"'As you wish to know,' she says, and the while with darkening brows stares upon the ground--'I was afraid--I doubted your love, and thought you might let me feel that I came to you without a penny----' "And with that the lie makes her face all aflame. "'Olga,' I cry out, 'could you think that of me? Do you remember 'What I reminded her of was one night on her father's estate when I came wooing Martha and thought to return sadly with a refusal; for Martha was ready to sacrifice herself and her happiness, so that I might marry another. Then she--Olga--had come to me in the middle of the night, and had opened my eyes for me, blind fool that I was, and spoken words to me, words full of contempt for mammon, which sounded like Love's song of triumph in my ears. _Those_ words I spoke to her now; for each one was indelibly stamped on my memory. "'At that time, then--you had such brave and generous thoughts--when you spoke on Martha's behalf,' I cried out to her, 'and now--when they apply to yourself----' I look into her face, which is trying to smile and ever smiling; but this smile grew rigid, and in the midst of it she closed her eyes and fell down fainting, like a log of wood. "It was trouble enough to bring her back to life; for I did not care to call in any help. Quite a quarter of an hour she lay there--not much otherwise than she is lying now--then she opened her eyes, and for a long time gazed silently into my face--so sorrowfully, so wearily and hopelessly, that I quite trembled for her. And thereupon she folded her hands and spoke up to me softly and imploringly: "'Give me time, Robert; I have overtaxed my strength. I must first grow accustomed to it----' "I, however, was so filled with the exuberance of my new happiness that I believed I could by force compel her too to be happy. 'If we love each other, Olga,' I cried, 'and the deceased says "Yes" and "Amen" to our union, I should like to see who could object! Therefore be brave and cheerful, my child!' But she was anything but brave or cheerful. And not till now--when she is dead--have I realised how utterly miserable and broken down she was as she lay there on the cushions--she who as a rule was so proud and severe in her behaviour to herself and others. It was as if some intense sorrow had cut the innermost nerve of her life in twain. That is all clear to me now, but then I did not see it--I would not see it; and I went on remonstrating with her, comforting her as I thought. She listened to me, but said nothing; only now and then she nodded her head, and a smile of unutterable sadness and weariness played about her lips. "I put it all down to the excitement of the moment and to the sadness of the last few years, which must rise up once more all the mightier within her, now that, for her too, a new happiness was dawning to supplant it.