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Timar burst out laughing. There was a world of humor, of child-like simplicity, happy pride, and deep emotion in the idea. Little Dodi will write to warn Timéa of her danger. Dodi to Timéa! .
And then he began to think of the revelations of his delirium before the two women who would be with him day and night of his stewards, his palaces, and of his pale wife of how he would see Timéa before him, call her by name, and speak of her as his wife and Noémi knows that name. Besides his bodily pain, another thing tormented him that he had struck Dodi yesterday.
"Push the table away and leave me alone," said Frau Therese, making Noémi and Dodi rise too. And as if all her strength had returned, she helped to carry the table into the next room, so that when his reverence knocked at the door she was alone, and had drawn her bedstead across the door-way so as to prevent access to the inner apartment.
Over the thickly frosted paths only one track led from the house, and that went to Therese's resting-place. This was Noémi's daily walk with little Dodi. Now there were only those two to go there; the third, Almira, lay at home at the last gasp: the ball had touched a vital part, and there was no hope of cure. It was evening. Noémi lighted her lamp, brought out her wheel, and began to spin.
But he felt that his penance consisted in the fact that his riches, influence, the renown of his name, his supposed home-happiness, were only a cruel irony of fate. They buried him, and he could not extricate himself to live the only happy life, whose center was Noémi and Dodi. When the first Dodi died, he learned what he had been to him.
"Well, where's Dodi?" he said, impatiently. But Noémi knelt down by his bed and held out to him the white rose. Michael took it and smelled it. "How curious!" he said; "this flower has no scent as if it had grown on a grave." She rose and went out. "What is the matter?" asked Timar, turning to Therese. "Don't be angry," said she in a gentle, soothing tone. "You were so dangerously ill.
Little Dodi longed to come back to us; it was better here, he thought, than up in heaven. He said to the dear Lord, 'Thou hast angels enough; let me return to those who had only me' and the Lord allowed it." "How can it be?" "H'm! h'm! The old story. A poor woman again who died, and we have adopted the poor orphan. You are not angry?" Timar trembled in every limb as if with ague.
"In the copies you set Dodi, to begin with; and then too in the contract by which you gave us the island. Have you forgotten?" "Yes; it is so long ago." "And do you not write to any one now?" "No one." "You have not left the island for a year and a half; have you nothing to do now out in the world?" "No. And I shall never have anything to do there again." "What will become of your business then?"
But suddenly fate cried "Halt!" Or rather not fate, but Therese. Eight years had passed since Timar had found his way to the little island. Then Noémi and Timéa were both children: now Noémi was twenty-two, Timéa twenty-one, Athalie would soon be twenty-five; but Therese was over forty-five, Timar himself nearly forty, and little Dodi was in his fifth year.
"And why do you not bring him to me when he is awake?" "Because then you are asleep." "That is true; but when we are both awake together, you must bring him in and let me see him." "I will do so, Michael." The child sunk gradually. Noémi had to conceal from Timar that Dodi was ill, and constantly to invent stories about him, for his father constantly asked for him.
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