December 10, 1902, was the day of his death. Up to the ninth I confided to my diary all the phases of my anxiety and my hope, my despondency and my despair. It is astounding how much like a friend such a book becomes to one—how one can tell it all one’s thoughts and complaints, how one can shed over it the tears that one must hide from others, particularly from a dear one who is ill. But on the tenth of December I could write no more, and not for a long time afterward. Much later I came back to this trusty confidant and made a large cross on the last written leaf. On the new page I wrote: December 29. Here yawns a terrible hiatus in this book. The most awful days of my life, henceforth to be lonely, so inexpressibly lonely.... On the tenth, after an hour of agony, and after he had called me by name, My Own, My very Own, breathed away his precious life! Maria Louise, Sister Luise, Pauline, the two physicians, and I stood about his deathbed—endlessly sad and tragic hours.... Have lost everything! Then followed the days and nights of the deathwatch. So lovely he lay there with his own characteristic smile on his cold, ice-cold lips, which I could not kiss often enough.... On the thirteenth solemn service for the dead; the weeping inmates of the house and the villagers; the mourning guests. We accompanied the coffin to Eggenburg. On the fourteenth the journey to Gotha. On the sixteenth the flaming pyre! During his lifetime he whom I lost said to me many dear and beautiful words, which are imprinted on my heart; but the loveliest are those which he spoke from beyond the grave, in his last will. After a few last instructions and directions it reads: And now, My Own, one single word to thee: Thanks! Thou hast made me happy; thou hast helped me to win from life its loveliest aspects, to get delight from it. Not a second of discontent has ever come between us, and for this I thank thy great understanding, thy great heart, thy great love!... Thou knowest that we realized within our hearts the duty of contributing our mite to the betterment of the world, of laboring, of struggling for the right, for the imperishable light of the truth. Though I go home, for you this duty is not extinguished. Thy happy recollection of thy companion must be a support to thee. Thou must work on in our plans, for the sake of the good cause keep up the work until thou also at last shalt reach the end of the brief journey of life. Courage then! No hesitation! In what we are trying to do we are at one, and therefore must thou try still to accomplish much! CONCLUSION