Reality was too strong!  This morning her sisters came to her room imploring her to yield:—­if she married Alvan, what could be their prospects as the sisters-in law of such a man?—­her betrothed sister Lotte could not hope to espouse Count Walburg:  Alvan’s name was infamous in society; their house would be a lazar-house, they would be condemned to seclusion.  A favourite brother followed, with sympathy that set her tears running again, and arguments she could not answer:  how could he hold up his head in his regiment as the relative of the scandalous Jew democrat?  He would have to leave the service, or be duelling with his brother officers every other day of his life, for rightly or wrongly Alvan was abhorred, and his connection would be fatal to them all, perhaps to her father’s military and diplomatic career principally:  the head of their house would be ruined.  She was compelled to weep again by having no other reply.  The tears were now mixed drops of pity for her absent lover and her family; she was already disunited from him when she shed them, feeling that she was dry rock to herself, heartless as many bosoms drained of self-pity will become.

Incapable of that any further, she leaned still in that direction and had a languid willingness to gain outward comfort.  To be caressed a little by her own kindred before she ceased to live was desireable after her heavy scourging.  She wished for the touches of affection, knowing them to be selfish, but her love of life and hard view of its reality made them seem a soft reminder of what life had been.  Alvan had gone.  Her natural blankness of imagination read his absence as an entire relinquishment; it knelled in a vacant chamber.  He had gone; he had committed an irretrievable error, he had given up a fight of his own vain provoking, that was too severe for him:  he was not the lover he fancied himself, or not the lord of men she had fancied him.  Her excessive misery would not suffer a picture of him, not one clear recollection of him, to stand before her.  He who should have been at hand, had gone, and she was fearfully beset, almost lifeless; and being abandoned, her blank night of imagination felt that there was nothing left for her save to fall upon those nearest.

She gave her submission to her mother.  In her mind, during the last wrestling with a weakness that was alternately her love, and her cowardice, the interpretation of the act ran:  ’He may come, and I am his if he comes:  and if not, I am bound to my people.’  He had taught her to rely on him blindly, and thus she did it inanimately while cutting herself loose from him.  In a similar mood, the spiritual waverer vows to believe if the saint will appear.  However, she submitted.  Then there was joy in the family, and she tasted their caresses.

CHAPTER IX