Linda told her story from the first to the last. She told everything,--her hatred for the one man, her love for the other; her journey to Augsburg. "Ah, dear, dear, dear," said aunt Gruener when this was told to her. "I know how wicked I have been," said Linda, sorrowing. "I do not say that you have been wicked, my dear, but you have been unfortunate," said aunt Gruener. And then Linda went on to tell her, as the day so much dreaded by her drew nearer and nearer, as she came to be aware that, let her make what effort she would, she could not bring herself to be the man's wife,--that the horror of it was too powerful for her,--she resolved at the last moment that she would seek the only other relative in the world of whom she knew even the name. Her aunt Gruener thoroughly commended her for this, saying, however, that it would have been much better that she should have made the journey at some period earlier in her troubles. "Aunt Charlotte does not seem to be a very nice sort of woman to live with," said aunt Gruener. Then Linda, with what strength she could, took Madame Staubach's part. "She always thought that she was doing right," said Linda, solemnly. "Ah, that comes of her religion," said aunt Gruener. "We think differently, my dear. Thank God, we have got somebody to tell us what we ought to do and what we ought not to do." Linda was not strong enough to argue the question, or to remind her aunt that this somebody, too, might possibly be wrong. Linda Tressel was now happier than she had remembered herself to have been since she was a child, though ill, so that the doctor who came to visit her could only shake his head and speak in whispers to aunt Gruener. Linda herself, perceiving how it was with the doctor,--knowing that there were whispers though she did not hear them, and shakings of the head though she did not see them,--told her aunt with a smile that she was contented to die. Her utmost hope, the extent of her wishes, had been to escape from the extremity of misery to which she had been doomed. She had thought often, she said, as she had been making that journey, that her strength would not serve her to reach the house of her relative. "God," she said, "had been very good to her, and she was now contented to go."