"When I came back here as a widow, I wondered if he would care for me then; but she had become a widow too, thanks to you, and I was embittered and wretched, and daren't hope for happiness any more. She, on the contrary, had added attractiveness and fascinations in her mourning, and seemed to say, 'Come, take me and comfort me; here I am.' I saw how he was drawn to her more and more on the pretext of compassionating her loneliness, and I looked on, paralysed with agony that I might lose him a second time. But instead of making a fight for him, I kept out of his way. And so I lost him--lost him." She stopped, smiling faintly before her. He writhed in his anger against the fate which seemed to be crushing them both beneath its relentless heel, and felt as if he must resist it with his last strength. His sister went on. "Then came the day when I learnt your secret, and had her in my power. But so ungovernable had my hate and jealousy become that I said to myself, if he thought so lowly of me that he could prefer that degraded creature, I would let him marry her and rue the day, as you and I should rue it. There, now you know all. I have confessed the horrible sin I committed, which I repent bitterly to this hour, and shall repent so long as my poor head holds out. But it is, oh, so tired, my head; and my knees are tired too. It can't last much longer, dear Leo." She laid her open palms upon her temples and sank back in the corner of the sofa. "What plans have you for the future, Johanna?" he asked. "I? None I shall go into a lunatic asylum." "Hannah!" he cried. "Yes. Don't you see that I am going mad?" she asked. "If you only knew the visions and hallucinations I have, I doubt whether you would let me go about without restraint. I have seen fiery swords, and the burning of Jerusalem; and I have seen the great Moloch, when _she_ threw him little Paul as a sacrifice. Uriah's wife have I seen in _her_ shape; and every night, do you know"--her eyes grew bigger as she poured out on him the horror of her sleepless nights--"every night the Saviour comes to me, and I may sit at His feet and put my fingers in His wounds; and then the whole room is full of His radiance, and hundreds and thousands of angels flap their red and blue wings like birds of paradise. That is a marvellous sight, I can assure you; but if I go on telling you more, two strange men will come and lay hold of me and drag me to a madhouse. But you won't let them do it, dear Leo, will you?" She sat upright and stroked his arm beseechingly with her outstretched hand. He almost forgot his own position in pity for this poor wretched existence. It was true that just for a moment the thought passed through his mind that if he had her put under restraint, he would be saved. But the next he flung the idea from him in disgust. No; he too was sick and tired of life.