"The invalid began to recover. I sent the maid away, ordering her to buy some salts at the druggist's; for I did not want to have any witness present when Leonora should fully awake. The old hypocrite had hardly left the room when Leonora once more opened her eyes and looked at me with a confused, incredulous glance. I noticed that in proportion as her mind returned her horror at my presence increased anew, and threatened to make her faint a second time. This painful shrinking from one whom she used to meet with open arms was harder to bear than all the rest, and nearly moved me to tears. I felt not a trace of hatred, of anger, in my heart, not even of contempt--no, nothing but pity, boundless, unspeakable pity. I do not know what I said--but I must have spoken good, mild words of love and of forgiveness, for her rigid features began gradually to become softer; her eyes, dilated with horror, filled with tears, and at last she broke out into passionate weeping, hiding her head on my bosom as I was kneeling by her side. It was a terrible weeping; it was as if all the tears of the last years, which she had concealed under laughter and jests, were breaking forth from their deep, deep cells and would never cease to flow; and between a sobbing as if her heart were breaking, a crying as if her innermost soul were pierced by two-edged swords. I have never in all my life, either before or afterwards, witnessed anything like this fearful breaking forth of repentance in a soul stained with sin, but noble by nature. "We seemed to have exchanged the parts allotted to us. It looked as if she had been offended, and I was the criminal. I exhausted myself in prayers, in implorations, to pour soothing oil into her wounds, to calm the terrible grief that was raging with such violence. Gradually I succeeded in calming her after a fashion. She wept, quietly resting her head on one hand, while I spoke to her holding the other hand--how white and slender and transparent her fingers had become!--spoke to her as a brother would speak to his sister in such a case. I begged her to look upon me as a brother, to confide in me as her best, perhaps her only friend. I conjured her by all that was sacred to her, by the memory of her youth, by the memory of her parents--who were both now resting under the green turf--to tear herself away from this whirlpool which must swallow her up sooner or later, and to follow me. I promised to take her, if she wished it, into a desert--to the very ends of the world--only away, away from this gilded wretchedness. "'It is too late; too late!' she murmured. 'You are kind, I know; inexpressibly kind; but it is too late, too late!' "I do not know how long this struggle might have lasted if a strange episode had not occurred, which decided it to my great astonishment quickly in my favor.