"I am a dying man" replied Selbitz, in a low voice. Then he paused. Again Walt said nothing, and a long silence ensued. Then suddenly Franz seized the hand of Andreas Walt in his own; covered it with tears and kisses; and cried "Andreas! Can you forgive me?" "Oh, comrade!" answered Andreas, flushing a blood-red, and drawing away his hand in his surprise and embarrassment. But Franz, lifiting himself up, continued. "If to night is to be my last, Andreas, so much the more reason for you to know that—l love you". "You—you speak so in your fever", replied his late antagonist, bewildered.
"No, Andreas! By God and by His Eternal Grace, I tell you the truth! Be cold—be proud if so you must be, after I humiliate myself before you. Yes, Andreas only a glowing love, hidden from all the world, not understood by even myself—this has made me treat you as I did. Know now that in my bosom lives a quite other heart; as long ago you would have known—found out under other circumstances. I tormented you, I insulted you, only because I loved you! I could not endure it any longer—that you were so cold to me, made no more of me than of other comrades. Yes—I have felt as if I would kill you, rather than find you so cold to me!"
"I cannot understand—"
"Listen, Andreas! When I saw you for the first time—when you first came into my room, as I sat alone and dull-hearted on my bed that day, a ray of sunshine fell through the old torn curtain. It fell on your face, on your breast and shoulder; and something cried out in me, "That man belongs to you! He is your brother your friend! Without him you ought not to live, you cannot live!…" Only because I could not throw myself upon your neck and kiss you, did I treat you so ill then and afterward … Oh, if you could have known that though I have mocked you in the presence of others, I have crept in the night to the door of your room, only just to hear the sound of your breathing while you were sleeping!—my heart tortured with dreams that perhaps you might die suddenly! that so I might be left alone, in cruel misery, without you! What a folly mine has been!… Point out to me, Andreas, any other such heart as mine! And so at last in my mad torment, ever more wreched, did I cry out, "This must come to an end! either by his bullet to my heart, or by mine to his! When he or I are dying, then, then, I can tell him all! Death shall unite us, since Life cannot! And so now you know all: forgive me, if you can".
Franz had turned his face to the wall, the agony of his wound overcoming him. But Andreas Walt knelt down beside him, and— 204 —
