“But,” I said, “since you were here Thekla has come to me, and we have had a long talk. She speaks now as openly to me as she would if I were her brother; with sensible frankness, where frankness is wise, with modest reticence, where confidence would be unbecoming. She came to ask me, if I thought it her duty to marry this fellow, whose very appearance, changed for the worse, as she says it is, since she last saw him four years ago, seemed to have repelled her.” “She could let him put his arm round her waist yesterday,” said Herr Müller, with a return of his morning’s surliness. “And she would marry him now if she could believe it to be her duty. For some reason of his own, this Franz Weber has tried to work upon this feeling of hers. He says it would be the saving of him.” “As if a man had not strength enough in him—a man who is good for aught—to save himself, but needed a woman to pull him through life!” “Nay,” I replied, hardly able to keep from smiling. “You yourself said, not five minutes ago, that her marrying him might be his salvation both for earth and heaven.” “That was when I thought she loved the fellow,” he answered quick. “Now——but what did you say to her, sir?” “I told her, what I believe to be as true as gospel, that as she owned she did not love him any longer now his real self had come to displace his remembrance, that she would be sinning in marrying him; doing evil that possible good might come. I was clear myself on this point, though I should have been perplexed how to advise, if her love had still continued.” “And what answer did she make?” “She went over the history of their lives; she was pleading against her wishes to satisfy her conscience. She said that all along through their childhood she had been his strength; that while under her personal influence he had been negatively good; away from her, he had fallen into mischief—” “Not to say vice,” put in Herr Müller. “And now he came to her penitent, in sorrow, desirous of amendment, asking her for the love she seems to have considered as tacitly plighted to him in years gone by—” “And which he has slighted and insulted. I hope you told her of his words and conduct last night in the ‘Adler’ gardens?” “No. I kept myself to the general principle, which, I am sure, is a true one. I repeated it in different forms; for the idea of the duty of self-sacrifice had taken strong possession of her fancy. Perhaps, if I had failed in setting her notion of her duty in the right aspect, I might have had recourse to the statement of facts, which would have pained her severely, but would have proved to her how little his words of penitence and promises of amendment were to be trusted to.” “And it ended?” “Ended by her being quite convinced that she would be doing wrong instead of right if she married a man whom she had entirely ceased to love, and that no real good could come from a course of action based on wrong-doing.”