gitated. She looked across to the
house on the hill, and she thought she saw Charlotte's white dress on
the balcony.

It was a long way round by the end of the lake; and she knew how
impatiently Charlotte would be waiting for the child. She saw the
plane-trees just opposite her, and only a narrow interval of water
divided her from the path which led straight up to the house. Her
nervousness about venturing on the water with the child vanished in her
present embarrassment. She hastened to the boat; she did not feel that
her heart was beating; that her feet were tottering; that her senses
were threatening to fail her.

She sprang in, seized the oar, and pushed off. She had to use force; she
pushed again. The boat shot off, and glided, swaying and rocking into
the open water. With the child in her left arm, the book in her left
hand, and the oar in her right, she lost her footing, and fell over the
seat; the oar slipped from her on one side, and as she tried to recover
herself, the child and the book slipped on the other, all into the
water. She caught the floating dress, but lying entangled as she was
herself, she was unable to rise. Her right hand was free, but she could
not reach round to help herself up with it; at last she succeeded. She
drew the child out of the water; but its eyes were closed, and it had
ceased to breathe.

In a moment, she recovered all her self-possession; but so much the
greater was her agony; the boat was drifting fast into the middle of the
lake; the oar was swimming far away from her. She saw no one on the
shore; and, indeed, if she had, it would have been of no service to her.
Cut off from all assistance, she was floating on the faithless, unstable
element.

She sought for help from herself; she had often heard of the recovery of
the drowned; she had herself witnessed an instance of it on the evening
of her birthday; she took off the child's clothes, and dried it with her
muslin dress; she threw open her bosom, laying it bare for the first
time to the free heaven. For the first time she pressed a living being
to her pure, naked breast.

[Illustration: OTTILIE. _From the Painting by Wilhelm von Kaulbach_]

Alas! and it was not a living being. The cold limbs of the ill-starred
little creature chilled her to the heart. Streams of tears gushed from
her eyes, and lent a show of life and warmth to the outside of the
torpid limbs. She persevered with her efforts; she wrapped it in her
shawl,