"Why do you stand at the door? You may come nearer if you like." "Thank you," whispered Felicitas. She approached an armchair with quaking knees, and clung to the back for support. "Speak out," said Johanna. "What has brought you here?" "Necessity," murmured Felicitas--"the necessity of my soul." Johanna laughed out loud. "Really, your phrases are as good as ever. And what can I do for your soul's necessity?" "Despise and scout me," said Felicitas. "You have the right; but believe me when I say that I am no longer what I was.... I am not the same as I was when you cast me off. Then I was cowardly and bad. To-day I come back to you purified and courageous, and the reason that I stand before you thus, Johanna, is"--her face lighted with enthusiasm--"is because he, in the two years of our married life, has made me what I am. I owe it to him." Johanna shrugged her shoulders. She thought of the gossip in everybody's mouth about the flirtations of the fair chatelaine of Uhlenfelde. "Your reputation is not above reproach, Felicitas," said she. "Is that also his doing?" "What? Johanna?" "I mean what people say about you?" "I must ask you, then, first what it is people say about me? No; but I am too proud to defend myself. That I can make such a boast is his doing likewise." And she spread out her arms, while in her mind she replaced Ulrich's name with Leo's. Johanna passed her hand over her brow, as if she would clear away some confusing impression. There was something in the bearing of this creature indeed which formerly she had not been acquainted with, and it wrung from her an unwilling sympathy. "Again I ask, what is it you want with me?" Felicitas smiled faintly. "Won't you let me sit down? It has cost me something to come here." And it was true enough that she was ready to drop. But she waited for Johanna's gesture of consent before she sank into the chair against which she had been leaning for so long. Her eyes closed, and she drew a deep breath. Then she began to talk in a subdued tone. "It is like being in a dream, Johanna. I can hardly believe that to-day I shall attain that peace of mind after which I have been groping for years. Believe me when I say that I haven't once had any real joy in what is mine. Your image has stood between us.... It has seemed to me as if I had got everything by stealth...." "And so you have," Johanna broke in harshly. "Yes; as if I had robbed some one worthier of the position. You see that, so long as I live at his side, I carry about with me the thought that my fate is in your hands. And now I feel that what you resolved to do would be my salvation. But what have I not had to endure before I reached this point?" And, as if shuddering at the thought of the past, she cowered back in the chair.