From this I concluded that Miss Lucy R. merged into that moment of hysterical conversion, which must have been under the determinations of that trauma which she intentionally left in the darkness and which she took pains to forget. On considering her attachment for the children and her sensitiveness towards the other persons of the household, there remained but one interpretation which I was bold enough to impart to her. I told her that I did not believe that all these things were simply due to her affection for the children, but that I thought that she was rather in love with her master, perhaps unwittingly, that she really nurtured the hope of taking the place of the mother, and it was for that reason that she became so sensitive towards the servants with whom she had lived peacefully for years. She feared lest they would notice something of her hope and scoff at her. She answered in her laconic manner: “Yes, I believe it is so.”—“But if you knew that you were in love with the master, why did you not tell me so?”—“But I did not know it, or rather, I did not wish to know it. I wished to crowd it out of my mind, never to think of it, and of late I have been successful.”[15] “Why did you not wish to admit it to yourself? Were you ashamed because you loved a man?”—“O, no, I am not unreasonably prudish; one is certainly not responsible for one’s own feelings. I only felt chagrined because it was my employer in whose service I was and in whose house I lived, and toward whom I could not feel as independent as towards another. What is more, I am a poor girl and he is a rich man of a prominent family, and if anybody should have had any inkling about my feelings they would have ridiculed me.” After this I encountered no resistances in elucidating the origin of this affection. She told me that the first years of her life in that house were passed uneventfully. She fulfilled her duties without thinking about unrealizable wishes. One day, however, the serious, and very busy and hitherto very reserved master, engaged her in conversation about the exigencies of rearing the children. He became milder and more cordial than usual, he told her how much he counted on her in the bringing up of his orphaned children, and looked at her rather peculiarly. It was in this moment that she began to love him, and gladly occupied herself with the pleasing hopes which she conceived during that conversation. However, as this was not followed by anything else, and despite her waiting and persevering no other confidential heart-to-heart talk followed, she decided to crowd it out of her mind. She quite agreed with me that the look in connection with the conversation was probably intended for the memory of his deceased wife. She was also perfectly convinced that her love was hopeless.