Julie had long ago finished reading the letter, and still she stood motionless at the window, while Jansen, his head sunk on his breast, sat on the sofa in a state between waking and sleeping. It was not until the sheets slipped from her hand and fell at his feet that he started from his stupor. But he did not pick them up. "What does he write?" He asked in a hollow voice. "Just what you thought he would," she answered. "You will hardly find anything new in the letter, or at all events, anything that can alter things. So you had better read it at some calmer hour, after you have had a good sleep. In spite of all, I feel sure the letter will do you good. It would have been impossible to write of an unworthy subject in a more dignified way, and I, at least, have no worse opinion of our friend since I have heard his sad story. I believe everything will yet go well, and we needn't even lose our friend. He speaks, to be sure, of his self-imposed exile, and has also written a farewell letter to Irene, because he is of too chivalrous a nature to allow himself a happiness of which he thinks he has deprived us." He raised his head and looked at her with a dazed, inquiring look in his eyes. "I don't understand a word!" he said. She bent over him, clasped her arms round his neck, and kissed him on the forehead. "It isn't at all necessary you should understand me, dear one. Only keep quiet and trust to your best friend. It is true, circumstances treat us ill! but a true love and a little common-sense--oughtn't they to come out triumphant over all the tricks of blind fortune? I am only a woman; but it goes against my pride to submit so tamely and helplessly, when life is at stake. For in our hearts, is not everything pure between us two? And shall we not belong to one another merely because all sorts of impurity and hostility work against us from without? No, my dearest, we will not submit to this. Because we live in an imperfect world, we will do our best to make it more perfect; at least on that plot of earth on which our cot may stand." Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke, but she smiled upon him so tenderly that, for the first time in a long while, a sense of warmth passed over the soul of this broken-hearted man. "What do you mean, dear?" he asked, looking at her in surprise.