rrying down
the stairs. When Els, who had watched her father from the window a short
time, went back to her sister, Eva dried her eyes and cheeks, saying:
"Perhaps he is right; but whenever my heart urges me to obey any warm
impulse, obstacles are put in my way. What a weak nonentity is the
daughter of an honourable Nuremberg family!"

Els heard this complaint with astonishment. Was this her Eva, her
"little saint," who yesterday had desired nothing more ardently than
with humble obedience, far from the tumult of the world, to become
worthy of her Heavenly Bridegroom, and in the quiet peace of the convent
raise her soul to God? What had so changed the girl in these few hours?
Even the most worldly-minded of her friends would have taken such an
impeachment ill.

But she had no time now to appeal to the conscience of her misguided
sister. Love and duty summoned her to her mother's couch. And then!
The child had become aware of her love, and was she, Els, who had been
parted from Wolff by her own father, and yet did not mean to give him
up, justified in advising her sister to cast aside her love and the hope
of future happiness with and through the man to whom she had given her
heart?

What miracles love wrought! If in a single night it had transformed the
devout future Bride of Heaven into an ardently loving woman, it could
accomplish the impossible for her also.

While Eva was gazing out of the window Els returned to her mother. She
was still asleep and, without permitting either curiosity or longing
to divert her from her duty, Els kept her place beside the couch of the
beloved invalid, spite of the fire alarm which, though somewhat subdued,
was heard in the room.

CHAPTER XIII.

Eva was standing at the open window. The violence of the storm seemed
exhausted. The clouds were rolling northward, and the thunder followed
the flashes of lightning at longer and longer intervals. Peace was
restored to the heavens, but the crowd and noise in the city and the
street constantly increased.

The iron tongues of the alarm bells had never swung so violently, the
warder's horn had never made the air quiver with such resonant appeals
for aid.

Nor did the metallic voices above call for help in vain, for while a
roseate glow tinged the linden in front of her window and the houses
on the opposite side of the street with the hues of dawn, the crowds
thronging from the Frauenthor to St. Klarengasse grew denser and denser.