She gazed at him with gentle earnestness, and slowly shook her head. "When I enter a prison, I know I shall find a criminal, and am prepared for arguments about sin which are not too difficult to disprove. But with you I am disappointed and embarrassed, for your face promised something better, and I cannot enter into your delicate sophistry. I am an 'enthusiast'; you a 'servant of the government': the two characters are not easily harmonized. Farewell. Allow me to choose the time of my visits here, and forgive the poor jailers whom I have outwitted." With these words she hastily ran up the stone staircase. _Heinrich_ stamped his foot angrily on the floor. "Willful, haughty witch!" he murmured, as he hurried after her. She paused on the upper step and nodded to him with all the winning charm of heartfelt emotion. "Be kind to my prisoners, Herr von Ottmar, and I will be kind to you!" Then, turning a corner, she disappeared before _Heinrich_ could follow her. He gazed into vacancy, as if he wished to trace in the air the shadow into which she seemed to have dissolved before his eyes. The jailers timidly approached him with their petition for pardon. "You shall be forgiven for the sake of this lady's eloquence, which is difficult to resist. But on pain of losing your places let no one hear of what has taken place to-day, or may occur in future," said _Heinrich_, sternly, and left the building. The two turnkeys looked at each other a long time in silence; at last one said, as the result of his meditations, "It's the Prison Fairy!" _Heinrich's_ astonishment was raised to the highest pitch by the appearance of this young girl. Even the thought of the strange fatality which had made Severinus the innocent victim of the sensuality he had denounced so bitterly, a few weeks before, could not long fix his attention. He was convinced that Severinus had discovered to what "rose" he had wished to open his doors, and had gone to Martin's house with the intention of obtaining his daughter's confidence, and using it against him. "Poor Severinus!" said he. "You were compelled to pay dearly for your efforts to save souls. The ghost of the artist whose Hebe you so mercilessly shattered has revenged itself upon you; but the innocent tool of this vengeance was the very person whom you had most deeply injured, the poor, rejected Albert! Oh, the wonderful justice of fate!" Then he returned again to the remarkable apparition of the young girl, which unceasingly occupied his thoughts. She had such a peculiar, changeful temperament that she had pleasantly affected every chord of his being. A deep earnestness gleamed through the naïve coquetry by which she had sought to bribe him to favor her _protégés_. He perceived that hers was a kindred spirit, that she too, like himself, was under the influence of supernatural powers, but in her childlike soul had unconsciously united these forces in harmonious, changeful action, instead of, like him, being their sport.