"Well, let bygones be bygones," he rejoined with bitterness. "I may surely be allowed to ask what snatched you from us so suddenly. You were going to tell me." Johanna seated herself opposite him. "If I only knew how to tell you, how to convince you that I could not do otherwise," she said. "From the expressions you have let fall you seem to me to think that I was influenced by vanity, love of pleasure, and a desire for luxury. Your sister accused me of the same motives." "Let that go; what is Mathilde to us? Go on!" Ludwig interposed, impatiently. Johanna obeyed; the dictatorial tone to which she had submitted for so long exercised its old influence upon her. "You went away in the autumn," she began; "the winter passed as peacefully as usual, and summer brought the usual throng of guests to the baths. Suddenly we heard that my father was starring in Weimar. One of our friends took me to the first performance. When we arrived it was too late to see my father before the play, and so I sat in the corner of our box in trembling expectation of beholding him after nearly eight years----" "Eight years!--a tender parent!" Ludwig interrupted; she paid him no heed. "But it was not my father whom I saw," she went on with increasing agitation: "it was Hamlet. I thought I knew the play, but what heights and depths were disclosed to me by this representation! This was no acting, it was actual life: suffering--doubt--despair. I sat trembling as if from a fever-fit, and after the performance I hastened to him. I do not know what I said to him, but my enthusiasm touched and delighted him. He kept me with him at first only during his stay in Weimar, afterwards for always. He went with me to Lindenbad to demand me of my foster-parents, and they thought it but natural that he should do so." "Yes, so my mother wrote me," said Ludwig, "in the last letter I had from her before she was taken ill." "I had no idea how ill she was," the young girl whispered, "or I should not have left her." He made no rejoinder; his expression, as he gazed moodily upon the ground, grew darker still. After a pause, Johanna said, "I wrote to you then; why did you not answer me?" "I could not," he replied. "Amid all your grief at my mother's death there was a tone of relief in your letter." "There was," said Johanna. "It is not in vain that I am the child of a great artist. The revelations he makes to me of the world of art are like my native air to me. Unconsciously I missed them and longed for them before I ever knew them." "The intoxication has lasted, then?" Ludwig asked, with his bitterest smile. "Intoxication!" she repeated. "You may call it so; but it is something better and nobler. I cannot define it, but its effect upon me is the same, only intensified, if possible. Everything within me that is dim and confused becomes clear and distinct when my father interprets for me----" "Johanna!" Ludwig exclaimed, "you would not--you cannot go upon the stage!"