"And you too. If we drove you from your home, as you deserve--for you are not worthy to have German laborers call you master--you would go to ruin in the shortest possible time, and that, for your child's sake, I do not desire." Brandow essayed a scornful laugh, but Gotthold's last words, and the tone in which he uttered them, closed his lips. "You said just now, Brandow, that you loved your child: it was a lie; if you had done so even a little, for her sake you would at least have kept yourself innocent of crime. You have never loved any one except yourself, and that with a coarse, vain, egotistical love, which had no trace of respect for the sacredness of that which even the roughest men reverence. Yet--although this is my honest opinion--I am a man, and may be mistaken; perhaps it will touch your heart, when you hear that your child is ill, very ill--that we shall possibly only be able to prolong her innocent young life a few days. It is terrible to say it, but I cannot lighten the burden you have laid upon your conscience: if it dies, you have killed it." "I?" faltered Brandow; "I?" "Yes, you! You who made life worthless to her mother," replied Gotthold, turning to Brandow. "Or did you think the blow you dealt the mother would not strike the child, too? That the latter would not drink death from the poisoned cup of life you gave the former? You cannot have thought so, for you had based your whole plan upon this mutual love between the mother and child; you thought the bond that united their souls strong enough to bear your whole shameful web of falsehood and deceit, treachery and violence. I say once more: if it dies, you have killed it. Understand this clearly, man, if you can. It is so horrible that everything else you have done is innocent in comparison; it is so fearful that you must realize it." Gotthold walked several paces, and then paused before his enemy, who sat cowering in his chair with his head resting on his hands. "Brandow, they say that years ago, when, struck down by your sword, I lay on the ground before you, you dealt me a second blow. It has always been impossible for me to believe it, even now it is difficult; but however that may be, I cannot give a death-blow to any one lying on the ground, no matter who he is, or what he may have done; but neither can I hold out my hand to a worthless man, even if he extends his imploringly to me. Remember this, Brandow. Perhaps the moment will come sooner than you believe possible." Gotthold left the room; Brandow still sat in the same attitude into which he had first sunk, staring steadily at the carpet. A dreary smile flitted over his pale face. "That was a fine sermon," he muttered; "highly edifying! He got that from his father, the parson! And I sit here, and let myself be made out a villain by the miserable babbler, the cursed hypocrite, and don't hurl all he says back into his canting face. Bah!" He started up and wandered about the room.