"I forgave you long ago," he said, more gently. "I told you so before. But you want to do what is impossible. You want to waken the dead, and to strike moments out of our life that are imperishable, because they are too deeply engraved on our memories ever to be forgotten. I know and can understand how you have suffered," he continued, his voice trembling, "because I can compare your feelings with my own. And now, that you may be spared more pain, and may not form hopes that can never be fulfilled, I entreat you to listen to me, although you asked me to come here to listen to you...." When he began to speak she had raised her clasped hands in mute appeal to his compassion, but now she let them fall listlessly to her side, and sighed deeply. She then resumed her seat, and motioned to him to take a chair opposite. He sat down, and went on firmly and decidedly: "I was born at Barnow, and am the son of the late rabbi. The people there were very kind to me in their own way after my father's death, but I was ungrateful, and mistook their meaning. I left the place after my mother died. I can still remember the dismal, misty autumn morning when I ran away as distinctly as if it were yesterday. I had no money, but Jews are always kind and charitable to the poor. I traveled through Galicia and Poland, remaining sometimes for a few weeks with a rabbi, who was good enough to take me as a pupil; but none of the teaching I received entirely satisfied me. I went on farther. In course of time I reached Wilna, where Rabbi Naphtali, the celebrated Cabalist, has a school. Under his guidance I learned to know the 'Cabala'--that strange, deep, mysterious book, containing the profoundest wisdom and religious teaching of our people. I threw myself into its study with the utmost enthusiasm. That was my misfortune, if you like to call it so. I went through that time of doubt when all dogmatic religion appears to be glaringly false--a time which no young man who thinks at all about these subjects can fail to pass through, and during which he boldly and determinately endeavors to grasp the inconceivable. "My knowledge appeared small and narrow. I strove to make it both wider and higher. The German people, with their great poets and thinkers, were irresistibly attractive to me. I studied their language carefully; and by dint of teaching, and exercising an economy that was almost miserly, I at last succeeded in making enough money to go to Germany. I set out at a most fortunate moment for myself, for it chanced that I made the acquaintance of old Prince Sugatscheff at a small town on the borders of Lithuania. He was of the truest nobility: he was a noble-minded man. Prince Alexius, whom you met at Baden-Baden, was his son, Frau Graefin." "I remember," she answered, in a low voice.