Eleanore insisted on a church wedding; this caused Daniel a great deal of worry; it made him run many a vexatious errand. But he consented to do as Eleanore had asked; for he did not wish to deprive her of any pleasure she might imagine such a ceremony would give her. Eleanore made her own white dress and her veil. Gisela Degen, a younger sister of Martha Rübsam, and Elsa Schneider, the daughter of the rector of the Church of St. Ægydius, were to be her bridesmaids. Marian Nothafft and Eva were also to come over from Eschenbach; Eleanore had already sent them the money for the tickets. “Help me with my sewing, Philippina,” said Eleanore one evening, and handed her silent house companion the veil, the border of which had to be made. Philippina took her seat opposite Eleanore, and began to sew; she was silent. In the meanwhile, little Agnes, tottering about on the floor, fell and began to cry in a most pitiable fashion. Eleanore hastened over and picked the child up. Just then she heard a sound as if cloth were being torn. She looked around, and saw that the veil had an ugly rip in it: “You wicked thing! What do you mean, Philippina?” she exclaimed. “I didn’t do it; it tore itself,” growled Philippina, taking every precaution to see that Eleanore might not catch her cowardly eye. “You just leave that alone! Keep your hands off of it! You will sew evil thoughts into my veil,” replied Eleanore, filled with forebodings. Philippina got up. “Well, it’s torn anyway, the veil,” she said in a defiant tone; “if harm is to come it will come; you can’t keep it off by sending me away.” Philippina left the room. The injury to the veil was not as great as Eleanore had feared. It was a relatively easy matter to cut off the torn piece entirely, and still use the remainder. But from that hour Eleanore was filled with sadness: her face might be compared to a beautiful landscape on which the first fog of autumn has settled. It is probable that the tearing of her veil had nothing to do with her depression: there was not a shimmer of superstition in her. Perhaps it was merely happiness and fulfilment: it may be that she felt the end had come, that happiness and fulfilment leave nothing more to be desired, that life from then on would be nothing but a hum-drum existence which does not give but only takes. Perhaps her mind was darkened and weighed down with grief because of the life within her body; for that which is to come sends out its rays of melancholy just as well as that which has come and gone. What was there to hinder a pure soul from having an inner premonition of the fate that was in store for it? Why should this soul not learn in its dreams of the inevitable that was not so far ahead?