She had to turn her head away, it was impossible for her to conceal her emotion any longer by forced jests. She stealthily pressed her curls against her overflowing eyes, but, nevertheless, she shook her head when he put his arm around her and drew her to his breast. "No, no!" she whispered; "I don't believe it even now. You shall see it will turn out badly. It's so silly of my stupid tears to give the lie to my wisest words; and then, too, my foolish heart, that ought to be old enough not to let itself be deluded--" * * * * * On the evening of the same day Angelica wrote a long letter to Julie. After she had relieved her heart of a thousand things that concerned her friend alone, and had arrived at the end of the twelfth page, she finally summoned up all her courage, took a fresh sheet, and wrote the following postscript: "To tell you the truth, I was going to be so cowardly and deceitful as to send off this letter without telling you of the great event of this day. I don't mean the declaration of war by France, which will be an old story by the time this letter comes into your hands, but the offensive and defensive alliance that I have to-day concluded. With whom, I should very much prefer you should guess for yourself. But as it will be too long for me to wait before I can learn whether you have guessed rightly or not--and as one is said to lose in shrewdness what one gains in happiness--I will state at once that the artful man who has surprised my well-known firmness and prudence is no other than--Rosenbusch. I hope you are not so far-sighted as to see that in making this confession I blush to such an extent as to do all honor to my future name--though my rosiness is of a somewhat faded sort. Oh, dearest! what is our heart? It really seems as though that inexplicable and irresponsible something within us that controls the blood in its course and makes the hand cold or warm if we place it in that of another, exists almost independently of all those other forces which govern that little world we call the individual. How often have I made this dear fellow-creature the butt of my merciless sallies! How often, when alone with you, have I caricatured his weaknesses and human frailties--to be sure he has changed very much since you last saw him--and made merry over this rat-catcher with his flute and blue-velvet coat! And all the while my heart sat in its cell as still as a mouse and made no movement; nay, even my conscience did not rebel at the godless way in which I denied that love we are commanded to feel toward our fellow-creatures. And now all of a sudden-- 'Frailty, thy name is woman!'