If she could help him! For herself she had no wish, no longer any desire. God was her witness! And if she rested tonight in his arms, he in hers--she could think of it without feeling her pulses quicken, and without feeling that the despair which depressed her heart had vanished even for a moment. He will not draw any new strength or fresh courage from your embraces, your kisses, she said to herself. He will arise from the couch of love--a broken man, weary of life. How should she keep her strength and courage to live--no longer for herself alone--now for both of them? If not strength and courage to live--then to die! If she could die for him! Dying for him could say: "Behold, death is a joy and a feast for me if I may hope that you will despise life from this moment on, and, because you despise it, will live nobly and well, as one who lives only to die nobly and well!" But for his weak soul even that would be no spur, no support--only one dark shadow more to add to the other dark shadows which had fallen upon his path; and he would continue to waver upon the steady path, inactive, inglorious, to an early inglorious grave!---- Thus she lay there, deep in the abyss of her woe, not regarding the howling of the storm which shook the house continually from garret to cellar, not hearing the boisterous tumult of the drunken guests directly below her room, scarcely raising her head when the innkeeper's wife came into the room. The latter had intended to ask the young lady, as the guests would now certainly remain for the night, how she wished to have the beds arranged in the room; but, at the strange expression of the beautiful pale face which rose from the arm of the sofa and gazed at her with strange looks, the question had died on her lips and she had only asked the other question--if she might not make the young lady a cup of tea. The young lady had not appeared to understand her; at least she made no reply, and the innkeeper's wife thought: She will doubtless ring if she wishes anything. So she went with the light in her hand into the adjoining room, and left the door, which was hard to close, slightly ajar, in order not to disturb the young lady further, and then turned with her candle to the windows to see if they were closed; the upper bolt had stuck, and as she loosened the lower one, the storm, coming through the narrow opening, blew out the candle which she had placed upon the window-sill.