ll see no one but you and Roland."

A lay-sister was sent for Roland. Meanwhile, Manna explained, that,
according to the regulations, she must return for a year to the world,
and then--she hesitated a moment, and ended with the words--if her
present resolution continued, she would take the veil.

"And will you never tell me, why and how this thought has sprung up in
you?" asked Sonnenkamp in a supplicating tone.

"Indeed I will, father, when it is all over."

"I don't comprehend! I don't comprehend it!" cried Sonnenkamp aloud.
Manna hushed the loud tone of her father with her hand, signifying to
him that here in the convent no one spoke so loud.

Roland, after whom they had been looking for a long time, was terrified
and shrank back, when, awakened suddenly by a form clothed in black, he
found himself in the church. He was conducted to Manna. He embraced his
sister heartily, crying out,--? "You good, bad sister!"

He could say no more, from the impetuosity of his feelings.

"Not so violent," said the maiden, soothingly. "Indeed! what a strong
lad you have got to be!"

"And you so tall! And you look like him, but Eric, is handsomer than
you are. Yes, laugh if you will! Isn't it so, mother? Isn't it, father?
Ah, how glad he will be when you return home, and how much you will
like him too!"

Roland talked sometimes of St. Anthony, sometimes of Eric, mingling
them together, and telling what an excellent man he had for a teacher
and friend: and when Manna said that she should not go home until
spring, Roland ended by saying,--

"You can very well imagine how Herr Eric looks; when you go into the
chapel, look at St. Anthony, he looks exactly like him, exactly as
good. But he can also be strict; he has been an artillery-officer."

Again the father made the request, and the mother joined in it, that
Manna would accompany them in their journey to the baths, after which
she would be allowed to come back to the convent.

Manna informed them that she could not interrupt her studies and her
retreat.

The strange, thrilling tone of her voice had something saddening in it,
and when she now stated how earnestly she hoped to become clear and
resolute in her determination to be constant to the religious life,
tears came into her mother's eyes. But her father gazed fixedly at her;
he hardly saw his child, hardly knew where he was. He heard a voice,
which once--it seemed incredible that he was the same person--he had
heard