the most delicate with the thousandfold more sublime works of
God, the vast, ceaseless machinery of the universe, where there is no
misplaced spring, no inaccurately adjusted cog in the wheels. Oh, that
glorious intellect! What hours were those when he condescended to point
out to a poor girl like me the eternal chronometers above our heads,
repeat their names, and show the connection between the planets and the
course of earthly events and human lives! O Wolf! how glorious it was!
How my modest mind increased in strength! And when I listened
breathlessly, and he saw how I bowed in mute admiration before his
greatness and called me his dear child, his attentive pupil, and pressed
his lips to my burning brow, can I ever forget that?"

She sobbed aloud as she spoke and, overwhelmed by the grief which
mastered her, covered her face with her hands.

Wolf said nothing. Another had robbed him of the woman he loved, and the
greatest anguish of his life was not yet wholly conquered; but in this
hour he felt that he had no right to be angry with Barbara, for it was to
the greatest of great men that he had been forced to yield. He need not
feel it a disgrace to have succumbed to him.

"Wawerl!" he again exclaimed, "in spite of the pleasant peace which I
have found, I could envy you; for once, at least, the sun of love shone
with full radiance into your soul. Your experience proves how bright and
long is the afterglow if it is only real. This light, I believe, can
never be extinguished, no matter how dense is the gloom which shadows
life's pathway."

"Yes, indeed, Wolf," she replied dully, with a sorrowful shake of the
head. "The gloomy night of which you speak has come, and it will last on
and on with unvarying darkness, from year to year, perhaps until the end.
What you call light is the remembrance of a single brief month of May.
Does it possess the power to render me happy? No, my friend, a thousand
times no! It only saves me from despair. But, in spite of
everything"--and here her eyes sparkled radiantly--"in spite of all this,
I would not change places with any one on earth; for, however dark clouds
may conceal the sun, when in quiet hours it once breaks through them,
Wolf, how brilliant everything grows around me!"

While speaking, she passed her hand across her brow and, as though seized
with shame for her frank confession, exclaimed: "But we will let this
subject drop. Only you must know one thing more. I shall never