"Matters have not yet gone quite so far, mother; there is nothing in the affair yet but pure human sympathy. But suppose it were to go further,--what then? The husband who is made unhappy by his wife has only himself to blame; for woman is just what we make her." "Oh, presumptuous man!" exclaimed the Staatsräthin, "there are women who would prove your error to you after a terrible fashion! This Hartwich girl was to me a most disagreeable child,--what must she be now?" "A woman who seems strayed from another world,--an apparition once seen never forgotten!" "Heavens!" said the Staatsräthin, really alarmed, "where and when have you met her? She vanished almost ten years ago; and if her rationalistic books had not appeared last winter, every one would have forgotten her." "Did you know her before, then?" several gentlemen asked curiously. "We were playmates for some time," said Angelika, "but in the end I could not endure her, she was so old-fashioned and despised my dolls." The gentlemen laughed. "She was the most strangely interesting child I ever saw in my life!" said old Heim. "Indeed she was," said Möllner; "but there was something repellant about her, for she had been embittered by cruel treatment, which had developed her mind precociously, while it had stunted her body. Such incongruity is always disagreeable, and therefore every one shunned her, as she shunned every one. We soon forgot her, for she left our part of the country when she was twelve years old, and we heard nothing more either of her or of her guardian, who accompanied her. A year or more ago, however, a couple of brochures from her pen appeared, that excited a tempest of criticism, at least among women, on account of their rationalistic tendency. I did not think it worth while to read them, as the pale little Hartwich girl had almost faded from my memory. No one knew anything about her, and we took no pains to know, for my mother and sister had been deeply shocked by the child's atheism, and had given her up. A short time since I went to see my friend Hilsborn, and met him just as he was getting into his carriage to drive to the village of Hochstetten, two miles off. He had been sent for to see the village schoolmaster. Hilsborn asked me to go with him, and, as the day was fine, I consented. When we arrived at the small castle that lies in the outskirts of the village, we alighted. Hilsborn went to find the schoolmaster,--I remained behind, to await his return, and walked slowly past the large, neglected garden, that surrounds the castle. A fresh breeze stirred the waving wheat-fields, and the setting sun shone through the quivering air upon the distant landscape. Suddenly, painted upon the flaming horizon, like the picture of a saint of the Middle Ages upon a golden background, appeared the figure of a woman dressed in black,--a woman so beautiful and sad that she might have been Night's messenger commanding the sun to set. She stood with folded