Yes, she clung convulsively to the money for which she had sacrificed all. She could not transact any new business herself but, strange to say, and in spite of her distrust, she allowed all Levy’s investments stand. But she collected her papers, pondered and calculated. Down in the vaults of the bank and at home in her villa she sat and counted and counted. Like the hermit with his rosary she sat mumbling, letting one figure after the other slip between her fingers.
Levy’s letter accompanying the bill she did not answer. Perhaps it was her timid unwillingness to reveal anything. Perhaps it was a secret hope that he would call himself.
In the end Mr. Levy had to take proceedings to get his money.
Hedvig no longer drove out to Percy’s grave. The shadow game was over. She no longer needed the dead to protect her against the living. And though she now more and more rarely went outside the house she no longer glanced at Percy’s collections. It was really a strange whim of fate that just such a being as she should steal about in that big house, built as a home of Art.
On a sultry and still summer evening Hedvig rose with smarting eyes and throbbing temples from her papers in the bedroom. She had an idea that people stared at her down at the bank and she had therefore brought everything home: shares, mortgages, title deeds, deposit receipts, bankbooks and bundles of notes. And now it was difficult in the evenings because she did not dare to light the light from fear of being seen from the outside through the chinks in the blinds. She sat over her papers till the figures swam together in a grey mist and there was a pricking sensation in her eyes. Then she crept to the door to see that the towel was hanging over the keyhole, so that none of the servants should peep in. Then she stole slowly, stopping all the time to listen, towards the big built-in wardrobe where she had found a good hiding place behind an old carved chest. When her treasure was hidden, she noiselessly opened a window and looked out to see if anybody moved.
Hedvig stood long in the window. The evening was sultry and heavy. Far below the firs lay a woolly darkness. Above, a few faint scattered stars hung in a sky to which the reflections of the neighbouring town imparted a reddish, ominous hue. Against this background she presently distinguished the quick shadowy flight of the bats round the eaves, the soft flutter of the moths, the flight of the spiders with their long helplessly suspended legs, all the mysterious fluttering and hovering things out in the big witches’-kitchen of the damp, warm summer night.
Hedvig felt a fever round her temples, a dull anxiety. All her silent, secret, suppressed feelings revived for the last time and moved about in the darkness. It was the restlessness of the body in the presence of the relentless oncoming autumn that melted together with her dim light-shy anxiety for her treasure.
Hedvig closed the window, pulled down the blind, turned on the light, and began to undress. She moved slowly, hesitatingly, sighing. At first she turned her back to the mirror, but by and by she stole one glance after the other into it. She was irresistibly drawn to the corner where the mirror stood. It seemed that the air there was not so still and burdened with loneliness. Before the mirror her movements quickened. With her glance fastened intently on her own image Hedvig loosened her hair and let her last garment fall to the floor. She had aged quickly of late, had grown grey about the temples and had folds beneath her breasts. And now she suddenly screwed up her face, so that it was full of wrinkles, and emphasised the weariness of her pose. “I am old,” she mumbled, “I am old.” And it seemed as if she had huddled up under the lee of old age.
But Hedvig did not escape so easily. She did not deceive herself. With a jerk she straightened herself up again, threw back her head, lifted her arms behind her neck so that her breasts seemed more beautiful. And she felt how a smile spread and opened out on her face. She saw it in the mirror, a strange, girlish trembling smile with pouting mouth, ready to be kissed and bitten. She began to turn and sway to and fro as if she heard dance-music. Closer and closer her face approached the mirror. She felt a faint sickness as if in a swing, and the air felt hot round her temples. Beside her own nakedness she beheld in the unnatural gloom of the mirror-room the nakedness of St. Sebastian. The ropes cut into his beautiful limbs. The points of the arrows were softly embedded in the even, slightly bronzed flesh. … To Hedvig he suddenly assumed Levy’s face. Yes, it was Levy’s mouth which smiled at her. His lips had lost their scorn and smiled close to hers, ecstatically, sensually. His eyes had lost their sharp, shortsighted stare and revealed black, fathomless depths of life and passion. His scorching breath rushed over her, his arms bent her irresistibly. …
Hedvig collapsed. Moaning and sobbing she rolled on the carpet whilst the last late attenuated rush of blood painfully fought its way through her bosom. …
Suddenly she started as if somebody had poured cold water over her. She seemed to hear footsteps and whispers outside. She flew to the switch, turned out the light and listened again intently. Then she quickly put on some clothes and lifted the blind carefully. Trembling in her whole body she lay there crouching and watched. At first she saw only the black darkness, but by and by she distinguished two figures, one dark and one light, down by the fence. They stood in the shadow of the firs tightly clasped together.
It was
