s. 'If you forsake me now, I must die--and I
have lived so short a time on the earth, I have known so little
happiness and so little love, that I am not fit to die! But you will
protect me! You are good and brave, strong with weapons in your hands,
and full of pity. You have defended me, and spoken kindly of me--I
love you for the compassion you have shown me.'

Her language and actions, simple as they were, were yet so new to
Hermanric, whose experience of her sex had been almost entirely limited
to the women of his own stern impassive nation, that he could only
reply by a brief assurance of protection, when the suppliant awaited
his answer. A new page in the history of humanity was opening before
his eyes, and he scanned it in wondering silence.

'If that woman should return,' pursued the girl, fixing her dark,
eloquent eyes intently upon the Goth's countenance, 'take me quickly
where she cannot come. My heart grows cold as I look on her! She will
kill me if she can approach me again! My father's anger is very
fearful, but hers is horrible--horrible--horrible! Hush! already I
hear her coming back--let us go--I will follow you wherever you
please--but let us not delay while there is time to depart! She will
destroy me if she sees me now, and I cannot die yet! Oh my preserver,
my compassionate defender, I cannot die yet!'

'No one shall harm you--no on shall approach you to-night--you are
secure from all dangers in this tent,' said the Goth, gazing on her
with undissembled astonishment and admiration.

'I will tell you why death is so dreadful to me,' she continued, and
her voice deepened as she spoke, to tones of mournful solemnity,
strangely impressive in a creature so young. 'I have lived much alone,
and have had no companions but my thoughts, and the sky that I could
look up to, and the things on the earth that I could watch. As I have
seen the clear heaven and the soft fields, and smelt the perfume of
flowers, and heard the voices of singing-birds afar off, I have
wondered why the same God who made all this, and made me, should have
made grief and pain and hell--the dread eternal hell that my father
speaks of in his church. I never looked at the sun-light, or woke from
my sleep to look on and to think of the distant stars, but I longed to
love something that might listen to my joy. But my father forbade me
to be happy! He frowned even when he gave me my flower-garden--though
God made flowers