"I was doubly guilty, because the holy work had led us to damnation. The penance inflicted for such impiety was lighter than I feared, because the superior leader of our community, blessed with especial powers of enlightenment, undertook to sanctify me, and I could soon stand purified from that sin. Now only the heavy punishment comes upon me, crushingly, annihilatingly. Too mild was the work of that atonement. Heaven has rejected it. I feel it, and now it dooms me to the full weight of its wrath. In deepest degradation I must humble myself before my own daughter, in order to destroy the happiness of whose life the spectre hand of that unholy, blissful hour is stretched forth from out the past. Forgive me, my beloved child!" Eva rose pale, dissolved in tears, and put out her hand, as if in repudiation. "I have nothing to forgive you, mother! I do not exalt myself so impiously as to wish to sit in judgment upon you. I could not but love you even unto death.--and you are not guilty! Oh, no--that you are not!" "Guilty towards you," said Frau Salden, wringing her hands. "None know what the future may bring," replied Eva; "it cannot be foretold. Human destiny is like a fleeting cloud: now it gleams in the full light of the sun at its mid-day height, or in the varying colours of its declining hour; then it flows down in tears. Many die in the bloom of youth; death is a doom; there is a death, too, for the heart. It comes, one knows not whence. It is not our fault. Mother, be calm! We have the same eyes, the same heart; must we not also have the same love?" Eva looked out of the window, unwonted sublimity lay in her demeanour. "Look; how the waves roll, and break upon the shore! Each one bears the rays of the same sun within it; now they spring exultingly in whirling foam, then die away upon the desolate strand! Mother, we are both wretched!" And she hastened back and clasped Frau Salden to her heart, who gazed in fear at her daughter's excited manner. "But no!" cried Eva suddenly, "what did I say of you? It is quite different for you, quite different. A question has long been hovering upon my lips; why, then, did you not become man and wife, if you loved one another? I must ask, I must; I can no longer endure the obscurity which o'ershadows everything! Life must be transparent for me, transparent--even if, like glass, it should break within my hands." Frau Salden pressed her hand upon her heart; "We parted, he no longer shared my faith! In that faith only I could live!" "Oh, mother, you will, you shall still be happy!" "I cannot, now! Too much has happened since I submitted to the decree of sanctification, that must have appeared to him like doing wrong. He measures with a worldly measure--therefore, I am not worthy of him!" "I will away to him, will entreat him, if still a particle of love for me--" "Stay, stay, my child; never, never!"