Judith is _the_ woman, the apocalypse of woman even for Keller, the embodiment of warm-hearted sympathy. In this woman, of whom he wrote at two different periods of his life, are united all his most fantastic ideas about women, together with all his most personal experiences. She is the most daring revelation of love that German literature, with its strict conventions, possesses. She is considerably older than Green Henry, and Keller is not in the least afraid of saying so. She is a woman in the full bloom of life, who has reached the age when a strong healthy woman is the most attractive, and Green Henry is eighteen years old. These contrasts, who are mutually attracted to one another, are frequent everywhere except in the literature of Germany. But the cause of this mutual attraction is by no means the most elevated; Judith is a mature, sensuous woman and Green Henry is an immature, sensuous youth. She has lived amongst coarse-grained peasants and is very coarse-grained herself; but when she comes in contact with Henry’s more refined and complicated nature, she becomes a thorough woman, _i.e._ plastic material. Judith has none of that innate stupidity which so often causes the woman to maintain her ascendancy over the man, to the destruction of his happiness. At first she is imperious and exacting, but as she sees more of Green Henry she gradually changes into a loving woman, by which I mean a self-subjecting woman, for a woman who loves cannot do otherwise than subject herself. He goes into the world, she goes to America. Keller does not tell us much about her while she is there. Time passes and Green Henry comes home, a _Sensitiva_ and poetic nature with whom the world has dealt harshly. His vitality is slackened and he feels depressed. Judith meets him, after having sought for him as one whom love has bewitched, who cannot forget; hers is the love of a strong, whole-hearted woman, smitten in the depths of her nature, willing to cast everything aside if only she may love. Her love has nothing to offer, and she does not believe that she can make him happy, she only begs in silence to be allowed to remain with him, for he is all she has in the world. She makes no stipulation, she asks for no outward sign, she requires no vindication in the eyes of mankind, he is free to come and go when he will. Green Henry can endure love after this manner, and they love one another. In the story of little Meret, Keller probes deeper still into the nature of woman. Little Meret is Judith over again in the person of a martyred child; it is Judith’s nature in the bud.