"No," she said at last, "I'm not so foolish. The memory of you is a sacred one. If that were not so, how could I have gone on living? That time, to be sure, I wanted to take my life. I had determined on that before I came to you. For that one can leave the man with whom.... I never thought that possible.... But one learns a good deal--a good deal.... And now I'll tell you how it came to pass that I didn't take my life that night. When everything was over, and I stood in the street before your house, I said to myself: 'Now the river is all that is left.' In spite of rain and storm, I took an open cab and drove out to the _Tiergarten_. Wasn't the weather horrible! At the _Great Star_ I left the cab and ran about in the muddy ways, weeping, weeping. I was blind with tears, and lost my way. I said to myself that I would die at six. There were still four minutes left. I asked a policeman the way to _Bellevue_, for I did remember that the river flows hard behind the castle. The policeman said: 'There it is. The hour is striking in the tower now.' And when I heard the clock strike, the thought came to me: 'Now my husband is coming home, tired and hungry, and I'm not there. If at least he wouldn't let his dinner get cold. But of course he will wait. He'd rather starve than eat without me. And he'll be frightened more and more as the hours pass. Then he'll run to the police. And next morning he'll be summoned by telegram to the morgue. There he'll break down helplessly and hopelessly and I won't be able to console him.' And when I saw that scene in my mind, I called out: 'Cab! cab!' But there was no cab. So I ran back to the _Great Star_, and jumped into the street-car, and rode home and rushed into his arms and cried my fill." "And had your husband no questions to ask? Did he entertain no suspicion?" "Oh, no, he knows me, I am taken that way sometimes. If anything moves or delights me deeply--a lovely child on the street--you see, I haven't any--or some glorious music, or sometimes only the park in spring and some white statue in the midst of the greenery. Oh, sometimes I seem to feel my very soul melt, and then he lays his cool, firm hand on my forehead and I am healed." "And were you healed on that occasion, too?" "Yes. I was calmed at once. 'Here,' I said to myself, 'is this dear, good man, to whom you can be kind. And as far as the other is concerned, why it was mere mad egoism to hope to have a share in his life. For to give love means, after all, to demand love. And what can a poor, supersensitive thing like you mean to him? He has others. He need but stretch forth his hand, and the hearts of countesses and princesses are his!'" "Dear God," he thought, and saw the image of the purchasable harlot, who was supposed to satisfy his heart's needs.