There was so much affection in her tone that the faint mockery in her words left no sting. "I will not wait long, I promise you," Wolff said. At the door he turned and looked back at her. It was almost as though he had meant to surprise her into a betrayal of some hidden feeling; but Frau von Arnim had not moved, nor was there any change in the grave face. "Tell Hildegarde that I shall never forget," he said earnestly, "that I owe her my happiness, and that I thank her." "I shall give her your message," Frau von Arnim answered. The fate that arranges the insignificant, all-important chances of our lives ordained that at the same moment when Wolff von Arnim passed out of the drawing-room Nora Ingestre came down the stairs. She held an open telegram in her hand, and the light from the hall window fell on a face white with grief and fear. Arnim strode to meet her. "What is it?" he demanded. "What has happened?" "My mother is very ill," she answered faintly. "They have sent for me." She had descended the last step. The next instant Wolff von Arnim was at her side, and had taken her in his arms. "_Mein Liebling!_" he whispered. "_Mein armes Liebling!_" She yielded, overwhelmed by the swiftness of his action, by her own wild heart-throb of uncontrollable joy. Then she tried to free herself. "You must not!" she cried. "It is not right!" "My wife!" he retorted triumphantly. "My wife!" She looked up into his face. At no time had he been dearer to her, seemed more worthy of her whole love, than he did then, with his own joy subdued by an infinite tenderness and pity. But the name "wife" had rung like a trumpet-call, reminding and threatening even as it tempted. "Oh, Wolff!" she said, "you must let me go. It is not possible—you do not understand. I——" She was going to tell him of the barrier she had raised with her own hands, of the letter that was on its way. She was going to say to him, "I am not free. My word is given to another. Seek your happiness where it awaits you." In some such words she meant to shatter her own life and lay the first stones of the atonement to the girl whose happiness she had stolen. Or, after all, had it been no theft? Was it not possible that she had been deceived? And even if it were true, had it not been said, "A useless sacrifice is no sacrifice at all"? Had she not a right to her happiness? And Wolff was speaking, and it seemed to her that his joy and triumph answered her. "Nothing can come between us and our love!" he said. "Nothing and no one! Oh, Nora, _ich habe dich so endlos lieb_!" The barrier, the letter, Hildegarde, every heroic resolution was forgotten, swept away by the man’s passion and her own exulting love. Nora leant her head against the dark-blue coat in reckless, thankful surrender. "_Ich habe dich so endlos lieb!_" he repeated. "_Kannst du mich auch lieb haben?_" And she answered fearlessly: "I love you!" and kissed him.