ye Gods! Each day's entries gave me fresh proof how dearly,
with what unspeakable fondness Victorine had loved me all along. The
most trifling incidents were recorded, and always there came, 'You do
not comprehend this heart of mine. Cold and unfeeling, must I cast
aside all maidenly reserve in the wildness of my despair, throw myself
at your feet, and tell you that without your love life is only death to
me?' And it went on in this strain. On the night when I fancied myself
so wildly in love with the little Spanish girl she had written, 'All is
lost and done. He loves her; nothing can be, more certain. Mad
creature, don't you know that the eye of the woman who loves is
all-seeing?' Just as I was reading this aloud in came Victorine. I
threw myself at her feet with the diary in my hand, crying, 'No, no; I
never was in love with that strange child. You, you alone, were always
my idol!'

"Victorine fixed a gaze on me, cried out in a screaming sort of tone,
which rings in my ears still, 'Unfortunate fellow, it was not you I
meant,' and rushed from the room. Now could you have imagined that
maidenly coyness would have been capable of being carried so far?"

Here Nettchen came in to enquire on the Baroness's part why the
Baron did not bring the visitor to see her, inasmuch as she had been
expecting him for the last half hour. "A splendid model wife," cried
the Baron with much emotion, "always sacrificing herself to my wishes."
It astonished Euchar not a little to find the Baroness very much
dressed as if for company.

"Here is our dear old Euchar!" the Baron cried. "We have got him back
again." But when Euchar approached and took her hand she was seized
with a violent trembling, and, with a faint cry of "Oh, God," fell back
on her couch fainting.

Euchar could not bear the pain of the situation, and he left the room
as quickly as possible. "Unfortunate fellow," he cried, "it was,
indeed, not you she meant." He understood now the fathomless depth of
misery into which his friend's incredible vanity had plunged him--he
knew now upon whom Victorine's love had been bestowed, and felt himself
strangely moved and touched. He comprehended now, and only now, the
significance of many things which his own simple straightforwardness
had prevented him from seeing before. Now, and only now, he saw through
and through the impassioned Victorine, and could scarcely explain to
himself how he had failed to discover that it was with him she