Erna had been weeping quite recently, and so indeed she had done ever since last night, whenever she felt sure that no one was looking upon her despair. For the gentle creature was in despair. All through the long sleepless night she had seemed to hear Agatha's whispered question, "What will you do if it comes out that Kurt is innocent?" She had seemed to hear it like the voice of a warning angel, and neither head nor heart had been able to reply anything but, again and again: "In that case I have betrayed him, and I have made him unhappy." Could he be innocent? She had struggled so long against the belief in Kurt's guilt, and had only accepted it when he declared that he could not explain his relations to the Russian lady; no, not even to her, from whom, for the sake of their love, he was to expect entire confidence; for confidence was the very soul and at the same time the touchstone of love. Alas, she knew yet another and a more terrible touchstone, and that was the jealousy which she had cherished in secret towards the unknown lady, and which had blazed up brightly when yesterday she beheld her, the hated temptress, in the splendour of her youth, beauty, and grace. In vain did she struggle against the charm which the lady seemed to radiate; in vain did she declare everything about her to be unreal, except her diamonds perhaps; with every furtive glance at her rival she felt herself more and more fascinated, allured, beguiled, and, in equal measure, conquered, and at last crushed. It was a terrible state which wrapped her poor fluttering heart in absolute night, and yet even then there was something like a faint glimmering of the star of hope. If Kurt had ever loved her--and he had--he had done so once--how could he love another woman, who, however charming and seductive, was yet in all things the very opposite of herself? Kurt, who had so often assured her that he hated all display and all vanity, that he loved her because there was nothing of display, nothing, of vanity about her, because she was his own rose, which, in its dewy freshness, he would not exchange for a world of brilliant exotics! And his large brown eyes had shone down upon her so gravely and lovingly as he spoke, and his lips had trembled with genuine emotion--and had all this been naught but lies on the part of him whom she in her turn had loved, because he had appeared to her as a lofty and lordly image of truthfulness and fidelity? It could not be.