"It is not that--if it only were so! Nothing would be too hard for me--no word, no deed--if I could found your happiness by them! But that power is not given to me; therefore we are both unhappy! But now go to sleep, my Eva! I am well; I will get up; but you have not closed an eye! How pale you look--where are the roses which yesterday bloomed so freshly in your cheeks? Go to sleep, only for a few hours--it will bring peace, rest, and courage! Who could endure life without sleep? It would be an uninterrupted agony; all pictures would score their burning impress in our brains. Sleep shrouds them beneath the softening veil, and we can confound them with our dreams." "No, mother! that I can never do! If it were all but a dream my soul would still bleed to death from it." Frau Salden had risen from her bed; she felt really better; only the internal conflict still remained imprinted in her features. With unenvious pleasure, Eva contemplated her mother, as she sat before the mirror, in order to arrange her hair flowing down abundantly; she thought herself less beautiful, less bountifully endowed by Nature, than was the mother over whom years had passed tracelessly away; could she compete with that splendid figure, with that nobility, those decided movements, that charm of her fully-developed form? She could not help it; she must fold her mother to her heart with words of glowing flattery. Frau Salden struggled gently against the love of a child, for whom she had just prepared the greatest anguish of its life. "Go to sleep, Eva," repeated she, with motherly anxiety. "Sleep--it would be best! I cannot conceive that I could look with waking eyes at the people before whom I stood yesterday in such utter abasement. It would be impossible for me to show myself here to the gaping crowd. I must away, away from here; but I cannot part from you with this enigma unsolved. Mother! I implore you, give me certainty--I have courage to bear all." "And you do not ask if I have courage to confess all?" "Mother!" cried Eva, doubting and questioning, with the terror of presentiment. "If it were so easy to lift the veil, should I not have raised it long since? If any happiness, any comfort could arise from it, should I hesitate with such a disclosure?" "I would have the truth, mother--the truth! In positive certainty I shall recover my strength of mind, which is paralysed in this gnawing doubt." Frau Salden rose from her toilet; the morning sun shone straight upon her face, she covered it with her hands; then she turned round, but a burning colour rested upon her features, and an internal tremor shook her form as if with ague.