Gradually her tears ceased, and warmth returned to her cheeks and hands. Never is a woman more grateful or more susceptible to love than when a great sorrow has broken her strength, and she gropes helplessly for some support. At this moment Cornelia could have worshiped her lover as some superior being; all suspicion was forgotten, she clung to him as if he were some consoling angel. "Cornelia, are you happy now that you are clasped to my heart?" whispered _Henri_. "Oh, infinitely happy!" she murmured. "What should I be without you, my life? Now I am cast wholly upon you, you will never forsake your orphaned love?" _Henri_ strained her to his breast with almost suffocating violence, and exclaimed from his inmost heart, with the utmost sincerity, "If I ever forsake you, accursed be the hour when I was born, the couch on which I rest, the air I breathe, the lips with which I kiss! I raise my hand and call upon all the powers of evil to witness against me if I break my oath." Cornelia laid her finger on his lips. "Do not be so violent; that is no oath, but a curse." "Is it not equally binding?" "Certainly; but it makes me anxious: as if there would be no blessing upon it; as if you felt the possibility of becoming faithless, and your better self was threatening you with punishment." "You angel! Look me in the eyes; do you no longer believe in your _Heinrich_, and yet love him still?" "Ah, _Heinrich_, forgive my distrust! I feared to lose you, because you are the dearest thing in the would to me. I cannot think clearly to-day, I am so bewildered and worn out by grief. How contemptible I must seem to you!" "If you knew how lovely you are in your weakness! You are not contemptible, you are only a true, tender woman, and therein lies your charm. Do you suppose firm muscles, large bones, and nerves of steel are attractive to men? It is your very helplessness that rouses our magnanimity; your delicacy demands our indulgence. To support a beautiful, trembling woman on his strong arm, and defend her from real or fancied terrors, is a sweet joy to a man,--sweeter than admiration of an abnormal strength, which woman attains only at the cost of her charms." Cornelia listened to his words with increasing delight. "Do you suppose," he continued, "that you were ever dearer to me than at this hour, when I am permitted to cradle your weary form upon my knees and fondly caress you? when your strong mind succumbs to the laws of womanly nature and you fly to me in your horror of death? You have trusted yourself to me more than ever before, and in your sorrow are sacred. You have nestled confidingly to this heart, and it shall never deceive you."