"Do you love Maria?"

"So I am to confess?"

"Don't refuse my last request, as you did the first. If you can be
generous, answer me fearlessly. I'll not betray your secret to any one.
Do you love Frau Van der Werff?"

"Yes, Fraulein."

Henrica drew a long breath, then continued: "And now you are rushing out
into the world to forget her?"

"No, Fraulein."

"Then tell me why you have fled from Leyden?"

"To find an end that becomes a soldier."

Henrica advanced close to his side, exclaiming so scornfully, that it
cut Georg to the heart:

"So it has grasped you too! It seizes all: Knights, maidens, wives and
widows; not one is spared. Never ending sorrow! Farewell, Georg! We can
laugh at or pity each other, just as we choose. A heart pierced with
seven swords: what an exquisite picture! Let us wear blood-red knots of
ribbon, instead of green and blue ones. Give me your hand once more, now
farewell."

Henrica beckoned to the musician and both followed Belotti up the steep,
narrow stairs. Wilhelm remained behind in a little room, adjoining a
second one, where a beautiful boy, about three years old, was being
tended by an Italian woman. In a third chamber, which like all the other
rooms in the farm-house, was so low that a tall man could scarcely stand
erect, Henrica's sister lay on a wide bedstead, over which a screen,
supported by four columns, spread like a canopy. Links dimly lighted
the long narrow room. The reddish-yellow rays of their broad flames were
darkened by the canopy, and scarcely revealed the invalid's face.

Henrica had given the Italian woman and the child in the second room but
a hasty greeting, and now impetuously pressed forward into the third,
rushed to the bed, threw herself on her knees, clasped her arms
passionately around her sister, and covered her face with owing kisses.

She said nothing but "Anna," and the sick woman and no other word than
"Henrica." Minutes elapsed, then the young girl started up, seized one
of the torches and cast its light on her regained sister's face. How
pale, how emaciated it looked! But it was still beautiful, still
the same as before. Strangely-blended emotions of joy and grief took
possession of Henrica's soul. Her cold hard feelings grew warm and
melted, and in this hour the comfort of tears, of which she had been so
long deprived, once more became hers.

Gradually the flood tide of emotion began to ebb, and the confusion of
loving exclamations and in