ion; then I would rave, needing the most careful
watching. And he--he came to me again, as the culmination of his
misdeeds. I had become changed for him, more desirable. But I spat in
his face. He came crawling and begging to me on his knees, and I struck
him in the face and spurned him."

She raised her clenched hand to her brow, and shook it as against an
invisible enemy. Her eyes glowed with resentment, and her breath came
pantingly.

Then again the unnaturally excited bearing relaxed; she sank gently
down on the couch, and bent over her lover, who hid his face in the
silk of her gown.

"Beloved," she whispered, in an infinitely softened tone; "it was then,
just when I had recovered from my delirium, that you returned. When I
saw you again, here in this room, it was borne in on me that we
belonged to each other, and I thought you must feel as I did."

Reimers looked up at her, and made a movement to seize her hand.

"I know now that I already loved you," he said, "but I fought against
it, because I feared unhappiness for you."

Hannah gently shook her head.

"Do not speak of unhappiness, beloved," she exhorted him. "Do I not
love you, and do you not love me? Are we not happy?"

She stooped to him, and pressed her lips to his in a long kiss.

"I could not see clearly through my dreadful doubts," she went on.
"What could I be to you--impure, defiled, ruined? There was only in me
the longing that you should love me. What was the mad intoxication of
my girlish folly to the happiness that possessed me when I became
certain that you did love me? I could have denied you nothing, dearest.
How happy I was!"

She smiled softly to herself, sunk in tender recollection, and Reimers
felt her light hand touch his hair gently with a caressing motion. He
grasped that fair hand and kissed it reverently.

"Ah, how happy I was!" repeated Hannah, with a sigh. "But the serpent
lurked in my Paradise. I came to know the pangs of jealousy, and I
hated Marie Falkenhein--hated her from the bottom of my soul. Ah,
beloved! it hurts, hurts deeply, to see the glance of the man one loves
passing one over for another woman. Do you remember the night of
Klaere's birthday, when you sat in the Falkenheins' garden? I did not
exist for you. I could have knelt before you, begging and imploring,
'Can you not even see me here?' But you had eyes only for Mariechen,
and when I went away into the night, you and she were standing together
by the r