When she entered the room, he noticed at once the dark rims which pain had left round her eyes, and the paleness of her lips. And yet she had never seemed to him more beautiful. She wore a careless artistic _negligée_ of blue cashmere, bordered with creamy lace, which accumulated on her breast into a filmy cloud. Her hair, only simply dressed, curled in countless small rings over brow and cheeks, and was massed on the crown of her head into a knot of curls, which was surrounded by a double circlet of gold. Leo remembered to have seen such heads in picture-galleries, bathed in golden tints and standing out in relief against a purple half-light, as if emerging from some background of mystery. "You have been suffering?" he exclaimed, extending both hands towards her. "I? Who told you so?" she replied, with a tired smile, as she sank into an easy-chair. "Minna told me." Instead of answering, she lifted her eyebrows languidly, and stretched out a limp hand for a cushion to support her neck. She must have just been scenting herself, for her person exhaled the opoponax perfume more overpoweringly than ever. Leo felt signs already of the enervating stupefaction which always took possession of his brain in this atmosphere. It began like a slight pressure on the temples, spreading to his forehead, and finally encompassing his whole head with iron spans. Felicitas buried her face in the hollow of her supporting arm and remained motionless. "Good God! What ails you?" he demanded. She raised her head slightly, and smiled at him hopelessly. "What ails me, Leo? I wish that I had never been born. That's all." "A pious wish, at least," he answered, with an unsuccessful attempt to sneer. "Now tell me frankly, Lizzie," he exhorted, "why do you rave against yourself like this? There is no sense in it. Tell me--why?" "Because I am learning to repent." A spasm shot through him, as if he were about to make an effort to protest against the word, but he no longer had the power. The life that he had been leading for the last two months had been nothing but a vain struggle against self-reproach and repentance. Hence the wrecking of his whole character. He got up, and in silence paced with unsteady steps the rosy, dimly lighted boudoir. Then he came close to her and leant against the edge of her chair. She looked up at him with plaintive eyes; then, sighing deeply, pressed her face against his arm. He would have drawn back, but he did not wish her to see that he thought this contact less harmless than she did. "Leo, I suffer unspeakable agony," she whispered. He drew his arm away from her abruptly, and sat down opposite her. "So all the happiness you are giving Ulrich," he asked, "is nothing but a delusion and a sham?" "Do you expect me to make it a reality?"