"Am I?" she replied, boldly planting her elbows on the table, and regarding him with an expression of joyous inquiry. "You mean, because I'm sitting here with you drinking wine and being treated as if I were human? Oh! it's exactly like being in heaven.... Do you think I shall ever go to heaven?... I don't. I am far too wicked!... And I think, too, I should be afraid to go there. It must be much livelier in hell.... I should be more at home there. The Herr Pastor often said I was like a little devil, and I never fretted about it. Why should I? It seemed quite natural that I should be the little devil and Helene the angel. An excellent arrangement.... Didn't Helene, _Herr_, look just like an angel in the flesh? So pink and white and delicate, with her blue eyes and folded hands. And she always wore ... a pretty ribbon ... round her neck ... and smelt always of ... rose-scented soap...." A cold shiver passed through him. He felt it was degrading both to himself and the beloved to allow this half-tipsy girl to speak of her as if she were an equal. "Stop!" he demanded hoarsely. She only answered him with a dreamy smile. Wine and fatigue suddenly overpowered her. She lay stretched out, her head thrown back on the arm of the chair, and fought against sleep, like a Bacchante exhausted after a whirl of dissipation. A great anger, that rose and fell within him like the sound of the storm outside, mastered him. "This is what wine does," he thought, and yet drank more. He wanted to wake her, to send her out, but he could not tear his eyes away from her face, and by degrees he became gentler again. "She meant no harm," he thought, as he moved nearer to where she lay. "This is the last time she will sit here with me; to-morrow a new leaf will be turned. After to-morrow she shall find in me nothing but the master." Then he remembered all he had wanted to ask her. "Well, never mind," he said to himself, "it can't be helped. Why spoil her Christmas? Some other time will do." The hurricane without seemed to have increased in fury. It roared through the keyholes, and battered the shutters. How brutally cruel it was to drive her out to sleep in a greenhouse on a night like this! But what was the use of being compassionate when it had to be done?