Page:The Prussian officer, and other stories, Lawrence, 1914.djvu/68

 his post card to his mother. He slipped out after Emilie, gave it her to post. His manner was careless and victorious, hers shining and trustful. He slipped back to shelter.

There he sat on the side of the bed, thinking. Again he went over the events of the afternoon, remembering his own anguish of apprehension because he had known he could not climb the wall without fainting with fear. Still, a flush of shame came alight in him at the memory. But he said to himself: “What does it matter?—I can’t help it, well then I can’t. If I go up a height, I get absolutely weak, and can’t help myself.” Again memory came over him, and a gush of shame, like fire. But he sat and endured it. It had to be endured, admitted, and accepted. “I’m not a coward, for all that,” he continued. “I’m not afraid of danger. If I’m made that way, that heights melt me and make me let go my water”—it was torture for him to pluck at this truth—“if I’m made like that, I shall have to abide by it, that’s all. It isn’t all of me.” He thought of Emilie, and was satisfied. “What I am, I am; and let it be enough,” he thought.

Having accepted his own defect, he sat thinking, waiting for Emilie, to tell her. She came at length, saying that Franz could not arrange about his bicycle this night. It was broken. Bachmann would have to stay over another day.

They were both happy. Emilie, confused before Ida, who was excited and prurient, came again to the young man. She was stiff and dignified with an agony of unusedness. But he took her between his hands, and uncovered her, and enjoyed almost