Helena hardly believed her own happiness. She was preparing for her marriage. Her clouded past had vanished, life's night was over, the morning was shining. From a woman of a wandering star, who knew not where and how low she might fall, from a woman who was a beggar, from a woman without a morrow, to enter into a new period of life, to receive the affection of a man whom she loved, to become in the future a wife, to begin a calm life, a life which had a to-morrow, surrounded by respect, filled with love and duty,--that was her future. Helena understood, or rather had a prescience of the abnormal relation between her past and her future. "From such a life as mine that ought not to come. I am not worthy of this happiness," whispered she to Yosef, when he placed the ring of betrothal on her finger. "I am not worthy of such happiness." That half-insane woman possessed of love was right. Out of the logic of life such a future could not bloom, but her life had ceased already to move in its own proper orbit. There are stars which circle in solitude along undefined orbits, till swept away by more powerful planets they go farther, either around them or with them. Something similar had happened to Helena. A stronger will had attracted a weaker. Helena met Yosef on her track, and thenceforward she travelled in his course. The knowledge of this made her more peaceful. "Oh, if he wishes I shall be happy," thought she, more than once. She had unbounded belief, not only in Yosef's character, but in his strength. So the last shadow vanished from her soul; alarm disappeared, that indefinite fear of the future which she could not dismiss till the moment of Yosef's declaration, this fear which tortured her like a reproach of conscience. Her head was full of imaginings. With a song on her lips she made preparations for marriage, amusing herself like a child with every detail of dress. Notwithstanding her widowhood she wished to wear a white dress, which would also please Yosef. Regaining cheerfulness, she regained her health also; she was busy, active, even minutely painstaking with reference to future housekeeping. She grew more beautiful and more noble-looking under the influence of happiness. From being a misanthropic woman, a bird with plucked wings, she was changing into a woman who felt her own worth, even in this, that some one loved her. The date of the marriage was approaching. Meanwhile the time in which Yosef was to become a doctor was drawing near. He toiled, therefore, and toiled so intensely that his health tottered. Sleepless nights and mental effort marked his face with pallor; he grew thin, blue under the eyes; he lived in continual feverish labor, in reality he was losing his strength, but he kept on his feet as best he could, wishing at any price to win absolutely both position and an independent future.