Hertha went and opened the door, and found herself standing opposite the daintily clad figure of a young and beautiful woman, deadly pale, who looked at her with great imploring eyes; with difficulty she collected herself sufficiently to ask what she wanted. But scarcely had the unknown's trembling lips mentioned her mother's name, than there was a cry behind her. The countess had torn the handle of the door out of her grasp, and said in a hoarse voice-- "Felicitas, _you_?" The strange woman covered her pale sweet face dumbly with both hands. And at the same moment Hertha felt herself pushed violently out into the passage. The key turned twice in the lock. The lady had gone in with her mother, and she was alone in the dusk. And then she ran, driven by a secret dismay, down the shaky steps, through shrubs and bushes, by woodland path and lawn, past the garden-house and pond, to where joyous laughter rang down from the terrace with a reassuring sound. The two whilom girl-friends confronted each other. The one, humble and supplicating, leaned against the door as if she hardly dared set one foot before the other, a cowering, crushed penitent, yet triumphant in personal charm, radiantly beautiful in her slender youthfulness of figure and the grace of her movements. The other stood erect, triumphantly sure of victory, filled with a sense of her high principle and stainless morality, supreme in the realm of self-torturing virtue, invulnerable in suffering, and proof against temptation, but at the same time faded and withered, with the hard lines of perpetual renunciation round her mouth, with lean throat and hollow cheek, and the smouldering fire of unattained wishes in her sunken eyes, a conqueror, but also a defeated woman. Johanna was the first to break silence. "Have you considered what will be the consequences of taking this step?" she asked. Felicitas bowed her head still lower. Johanna did not accept this gesture as an answer. "You seem to have a short memory," she burst forth contemptuously. "I have thought it all over, and remember everything," Felicitas breathed. "Then you are prepared for your husband's eyes being opened to what you are, to-morrow?" For the first time Felicitas gave her a direct look, touching, hopeless, yet withal collected. "Why wait till to-morrow?" she said, in the same low tone. "He is here." A faint colour spread over Johanna's face. "Here! do you mean in this house?" "No; over at the castle." "What for? It is a long time since he was there." "I asked him to come, Johanna." The two women looked at each other for a while in silence, one full of suspicion, the other of seraphic resignation. Then Johanna drew a step nearer. "Felicitas, you are playing a dangerous game," she said. "I want to end it, Johanna." "And that is why you have brought him?" "I thought I would make it simple for you, Johanna." Again silence reigned. Then Johanna said, with averted eyes--