"'So this is what a woman looks like who wishes her sister might die!' said I, while my ashen-pale face stared back at me; and, seized with a sudden loathing, I hit at the glass with my fist. My knuckles bled, but it did not break. Fool that I was, not to know that henceforth all the world would only be there to hold up a mirror to my crime! "'But perhaps she may not die!' it suddenly darted through my brain. Such radiance seemed to burst forth from this thought, that I closed my eyes as if dazzled. "And then again it cried aloud within me: 'She will die; your wish has murdered her!' I ground my teeth, and groping along by the walls, I crept into the sick room. "When I stood at the door, and no longer heard any sound from within, the idea took possession of me: "'You will find her as a corpse.' "No, she still lived, but death had already set his mark upon her face. "The bridge of the nose had become more prominent, her lips no longer closed over her irregular teeth, her eyes seemed to have sunk right down into their dark sockets. "At her feet stood Robert and the old doctor. Robert had pressed his hands to his face. Sobs shook his frame. The old man scrutinised me with a penetrating glance. Again, for a moment, I felt as if he were looking me through and through, as if my guilt were openly exposed before him. But then, as he hastened towards me, who was tottering, and held me upright in his arms, I recognised that it was only the physician's glance with which he had examined me. "'How long will she live yet?' I asked, closing my eyes. "'She is dying!' "At that moment something within me grew rigid, turned to stone. At that moment hope died within me, and with it my faith in myself, in happiness, in goodness. A great calm came over me. Death, which hovered over this bed, had spread its dark pinions around my body too. With the clear vision of a prophetess, I saw what yet remained to me of life, spread out unveiled before my eyes. Like one dead I should henceforth have to wander upon earth, like one dead I should have to cling to life, like one dead see that happiness approach me, which was for ever lost to me. Robert stepped up to me and embraced me. I calmly suffered it, I felt nothing more. "Then I sat down close to my sister's bedside, and looked at her, waiting for her death. "Attentively I followed every symptom of her slow expiring. I felt as if my consciousness had separated itself from me, as if I could see myself sitting there like a stone figure, staring into the dying woman's face. "No feverish illusion, no morbid self-incrimination any longer disturbed the course of my ideas. It was by this time clear to me that my wish could not in reality bring death upon her, and yet--for me and my conscience it remained the wish alone which had killed her. "Thus I sat, as her murderess, at her bedside, and waited for her death which was also mine.