"How dare you affirm such a thing? Do not insult the dead!" "Nothing is further from my thoughts, dear boy. Who shall presume to cast the first stone at her? But if you have been listening attentively, you will certainly understand that her whole life was nothing more than the maturing of this moment. Already in her girlish dreams the seeds of this criminal wish lay buried; they put forth sudden shoots on yonder stone in the wood, and came into blossom at the very hour when she crept into your room to unite you with Martha." "Why did she do that, if she herself wished to step into Martha's place?" "She was not conscious of what she wished. All her efforts to make you and Martha happy were nothing further than the secret struggle which her pure honest nature was waging with the wish growing up within her, since that day of her girlhood when she had seen you again. But she did not know it. Even her love for you did not become clear to her till she entered your house. How much less then could she suspect what was slumbering, as the fruit of this love, within her soul." "And yet you say she fought against it and tried to exterminate it?" "Not spiritually, not consciously. Her thought remained pure till that terrible midnight hour. It was only her instinct which struggled against the poison. That drew new resources daily from the healthy depths of her strong nature, by which to secrete the putrid matter or at least to enclose it so that it became innocuous. For this reason she condemned herself to exile, for this reason even in face of your house she contemplated a hasty retreat. How little she was, even later, conscious of the processes which for years had been developing within her, you may see by the whole tone of her reminiscences. She absolutely unconsciously dwells upon many unimportant incidents, which have nothing to do with the progress of the story and yet are valuable as showing the gradual development of her wish. She knows not why she does so: her feeling alone tells her: this has some connection with my guilt." "I believe in no guilt!" exclaimed Robert, in greatest excitement. "If that wish was not a mere hallucination, not the result of a momentarily morbid, over-strung frame of mind, but had lain for a long while dormant in her nature, how came it that, only six hours before uttering it, she expressed herself with such indignation about my mother because she suspected her of harbouring it?" "For my part," replied the old man, "nothing is more convincing for my view of the matter, than this very indignation. To free her own conscience from the burden which she felt resting upon it, she cast every stone which she could take hold of, at your mother. It was terror at her own sin which drove her to it." "And the noble, self-sacrificing resolve which she formed only a few days before?" Over the old man's weather-beaten features there flitted a smile full of understanding and forgiveness.