"I learnt at the parsonage, _Herr_," she replied. "Helene had a class----" She paused, embarrassed, for at the sound of the beloved name, which he heard for the first time from her lips--such lips--he winced as if from the lash of a whip. She took his excitement for anger, and added apologetically, "I mean the Pastor's daughter." "Never mind," he said, controlling himself with difficulty. "Go to bed now." That night Boleslav fought a severe battle with himself. He felt as if his ideal of exalted purity had been polluted since his eyes had rested with favour on this abandoned woman. And he himself was polluted too by that involuntary caress. It was absolutely necessary to regain his peace of mind and purity. He must come to some distinct understanding with Helene without delay, in order that he might be strengthened in his struggle against his treacherous senses and benumbing doubt. So urgent did it seem that his resolutions should at once be put into force, that he rose in the middle of the night, and by the glimmer of his night-light wrote to Helene assuring her of his undying love and eternal devotion, and imploring her to make some sign to show that she stood by him in trouble as she had once done in happiness, so that he might know for certain it was worth while his continuing to wage for her sake the fight against such enormous odds. With every line he wrote, his anxiety lessened, and when he lay down in his bed again, he felt that, through bracing his energies for the task, he had relieved himself of a load of care that had long heavily oppressed him. "Can you undertake, Regina," he asked the next evening, "to deliver this letter unseen to the _Fräulein_ at the parsonage?" She regarded him for a second with wide eyes, then looking down, she murmured, "Yes, _Herr_." "But supposing they attack you down in the village?" "Pah! What do I care for _them_?" she exclaimed, shrugging her shoulders contemptuously, as she always did when the villagers were in question. Soon afterwards he saw her glide by the window like a shadow and disappear in the gloaming. Hours passed. She did not return. He began to reproach himself for having engaged her in his amatory mission when her life was at stake. At last, towards midnight, he heard the front door latch click. She appeared on the threshold with chattering teeth, blue with cold, the letter still grasped in her cramped fingers. He made her sit down by the stove, and gave her Spanish wine to drink--and gradually she found her voice. "I have been lying all this time in the snow under the parsonage hedge," she said, "but there was no possibility of getting at her. Just now she put the light out in her bedroom, so I came home. But don't be vexed, _Herr_. Perhaps I shall have better luck to-morrow." He wouldn't hear of her repeating the adventure, but when she came to him the following evening equipped for her walk, he did not forbid her to go.