It was a chance--of course a chance; but he had never been able to laugh at sailors' superstitions even if he did not share them, and he would not laugh now. No; he would take it as a sign from heaven, as a confirmation of the principle to which he had held as long as he could remember--not with childish self-will to strive after the unattainable, but on a really worthy purpose, attainable by courage and strength and perseverance, to set all his courage, all his strength, and all his perseverance. Venus had disappeared in dark clouds, but other stars peeped out; there was a louder rustle in the trees, whose heavy masses began to stand out from the sky--the morning was breaking. Reinhold closed the window. He wanted an hour's repose, and felt that now he could take it. A gentle peace like the lull after a storm had come upon his spirit--he felt that he was himself again, that he had no need to blame or quarrel with himself further, and with fate he had never quarrelled. He put out the candles, which had nearly burnt down to their sockets; sank into the great arm-chair which stood before the fire, stared for a few moments at the embers which here and there shone amongst the ashes with a feeble and ever feebler glow, and then fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. CHAPTER XII. It was long, very long, before Elsa could sleep. As soon as she closed her eyes the bed changed to a ship that rocked up and down in the waves, and when she raised her weary eyelids more and more wonderful shadows flitted between the heavy folds of the curtains in the dim light of her night-lamp. The events of the day passed through her mind in the most varied form and in the utmost confusion. She was sitting by the sick-bed of the children in the close farmhouse room; but near her sat, not the farmer's wife, but Meta, who had let her loosened hair fall over her face, and told her with sobs how ashamed she was of being in love with a merchant captain whom she had never seen before. And then, again, it was the farmer's wife who sat upon the side of her bed and begged her to forget what she had said about the Count, who had sent for the doctor the moment she asked him, and who was certainly a kind gentleman in his own way, although he did not care about children and poor people, and looked sometimes so proud, and would be very angry if he knew that she always kept the little compass concealed in her pocket, which she must return to its owner to-morrow, for she had promised it by her friendship.