"It's strange that I feel merely as if I had had a dreadful dream--just a dream--that is the strange thing. No matter how hard I try, I cannot fully convince myself, except when I think of Siegfried, that my dream reflects an actuality which I experienced." "We mustn't indulge in vain broodings," said Frederick. "I know," she continued without looking at him, "I know I didn't always do what is right, but if _I_ deserved to be punished, Siegfried did not. Why did I escape?" After an interval of silence, she began to speak of her past, of conflicts with her husband, who had deceived her. Hers had been one of those loveless matches which are contracted in the customary business fashion. She told Frederick that she was an artist by nature, Rubinstein, for whom she had played when she was eleven years old, having prophesied a great future for her. "I don't know anything about cooking or children. I was always terribly nervous. Still, I love my children. If I didn't, would I have been so obstinate in trying to win them from my husband? I pledge you my word, Doctor, if I could change places with Siegfried, you would find me ready at any moment." Frederick made all sorts of consolatory remarks, some of which were not wholly superficial; for instance, what he said of death and resurrection and the great atonement that every form of death, even mere sleep, involves. "If you were a man, I should recommend Goethe. I should say to you, 'Read over and over the beginning of the second part of _Faust_:' 'Then the craft of elves propitious Hastes to help where help it can.' or the passage beginning: 'The fierce convulsions of his heart compose; Remove the burning barbs of his remorses, And cleanse his being from the suffered woes!' Doesn't what we went through give you a sense of expiation and purification?" "I feel," said the woman who had arisen from the dead, "as if my former life were far, far away, as if, since the sinking of the _Roland_, an impassable mountain were lying between me and my past. But leave me now, Doctor. You are bored. Don't waste the precious time you owe your pretty friend on me." As a matter of fact, Frederick preferred to talk to Mrs. Liebling rather than to Ingigerd. If he was bored, it was with Ingigerd, not with Mrs. Liebling. "Oh," he said, "never mind. Ingigerd Hahlstroem always has company. She doesn't need me." "My mother urged me," said Mrs. Liebling, "not to take the children, but to leave them with her. Had I obeyed, Siegfried would still have been alive. She has a perfect right to reproach me severely. And how can I face Siegfried's father? He did what he could to keep the children back. He wrote to me and sent friends and his attorneys."