Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/289

 combined news will make her come at once, very likely the day after to-morrow.… Now tell me, can I help you in any possible way? To fetch medicine? No! But perhaps if I came round to-night to help you with the sitting up?"

"I sit up myself most of the time, and a night nurse is coming, a Sister. Besides you look yourself as if you needed rest; you must be overworked, my dear! I suppose it is to drive away the monotony while Minna is away that you overwork yourself, but that you mustn't do, do you hear? Farewell!"

I went straight home in order to write the letter.

How happy did I feel at again being able to write to her!

Willingly would I have filled one sheet after another, but I only permitted my pen, as shortly as possible, to inform her of Hertz's critical condition and of the curtailment of my stay in Dresden owing to my uncle's altered plans. Certainly I should have liked to have kept back this last information until she had made her decision, and then, if she had decided in my favour, to have told her myself. But it would not do for her to come to Hertz without knowing it.

Though I had considered it my duty not to give way to my feelings, a strange tone had involuntarily stolen into the letter, which disclosed all my despair and anxious longing for her. It struck me on reading it through, and I was pleased by it.

I at once took the letter to the post-office, though it was too late for the night mail, and I might as well have dropped it into a letter-box. It calmed me immensely to communicate with Minna, and in such a way that nobody could blame me for it.