over?

But the falsehood!

How severely she must perhaps atone for it this time!

Yet the esteem, the love of the man to whom her heart clung, whom she
worshipped with all the fervour of her passionate soul, might be at
stake, and when he now seized his hat to withdraw she barred his way.

Sobbing aloud, she threw herself at his feet, confessed that she was
guilty, and remorsefully admitted that fear of his resentment, which
seemed to her more terrible than death, had induced her to deny what
she had done. She could hate herself for it. Nothing could palliate the
departure from the path of truth, but her disobedience might perhaps
appear to him in a milder light if he learned what had induced her to
commit it.

Charles, still in an angry, imperious tone, ordered her to rise. She
silently obeyed, and when he threw himself on the divan she timidly sat
down by his side, turning toward him her troubled face, which for the
first time he saw wet with tears.

Yet a hopeful smile brightened her moist eyes, for she felt that, since
he permitted her to remain at his side, all might yet be well.

Then she timidly took his hand and, as he permitted it, she held
it firmly while she explained what ties had bound her to Wolf from
childhood.

She represented herself as the sisterly counsellor of the friend who had
grown up in the same house with her. Music and the Catholic religion,
in the midst of a city which had fallen into the Protestant heresy, had
been the bond between them. After his return home he had probably been
unable to help falling in love with her, but, so truly as she hoped for
Heaven's mercy, she had kept her heart closed against Cupid until he,
the Emperor, had approached in order, like that other Caesar, to come,
to see, and to conquer. But she was only a woman, and pity in a woman's
soft heart was as hard to silence as the murmur of a swift mountain
stream or the rushing of the wind.

Yesterday she had learned from the violinist Massi that the knight's
condition was much more critical, and he desired before his death to
clasp her hand again. So, believing that disobedience committed to
lighten the last hours of a dying man would be pardonable before God and
human beings, she had visited the unfortunate Wolf.

The helpful and joy-bestowing power of good works, which the Protestants
denied, had thus become very evident to her; for since she had clasped
the sufferer's hand an indescribable sense of happines