"Sin against myself!" she repeated, speaking in a low, hopeless monotone. "Oh, my God! As if there was anything worse for me to do! Could I sin more than I have done? My little Paul is dead, and I am still alive. I sentenced my child to death, and am allowed to live. Matricide; isn't that the most horrible of crimes? How can I go through life with such a burden of guilt weighing upon me? How can any one who cares for me wish me to do it?" "Matricide!" he exclaimed in bewilderment. "What do you mean?" "I know what I mean," she said, and smiled. A cold shudder ran through him. This woman's brain must be unbalanced by grief; she was going out of her mind. Her fingers groped on the counterpane. "Where is your hand?" she whispered. "Give me your hand. I implore you to give me your hand." He stretched it towards her mechanically, and she grasped it in her hot moist palm. "Lean down to me," she whispered on, "and I will tell you in your ear how it happened." He inclined his head as she commanded, till it was close to her mouth. "You remember that evening you came before Christmas?" she continued--"that was the hour when I sacrificed my boy's life to you. When we were warming ourselves at the furnace in the greenhouse, it was then that he died." "You are talking deliriously, Felicitas!" he exclaimed, drawing himself erect. "Hush!" she said, pulling him down to her again. "They may be listening at the door, and no one must know this but you and I. It was three days before Christmas. I was doing up his presents, and there wasn't much time. For I had sent him far, far away for your sake, and kept from Ulrich how unhappy he was at school; for your sake I did that too. But I wanted him to have his Christmas presents, but in the middle you came in. And then I forgot everything else. I thought no more about Christmas, or my child. My whole soul was filled with you. I wanted nothing else but to go away with you into some corner where no one could see us or hear us. And when you were gone, I was in a sort of mad ecstasy. I ran up and down stairs. I stood by the window looking towards Halewitz half the night through, and then I sat by the stove, and stared into the fire and thought, 'This is how he and I sat beside the furnace.' And at last when I came to my senses it was too late--too late." "Why too late?" he asked hoarsely. "Yesterday morning," she answered, "Ulrich's telegram came, and last night the letter. Everything is in the letter. It is somewhere in the room. Look for it."