Husband and wife, and always united during many years, and many children--it sounded like distant music. Rosa moved her lips more rapidly; she would have liked to stop her ears, she fought with all her strength against the distant music. "Jesus, my only Friend, I love Thee above everything. Sweetest Jesus, Saviour!" she whispered fervently; her eager eyes were full of longing as she raised them. Rosa had never had a picture of the Saviour over her bed, nothing but a vessel containing holy water and some consecrated palm branches, but at that moment a picture shone on the bare wall which had never been there before. She stared at it in a transport of joy, and her eyes grew bigger and bigger; her lips faltered as she prayed, and she heaved a deep sigh--there--there--Jesus Christ! How Martin Becker resembled Him in every feature, and how He smiled at her. The expression in the girl's face grew more and more ecstatic; it was as though all the blood in her body had suddenly become active, as it coursed down into [Pg 232] the tips of her toes and then up into her hot cheeks. Rosa glowed with delight--there He was, there He was. It was no longer the Christ Child, whom she had got leave to nurse, it was He, He, so big and so beautiful. "Jesus, O my Saviour!" She uttered a cry of joy and stretched out her arms. It had grown dusk outside and the low room was already in darkness, but the picture shone with a wondrous splendour before Rosa's eyes. She writhed on the floor, her delicate body trembled with pain and ecstatic happiness. When Marianna came upstairs to dress--for Mr. Mikolai had promised faithfully to take a short walk in the fields with her after supper--she found the Paninka lying on the floor, pale and almost fainting, as though all the blood had left her body. Poor little thing! The maid lifted the light body on to the bed and began to undress her. But Rosa resisted with a wail and kept firm hold of her clothes. She would not come down to supper either, she wanted to be alone, quite alone with Him. "With whom?" asked Marianna inquisitively. But she received no answer. The young girl lay on her bed, pale and with a faraway look in her eyes. Marianna cast a glance at her in which there lay both fear and reverence--dear, dear, was that to begin again? She made the sign of the cross and then, as no sound came from Rosa and she seemed to be sleeping, hastily made herself smart, put on a dean cap and her beads with all the long, gay-coloured ribbons round her neck--Mr. Mikolai would approve of her now--and hurried downstairs, humming a song. [Pg 233] Nobody missed Rosa at supper. The evening was so warm, so mild and alluring that it had turned all their heads. Even Mr. Tiralla, who otherwise would have asked for his little daughter, did not give her a thought. True, he was sitting at the table, but his eyes were fixed on vacancy, and he neither saw nor heard anybody. It appeared as if he might fall off his chair at any moment.