"Do not be childish, Ella," he replied, impatiently. "Do you think it is good or elevating for a man, when he returns home after his first success, there to find complaints, reproaches, in short, all the wretched prose of domestic life? So far you have spared me it, and should do the same in future. Otherwise you might discover that I am not the patient sort of husband who would allow such scenes to take place without resistance." Only a single glance at the young wife was required to recognise the boundless injustice of this reproach. She stood there, not like the accuser, but like the condemned; indeed she felt that in this hour the verdict was spoken upon her marriage and her life. "I know well that I have never been anything to you," said she, with trembling voice, "never could be anything to you, and if I only were concerned, I would let you go without a word, without a petition. But the child is still between us, and therefore"--she stopped a moment, and breathed heavily----"therefore you can comprehend that the mother should pray once more for you to remain with us." The petition came out shyly, hesitatingly; in it could be heard the effort it cost her to make it to the husband, in whose heart no chord throbbed for her, and yet in the last words there rang such a touching, frightened entreaty, that his ear could not remain quite deaf. He turned to her again. "I cannot stay, Ella," he replied, more mildly than before, but still with cool decision. "My future depends on it. You cannot conceive what lies in that word for me. You cannot accompany me with the child. Besides this being quite impossible in a tour undertaken for study, you would soon be very miserable in a foreign country whose language you do not understand, in circumstances and surroundings for which you are quite unsuited. You must, indeed, now accustom yourself to measure me and my life with another measure than that of narrow-minded prejudice and middle-class contracted ideas. You can stay here with the little one, under your parents' protection; at latest I shall return in a year. You must resign yourself to this separation." He spoke calmly, even pleasantly; but every word was an icy rejection, an impatient shaking off of the irksome bond. Hugo was right; he lay already too firmly under the influence of his passion to listen to any other voice--it was too late. A cold, pitiless, "You must resign yourself," was the only answer to that touching prayer. Ella drew herself up with a determination at other times quite foreign to her, and there was also a strange sound in her voice; there lay in it something of the pride of a wife, who, trampled upon and kept down for years, at last revolts when extremities are resorted to. "To the separation, yes," replied she, firmly. "I am powerless against it. But not to your return, Reinhold. If you go now, go with her, notwithstanding my prayers, notwithstanding our child, so do it. But then, go for ever!"