"Before he stepped into the carriage, it so happened that he was for a few moments alone with me. Then he took my hand and whispered: "'You will not betray one single word, will you? I can depend upon it?' "I nodded eagerly. "'And you will write to me soon?' "'Certainly.' "'Where shall I send the answer?' "I started. I had not in the remotest degree thought of that. But as the moment pressed, I mentioned at haphazard the name of an old inspector who had always been specially attached to me. * * * * * "Time passed. One day followed another in the old way, and yet now how differently, how peculiarly the world had shaped itself for me. "I no longer had any need to study love from books, and search for it afar off; it had stepped bodily into my existence, its sweet mysteries played around me, and I--oh, joy!---I was joining in the game. I was entangled head over ears in the intrigue that was to lay the basis of my sister's happiness. "It was like a miracle to see how after each of Robert's visits she revived and gained fresh strength and colour and health. Like an invigorating bath those few days of their intercourse had acted upon her, and more even than they, probably, that miraculous fountain of hope from which she had drunk a long and furtive draught. "Certainly the sunny cheerfulness of other days did not return to her again, that seemed irretrievably lost in those seven years of weary waiting; no song, no laughter ever issued from her lips, but over her features there lay spread a soft warm glow, as if a light from within her soul irradiated them. Nor did she any longer drag herself about the house with lagging, weary steps, and whoever approached her was sure of a friendly smile. "And as her happiness must needs find vent in love, she also attached herself more closely to me, and tried to gain an insight into my hidden and lonely thoughts. I loved her the more dearly for it, I all the more often invoked God's blessing upon her, but I did not give her my confidence. "Before she, of her own accord, opened out her whole heart to me, I could not and would not confess how far I had already gazed into its depths. "Sometimes I caught myself looking across at her with a motherly feeling--if I may call it so for since I carried on an active correspondence with Robert, I imagined that it was I who held her happiness in my hands. "My vanity made of me a good genius, clad in white raiment, whose hand bore a palm-branch, and whose smile dispensed blessings. And meanwhile I counted the days till a letter from Robert came, and ran about with glowing cheeks when at length I carried it near my heart.