"Listen, Johanna. I came here hating you very sorely, God knows. A little more, and I might have---- But you are not what you were, for all your threats. You and I are both poor bruised and broken creatures, so we may as well be frank with each other. Come, tell me what I wish to know, before it is too late." Her tears were quenched, and she looked at him in utter mystification at the unexpected softness in his manner. So accustomed was she to regard him in the light of some wild beast, that she could hardly grasp that he meant to be kind. Gradually her eyes recovered their fixed and glassy expression, and she nodded her bead mysteriously towards the crucifix in the corner. "Look at Him," she said--"near, quite near." "At whom?" "The Saviour." He approached the _prie Dieu_, and gazed into the white face of the Crucified, so calm in its supreme repose, as if weary of all earthly contentions and excitement of the emotions. "Do you see the resemblance?" asked his sister, with an almost prudish smile. "No; to whom?" "Oh, Leo! can't you see?" she replied, with a melancholy little attempt at playfulness, "Any child could tell you whom it is like. It is Ulrich; exactly like Ulrich!" "Ah, really!" exclaimed Leo, and as he saw the look of half-triumphant possession in her face, the martyrdom of a lifetime was revealed to him in a flash. "Hannah," he said, "why, if you loved him so much, did you take up with that villain Prachwitz?" She started. "Love!" she stammered. "Who spoke of love? How can I love any one?" "What is the use of dissimulating? Haven't you as good as confessed?" he answered. Whereupon she threw herself back on the sofa-cushion and began to weep again silently, as if she feared the intense sorrow of her soul being brought to light. She tried to speak, but could only articulate a confused murmur. It was not only that she had suffered, but, worst of all, she was ashamed of her suffering. And then at last she found words sufficiently humble in which to begin her tale. "It would sound ridiculous to say so, Leo, and you may scoff at me as much as you like, but you are right. I love him, and I have always loved him. That has been my fate, and God meant me for him---me, and me alone. For I understood his character as no one else in the world could do, not even you, Leo, with all your great friendship. If I had become his wife, I would have kissed his feet and hands. I would have watched over his poor weakly body with the tenderest care, which now languishes because no one troubles about it. But she came--I won't abuse her; she has had her punishment--and for her sake he forgot me. He ran after her in the same way as you did. And, out of defiance, I took the first man who asked me.