Sabine was silent. At length she inquired, still with averted face, "What draws you to those strangers; is it a joyful hope, is it sympathy alone? Give this question close consideration before you answer it to yourself at least." "What it is that makes it possible for me to leave this house," said Anton, "I do not myself know. If I can give a name to my motives, it is gratitude felt toward one. She was the first to speak kindly to the wandering boy on his way out into the world. I have admired her in the peaceful brightness of her former life. I have often dreamed childish dreams about her. There was a time when a tender feeling for her filled my whole heart, and I then believed myself forever the slave of her image. But years bring changes, and I learned to look on men and on life with other eyes. Then I met her again, distressed, unhappy, despairing, and my compassion became overmastering. When I am away from her, I know that she is nothing to me; when I am with her, I feel only the spell of her sorrow. Once, when I had to depart out of her circle like a culprit, she came to me, and before the whole scornful assembly she gave me her hand and acknowledged me her friend; and now she comes and asks for my hand to help her father. Can I refuse it? Is it wrong to feel as I do? I know not, and no one can tell me--no one but you alone." Sabine's head had sunk down to the back of the chair on which she bent. She now suddenly raised it, and with tearful eyes, and a voice full of love and sorrow, cried, "Follow the voice that calls you. Go, Wohlfart, go." CHAPTER XXVII. On a cold October day, two men were seen driving through the latticed gate of the town of Rosmin on toward the plain, which stretched out before them monotonous and boundless. Anton sat wrapped in his fur coat, his hat low on his forehead, and at his side was young Sturm, in an old cavalry cloak, with his soldier's cap cocked cheerily on one side. In front of them a farm-servant, squatted on a heap of straw, flogged on the small horses. The wind swept the sand and straw from the stubble-fields, the road was a broad causeway without ditches or hedges, the horses had to wade alternately through puddles and deep sand. Yellow sand gleamed through the scanty herbage in all directions wherever a field-mouse had made her way to her nest or an active mole had done what he could to diversify the unbroken plain. Wherever the ground sank, stagnant water lodged, and there hollow willow-trees stretched their crippled arms in the air, their boughs flapping in the wind, and their faded leaves fluttering down into the muddy pool below. Here and there stood a small dwarf pine, a resting-place for the crows, who, scared by the passing carriage, flew loudly croaking over the travelers' heads. There was no house to be seen on the road, no pedestrian, and no conveyance of any kind.