He tried to pull her up, but with a sharp hollow bang her head struck against the corner of the sofa. An expression of acute pain passed over her face, and she sank in a kneeling attitude on to the floor. Then he half regained his senses. He let go of her throat, and propped her head against the cushion. And then he tore about the room, his eyes searching in desperation every corner, as if there must be some solution concealed there as to how he was to save himself and Ulrich. The crucifix floated weirdly white in the gathering shadows. He saw the good shepherd smile, and the dusty grasses seemed to tremble. "How can I save myself, how can I save myself?" he cried inwardly. And he felt as if the hatchet which the shadow of evil had held over his head for so many months was about to fall. But at the sight of his sister lying motionless on the ground, with her head resting against the sofa, he began to feel ashamed. "Get up, Johanna," he begged. "It is true that I would like to kill you, but I don't want to ill-treat you." He held out a hand to help her rise. She rejected his offer, and with difficulty seated herself again in her former position. "Poor Leo!" she said, and there was a note of compassion in her tired voice. "Yes, indeed poor Leo, poor Leo!" he exclaimed, planting himself before her in his consternation. "You can pity me, but you won't hesitate, nevertheless, to ruin me." "You are ruined already," she muttered. "And if I am, whose fault is it but yours and that cur of a priest? I'll be even with him too. You want to speak now, when neither God nor devil can do anything. But why did you not speak out at the time that Ulrich was going to take the insane step of marrying? You were the only person in the world who might have prevented the blunder. Why did you keep your mouth shut then, eh?" She glanced at him from under her lids in furtive distress. Then a shudder swept the angular shoulders, on which her dress hung in ill-cut folds. "I have repented. Oh! how I have repented everything--everything!" she murmured. "Repented or no, that is not the question. When I asked you in the summer, it was the same. You answered by evasion. I say that if you have a clear conscience, you would have answered me then, and would answer me now." "Oh, don't torment me!" she implored, in growing anxiety, and leant far back in the corner of the sofa. And on Leo repeating his demand even more emphatically, she burst into hysterical weeping. Motionless she sat there, with the tears streaming in rivulets over her hollow cheeks. He had never seen her look so yielding and so defenceless, and in the midst of his wrath and misery a gleam of chivalrous pity stirred within him, and he began involuntarily to speak to her in gentler tones.