Thea had turned away, and in silent indignation would have left the room, but Lothar interposed between her and the door, and, throwing himself at her feet, cried, "Forgive me! forgive me! My sin is my excuse; for I love you, Thea, I love you! more--far more--than all the rest!" Suddenly he sprang to his feet. A servant entered with some commonplace message. Lothar stood for a moment as though paralyzed. He heard the man's voice and then Thea's as though from some vast distance, and when he looked around Thea had vanished, and the servant was asking whether the Herr Lieutenant would drive home in the open wagon or the covered carriage. For an instant Lothar stared at him in bewilderment. Then he passed his hand across his brow. "No; the Countess's kindness is unnecessary," he said, when the explanation of the scene dawned upon him. "I am no longer giddy, and I can ride home." He left the room, and in the hall he encountered Alma, who had dried her tears and bathed her eyes. "Farewell, my dear Alma," he said, with a deliberate gravity, almost a solemnity of manner, quite foreign to him. "Are you going away?" the girl asked, all unconsciously, and impressed by this strange mood of his. "Going away? No--that is--yes--perhaps so. At all events, I bid you farewell." She heard him go down the stairs slowly and heavily. A sudden inexplicable foreboding weighed upon her like lead. She felt as though some evil threatened him, and she longed to avert it, to call him back. She started to do so, when she heard the voices of the servants in the hall below, and reflected that she did not know what to say to him. She ran into the bow-windowed room, and looked down the avenue. A flock of crows hovered above it; they were the only living things in sight. Alma waited. One of the crows that had alighted in the road flew into the air, and instantly afterward a lonely horseman rode along between the snow-clad trees. Alma pressed her forehead against the window-panes, but the rider never turned to look towards the castle. His head was bent forward on his breast, and he seemed to pay no heed to his horse. Like some shadow horse and rider appeared and disappeared at regular intervals among the poplars lining the avenue. Alma gazed after them until the last glimpse of Lothar had vanished in the wintry mist that had begun to veil the landscape. "Farewell," she whispered, and her heart was as heavy as if she had parted from him forever. Suddenly she roused herself from her revery. "How selfish I am!" she thought. "I stand dreaming here, thinking of all kinds of impossible misfortunes, while Thea is alone. Ah, we have enough real sorrow to bear! There is no need to invent fancied woes." She went to look for her sister, whom she had some difficulty in finding.