He stared at her as if she were some phantom. "For God's sake, Thea, tell me what you mean," he cried. The expression of his face bewildered her. She paused again for a moment. Then he took her hand, and said, in a voice vibrating with emotion, "This is perhaps the last time that we shall stand thus face to face,--our last conversation. Thea, will you not answer truly and frankly one question?" "I have always been true," she replied, gazing past him as into space. "Tell me, then, do you believe the cause that separates us to exist in me? Do you believe that I desire our separation? and is there no reason _known only to yourself_, no memory in _your_ soul, to keep us asunder?" She covered her eyes with her hand, as if dazzled by a sudden light. A slight tremor passed through her frame, and a delicate flush coloured the pale, resigned face. Bernhard gazed at her in breathless eagerness; but, even before she spoke, he was overpowered by the conviction that this woman could not be false; that he had been the victim of an illusion. "I have no such memory," said Thea, helplessly dropping her clasped hands before her. "Nothing in this world except yourself could ever separate me from you. I thought----" Before she could utter another word she was clasped in his arms. "Thea! my own Thea! what useless misery we have caused each other!" She extricated herself in utter bewilderment from his embrace. "And do you still love me, then?" she asked. "More deeply and truly than on our marriage-day," he said, fervently. "And Julutta Wronsky----" "Ah, dearest child, let me tell you all. I will confess everything to you,--all the doubts that have so tortured me." She looked at him in amazement. "Doubts?" she repeated. "Yes, my darling; foolish doubts. I know them to be so now, but they were terrible. Do you remember refusing me any explanation with regard to Lothar? Then I----" "Ah, poor Lothar! I, too, have something to tell you, Bernhard." She nestled close to him, and he told her of his adventures with Julutta Wronsky. He did not even suppress the account of the fleeting emotion of that moment when he thought he loved her; he told her all; and she listened to him, without doubt, without reproach, with the entire confidence of a woman who loves. "We have both been blind," she said; "but only when we doubted of each other's love did we learn how valueless life was to us without it. Oh, Bernhard, how wretched we have been!" "And how blest we are once more,--each living in the other's heart!" "Oh, why is our child not with us?" Thea cried. He kissed the tears from her eyes. "He has been our guardian angel, my darling," he said. "He has reunited us; for who can say how long we should have been estranged from each other without this sorrow?"