"Cornelia, I no longer know you. Is this the self-sacrificing woman who has always cared only for others, never for herself? and could you now suddenly transform yourself into a calculating egotist, who bargains and higgles for a price, and demands the sacrifice of a whole career in return for her love? Cornelia, an unconditional sacrifice, a complete forgetfulness of self, might have won me to anything, but this is not the way to obtain my hand." He looked up and recoiled a step in horror, for before him stood the gorgon he had once imagined in those eyes. The disheveled hair seemed to move; her gaze rested upon _Henri_ with petrifying power. At last the tension of the nerves relaxed, the blood surged into her face, and her noble indignation flushed her cheek with as deep a crimson as it had before been pale. "Heinrich!" she cried, "I have borne your fiendish dialectics long enough! I wished to know you thoroughly, and therefore forced myself to be calm. Now this must cease; the measure is full! Do you really believe I would so far humiliate myself as to bargain and beg for your hand? Do you really suppose the sacrifice you ask would be too great for me, if I could justify it before God and my own conscience,--if you were worthy of it? That you are not you have now shown me. I was obliged to hear the answer you gave me with my own ears, or I should not have believed it; therefore I asked the question. I was forced to learn your falsehood from your own lips, to be able to offer you the only thing you deserve, my scorn. Yes, my nature is so healthful that I have strength to thrust evil from me, though my very life should cleave to it. Oh, Heinrich, that it must come to this! You have stripped the bloom from my existence, stolen the most sacred emotions of a young, trusting heart, wished to take from me honor, faith, all that affords support and protection to a woman, torn the wings from my soul to chain me, and then, when you wished to disown me, to say 'fly away.' Oh, treacherous soul-murderer, beautiful and winning as no other can ever be, for whose creation an angel must have mated with a fiend, I love and hate you with equal fervor! I would gladly ennoble you, yet feel already how you have corrupted me. Yes, I understand that no one resisted you,--that you conquered wherever you went; but here, proud man, is the limit of your victory. The shame you destined for me does not humiliate me, for I am conscious I have not deserved it. See, it rouses every hostile power within me. I feel, with a shudder, how they are taking possession of my heart, calling mockingly in my ears, 'Count Ottmar's mistress,' and painting scenes,--scenes which might well drive me to madness. And there stands the man who loves me, and from pure affection dooms me to such tortures; who will not suffer me to stand by his side before the world; will not give me his name in return for the life he demands: and all