Strange, when he had drawn her on one side at the last moment, while Ottomar and Bertalda in the next room were arranging a few last things, and spoken to her thus--hastily, yet so clearly--his words had passed by her like an empty sound; she had hardly known what he was speaking of; and now it all came back upon her memory word for word! It was all coming true already, word for word! All-powerful love! Good heavens, what a mockery! What answer had he had for the pictures of the future which she had painted for him in colours whose glow was drawn from her overflowing heart, but a sad, gloomy smile, or monosyllabic absent words, evidently only spoken because he must say something, while his spirit was weighed down with the burden of his thoughts about his angry father, his pitiful or scornful brother officers, and of the possibility of forcing a duel upon Herr von Wallbach or Count Golm. His very caresses when, with a heart full of unutterable fear, she put her arms round him--as a mother round her child whom she is carrying from the flames--his very caresses made her shiver as she thought, "He treats me like a love-sick girl, who must be humoured, like a mistress whom he has taken on his journey, and from whom he wishes to hide that he is weary of her before their first station is passed." She! she! who had once dreamed that her love was an inexhaustible spring, and had blamed herself that she had been so chary with it, and had turned away her suitor from her door, had left him without in the barren wilderness of life to despair and perish without her! She who had been so proud! so proud, because she knew that she had boundless wealth to give; that her love was like the storm now raging without, throwing down all that was not stronger than itself--like the flood rushing by, destroying, devouring all that did not rise into the clouds! That had been her fear all this time, that he too, even he, would never quite understand her; there would always remain a gaping breach between the real and the ideal, and she ought not therefore to sacrifice the ideal, however yearningly her heart might throb, however stormily the warm blood might rush through her veins. She had but this one best thing to lose, to be for ever after poorer than the poorest beggar, she for whom inexorable experience had once for all destroyed the fair dream of so many years--that of being an artist by the grace of God! How she had fought! how she had struggled through so many weary days, so many wakeful nights passed in gloomy brooding, in writhing despair! days and nights whose terrors would long since have brought even her strength low, if his beloved, fascinating image had not flitted through her feverish morning dreams, alluring her on to other weary days, to other tortured nights. It was no longer his image now, it was himself; no longer fascinating, but still beloved as ever!