The lady leaned back in her chair, let her hands fall into her lap, and looked for a time fixedly before her, absorbed in deep thought. Are these last verses true? "I gave thee life, and thus thou art now mine!" I owe him more than I can tell; he sowed the golden seed of varied knowledge in my young mind; and if I can look higher than most of my sex, if I have an interest in art and science, if I have a heart for the sick and the suffering--it is all his work. And who has ever faithfully stood by me in the strife of life, when no one else troubled himself about me? He, and always he! And yet, if I thus live through him only, do I therefore really belong to him? Melitta rested her head on her hands in order to be able the better to puzzle out this enigma, which, after all, the heart only can solve, and not the head. She does not succeed, therefore, any better now than before, and this only is clear to her, that Oldenburg has never been so near to her heart, and has never been so dear to her as now. But now for the reverse of the medal. "Therefore I am thine!" To be sure he has told me so a thousand times by words and by acts, but--but--is this love, which dates back to the first years of his boyhood, which, he says, he has carried within him through all the changes of his eventful life? is it more than an illusion, such as is not uncommon in fanciful men--one of those fixed ideas in which very obstinate minds take delight? Is it not, perhaps, the love of a Don Quixote, who seeks refuge in it when he is offended by the fearful prose of everyday life, so repugnant to a great and noble heart? Is it not but too probable that this mirage may look charming at a distance, but when seen near by, would quickly dissolve into ethereal vapor? What can I be to him? Has he not nobler ends to live for than to make a woman happy? Can so restless a mind ever restrict itself to the narrow limits of a family circle? May not what he now aims at as his highest happiness, soon become to him an intolerable chain? Melitta sighs as she comes to this hard knot in her tissue. She has mechanically opened the book once more, and as she turns over the leaves she comes to a place which she has not noticed before: