"I could not sleep, Paul," he began; "I tried, but----" Then he saw her. She sat in the chair looking at him with no trace of softening on her face, no shame, just a half smile of amusement. Maria rose from her knees and stepped toward him, her arms held out as if to offer him protection. The two men stepped forward, watching his face for the sign of love and forgiveness they both hoped to see there. It did not come. He paused for just a moment, then spoke very quietly, with extreme politeness. "I had not expected you--quite yet." "No?" She seemed quite as calm, quite as formal as he was himself. "You are to remain with us?" He asked the question as one might ask it of a perfect stranger. "Yes." "Your room is ready, I believe. Maria." "Yes, sir." Maria stepped to his side. "You will see to everything, Maria." "Yes, sir." "Martin!" Dr. Crossett could contain himself no longer. "Is this the way you meet, you two?" "Why not?" Lola looked up at him coldly. "We understand one another quite well, I think." "I think so," replied her father, "but I must be sure. I must speak with you alone." "Come, John. Come, Maria." Dr. Crossett went with them to the door, but the sight of those two, father and daughter, coldly facing one another, was more than he could bear, and he returned to Dr. Barnhelm and, putting both hands on his shoulders, spoke to him with all his tenderness, all his love for them, and for the dead mother to whom this sight would have been so terrible, in his voice. "Martin, if our old friendship means anything to you, I beg you to remember that she has come back to us, not for blame or reproaches, but for comfort, for love!" "I must speak to her alone." Dr. Barnhelm's voice was so firm, his manner so full of an iron resolution, that Dr. Crossett could say no more. He turned to Lola with a pitiful attempt at his old lightness of manner, and without again looking back he left the room, only pausing to shut the door behind him. She did not speak, but sat there, never for a moment taking her eyes from his face and waiting; at last he began. "Why are you here?" "I am here because they tell me that I am going to die." He had not expected this, and for a moment it broke through the stern repose of his manner. "What?" "So they say," she answered calmly, "the best of them. There is something here." She put her hand to her side. "Your heart." "Did you think," she said, her whole face lighting up with a flash of merriment, "that it was my soul?" She laughed then, quite with her old hearty laugh, at his cry of horror and at his look of mortal agony as he shrank away from her, his arms thrown up, as if to ward off some deadly peril. "They told me," she continued, "that it was not a question of months or of years, but of hours, and so I came to you." "Why?"