'I was resolved to meet you, at all risks, my darling. A faith plighted--a promise made is holy, Carl--holy to God and man. I promised to be here, Carl, in a dream that I had of you; and by a strange chance I have been permitted to come--to be here, to see you, feel your strong but tender arm round me once more. Oh, Carl, kiss me once again, as you did on that day in the Hoch Munster when first you said you loved me.' 'Ernestine, what do you mean?' asked Charlie, eyeing her with some anxiety, and impressed with a strange fear by the solemnity of her manner. 'I belong no longer to myself.' 'To whom, then? Heavens!' he added, starting, 'you have not become the wife of that man!' 'Who?' 'Baron Grünthal.' 'Oh, no; how could you think of such a thing for a moment, Carl?' she said, with a bitter smile, while looking down and playing with a ring he had given her in other days. 'Then to whom do you belong?' he asked, fondly. 'My love--to you!' She put up her little face tenderly to his, and then looked away, with the weary, wistful expression of those who have long lived in some world of their own, and can never seem to see out beyond the present. 'We were betrothed together for life and death, Carl.' 'Were--_are_, you mean, Ernestine.' 'Yes, beloved Carl; but time presses--alas! I fear that I must leave you now.' 'But to meet again----' 'Very soon.' 'I have brought these for you from Lorraine. This is the bullet that struck me down, and this cross is a trophy of the war.' 'How pretty--nay, it is beautiful and interesting, too,' she exclaimed, with something of her old gleeful way, as he clasped round her slender throat a gold necklet he had procured in Aix, and now the white enamelled cross hung thereat. She shuddered when she looked at the chassepot ball and took it in her hand. 'And this actually pierced you, my Carl?' 'Nearly through and through, love. For five days it was in unpleasant proximity to my lungs.' 'It is indeed a relic,' said she, while placing it in the bosom of her dress. 'So--so,' said she, sadly, disengaging herself from his arms, 'our love has been sanctified by danger and death.' 'Great Heavens!' thought Carl, 'sorrow has turned her brain!' 'It has _not_,' she said; 'do not think so.' 'What is not? I did not speak,' said Carl. 'No, but you thought; and I know what you thought, and there is no living grace or glory like a love so sanctified as ours, Carl.' He regarded her with a bewilderment not unmixed with alarm. There was a strange wild and weird beauty in her pale face--a radiance in her eyes, a brightness all over her such as Charlie had never before witnessed. Whence did it come? From the altar-lights? They were too dim. What did it mean? Was it her natural beauty only, magnified by the force of his imagination, and enhanced by his great love for her? Somehow Charlie was perplexed and startled by her, amid all the transport and joy of the time.