"Forgive me," said the princess, with deep emotion. "I have esteemed you highly, but not known you; now I understand you. You shall hear no more from me of an expectation so ill suited to your character. You are born for higher things; you belong to the great band of those who are appointed to restore the ideal balance of the world. You are right. Fate allots to each his sphere of labor, and you are to make the happiness of an equally gifted nature. To seek to withdraw you from this object would be committing a wrong against him for whom God created you; and, in truth, he must love the man to whom he has given you for a companion." Again a short pause followed. "Let those for whom life has no longer any hopes, whom it has robbed of all the heart of woman needs, devote themselves to the vocation I have mentioned. For you many great joys and duties are still reserved,--but do not deceive yourself, perhaps many sorrows also." "Oh, I have never blinded myself to that!" replied Cornelia. "I do not fear them. No one is spared, and what all suffer will not be too heavy for me." "It is easy for us to say so. God grant you may be spared the hours when we doubt our own strength! Shall I be frank?" she asked, with sudden resolution; and then continued, without waiting for a reply, "I thought I could guard you from such sorrows when I selected you for the position at T----. I believed you to be under dangerous influences, and as I had become deeply interested in you from the descriptions I had heard, thought it any duty to constitute myself your protectress. But I now feel ashamed in your presence, for I am convinced that you are too noble to need my protection; you have the best support in yourself. It depends upon you to make the power that will be exerted over you beneficial or otherwise, and I know now it will be the former." "Oh, your Highness," cried Cornelia, her eyes dim with tears, "I thank you for those words! But I beseech you not to overvalue me at the expense of another whose influence I have thus far felt as one rich in blessing. I should despise myself if I did not gratefully remember all the beauty and goodness I have received through the very intercourse you feared for me. Least of all, your Highness, could I bear to see the heart which is the dearest thing on earth to me misunderstood by you." She was silent in alarm. Ottilie coughed and pressed her handkerchief to her lips, then removed it and looked at Cornelia with a smile. Cornelia could not speak: she was gasping for breath; she had seen blood on the transparent folds.