“Innocent” or “guilty” were two arbitrary words with which to divide her conduct. She had herself always maintained her innocency of putting another man in her husband’s place, as firmly as that husband had believed in, and acted upon, the contrary. But that she had been guilty of loving Philip von Königsmarck was beyond denial. Whether he had ever had more of her than the kiss she had given him when they were discovered together only Sophia Dorothea and the Countess von Arlestein knew. For Count Philip had died, horribly, before the dawn following that fatal night. No one cared much now, even those who waited on her, whether she had kept her marriage vows before God. Unconsciously they thought of her as pure; they could not think one a wanton who had lived in this awful chastity and renunciation for thirty-two years. The Captain of the Guard was a young man, born while she was in prison. Thinking of what he had already crowded into his life, he shuddered when he saw the proud, grievous woman entering the austere little chapel on Sunday, and reflected that during his infancy, his childhood, his youth, his young manhood, she had been doing the same without rest or change, while the beauty withered on her face and hope withered in her heart. As he rode through the courtyard to-night he looked up at her window, reluctantly but irresistibly. There was the peaked white blur of her face, the dark, restless eyes fixed on the twilight landscape, the long white hand supporting the sharp chin. “Herr Jesus!” he muttered. “Why does she not die?” Sophia Dorothea was thinking the same; she wondered what had kept her alive, what had actually sustained her to grow _old_–yes, to come to that horror, to lead this existence to _old age_. Why had she not flung away a life so miserable and died at least in the triumph of youth? She envied Philip von Königsmarck in that he had not lived to grow old. Hope had upheld her a certain time, but hope was dead. She could recall almost the actual moment when it had finally died, when she had stood at the window watching the road, and known at last that no help would come ever along it to her–known that her husband would not die and release her; but still she had lived and grown old. The dark gathered, descended and settled. She leant back in the threadbare velvet chair, and her tired eyes remained fixed on the dusk. She thought of her husband; he was an old man now, but she pictured him as she had last seen him in the full lustiness of his youth. Her children were grown to middle life, but she saw them still in petticoats. Though both were married and had children of their own, the news had come to her through her women. She had once had great hopes in her son; she believed that he would have some desire to see his mother.