I can't go.
No, right in the front! There is nothing to be done, nothing to be
done!" She sat alone in the room, the five candles she had lighted
guttering and spilling wax. She was in the half-fastened painted bodice
and a fine net petticoat she had bought at Nancy. Even the green silk
bedroom slippers were on, tied round her ankles with ribbons, the only
slippers she had found in Metz, and she had searched for them for hours.
The room was icy cold, and the hand of the clock chasing towards the
hour for the dance. Should she go in uniform? Not for the world.
She would not meet him, and it seemed as though there could be no
to-morrow, and she would never meet him again in this world. This
meeting had had a peculiar significance--the flouncy, painted dress, the
plans she had made to meet him for once as a woman. Shivering, and in
absurd anguish she sat still on the bed.
"Oh, Elsa, Elsa, look!" Better the child than no one, and the shiny head
was hanging round the door. ("Wie schoen!")
"But it isn't _schoen_! Look! It won't meet!"
"Oh!..." Elsa's eyes grew round with horror, and she went to fetch her
mother. "Tanzen!" They talked so much of "tanzen" in that household. The
thin mother was all sympathy, and stood in helpless sorrow before the
gap in the bodice.
"What's all this?" and _der Vater_ stood in the doorway, heavy as lead,
and red as a plum.
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