ried to assure him of her complete indifference--three steps from the
drawer where her confessions were lying.

"I know it," continued he; and his dark glance wandered over the
dimly-lighted room. "I am so perfectly indifferent to you, that it
must, after all, be very easy for you to pardon something that cannot
have awakened any very strong personal feeling in your mind. One who is
entirely unknown to us cannot insult us. When he has taken back again
that with which he has wounded us, it is as if nothing had happened.
And so I might perhaps take my leave of you, gnaediges Fraeulein, with
the renewed assurance of my sincere regret that I have unconsciously
offended you."

She made a scarcely perceptible motion toward the sofa, as if she would
invite him to be seated. He was much too occupied with his own thoughts
to pay any attention to it.

"Perhaps it is folly," continued he, after a pause--"perhaps more than
that--wrong, if I intrude any longer, and give you an explanation for
which you have no desire, and which will perhaps strike you
disagreeably, since it turns upon something that cannot but be a matter
of perfect indifference to you: not much more interesting than if you
should hear there had been a thunderstorm at a place forty miles away,
and that the lightning had struck a tree. Still--now that I have
acknowledged my wrong and have done all in my power to make it good
again--I owe it to myself not to permit you to take a worse view of me
than I have really deserved. When, before a court of justice, one can
put forth the plea of mental irresponsibility, it is considered the
most important of all mitigating circumstances. Now this is just the
case in which I find myself placed in regard to you. I can plead, as an
excuse for the insane thought of giving your features to my Eve, the
fact that since I first saw you I have actually been insane; that
waking or dreaming no other face floated before me except yours; that I
have gone about as if in a fever, and that I knew no better way of
dealing with my hopeless passion than by striving, shut up alone in my
workshop, to reproduce your face--and wretchedly enough did I succeed!"

He made a movement as though he were about to leave her; but once again
he remained where he was, and appeared to be struggling painfully for
words.

"You are silent, Fraeulein," he continued. "I know you think it very
strange that I should endeavor to atone for a great and almost
unpard