At his entrance the little artist started from a chair by the window, where he had apparently been seated a long time, absorbed in deep thought.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed, and his sad, honest face brightened, as he held out both hands to Edwin--"you again walk among the living. It's pleasant that you instantly remember your old friends--though this is not exactly the right atmosphere for a person just recovering from illness--you come to people who, in the midst of the loveliest air of Spring, sit in affliction and the shadow of death. Well--it's as God wills, I keep calm."

With the tear's streaming down his cheeks, he now told Edwin that Leah had grown so ill that she could scarcely get an hour's sleep, and the food she took was hardly enough to nourish an infant a week old. Yet she bore her fate with a divine patience that often made him wonder whence she derived her strength, since she neither prayed nor accepted everything as the will of an all merciful Father who could make even the most incomprehensible and hardest things result in a blessing. "In that she's like her mother, whose only defense and weapons against all sorrow were silence and meditation. Go to her, dear Doctor, I know she'll be delighted to see you. She always esteemed you so highly, and God is my witness that I've often reproached myself for yielding to Frau Valentin and interrupting your lessons. Doctor Marquard says the sickness is connected with the mind--if she could but divert her thoughts, and not brood perpetually over one idea--Ah! me! If philosophy could give her sleep and appetite, preserve my child to me--" He paused and pressed his handkerchief to his eyes.

"If you'll give me leave, dear Herr KÖnig," said Edwin, "I'll try what I can do. Philosophy has already banished many evil spirits and infused new blood into whole races. I'll speak to your dear daughter, and hope it is not yet too late."

He turned away to conceal his emotion, and hastily left the studio. When he entered Leah's room, he found her resting on the sofa with a book in her lap, her beautiful dark eyes fixed upon it, each a burning fire in whose glow a waxen image is slowly consuming. In other respects she was not altered, except that her complexion was more transparent and a sorrowful smile seemed frozen on her lips. But as he approached her and with a few cordial words took her hand, a deep blush suffused the delicate face and gave to it the appearance of blooming freshness and health.

"What sorrow you are causing us, dear Leah!" he said drawing a chair toward her couch. "No," he added as she attempted to rise, "you must remain as you are, if you don't want to drive me away. I'm so glad to see you again. Since that terrible day I've only heard of you through others. And yet not entirely through others, through yourself, too. Do you know that I read your journal yesterday for the first time?"

She moved her head as if to beg him not to talk about it, and replied: "You've so many better things to do--if my father had not desired it--"

"No, dear FrÄulein," he answered, "I only wished I had not spent my time over things so much more useless, before I took up that volume. And yet, who knows whether I should before have been capable of estimating the full value of the treasure entrusted to me."

She suddenly turned pale. "No," she murmured, "do not talk so, don't treat me like a silly child, to whom you must make pretty speeches, because you perceive my weakness and think you must spare or flatter me; it pains me--I've been used to different things from you."

"I know you're ill and need consideration," he replied in a trembling voice. "And yet, dear Leah, I've come to tell you something which will at any rate excite you, think what you please and answer as you may. Since I've read those pages, it has become evident to me that I've been groping about in the mist like a dreamer and not perceived a real happiness--the happiness of having found a soul, such as is revealed in those pages, never to lose it again!

"They've tried to part us, dear Leah," he continued with increasing agitation, while she lay with closed eyes and hands clasped upon her bosom, without any sign of life. "But it only served to unite our hearts more closely. We've both experienced how necessary we are to each other, how little qualified to cope with life alone. True, you'll doubt whether I've really missed you; nay I did not even realize it myself. I was enchained by a passion which like some diabolical enchantment, made me a stranger even to myself. I know not how much you know or suspect, dear friend. For the first time in my life I learned, a woman's power, and suffered keenly from it. It's over, Leah, the last trace of it has vanished. She's about to become another's wife, and I heard the news without the slightest heart-throb. Oh! Leah, those were terrible days! When I think that the result might have been different, that I might have been forever forced to bow to this power--a power which treated pride and freedom, all that was worthy and precious in life, as a toy, and rendered me almost unfeeling, even in the days of Balder's keenest sufferings--I shudder at myself and the danger I have escaped. But you ought to know, Leah, the weakness of the man who now comes to you and says: 'will you, can you, notwithstanding all that has happened, unite your life to mine? Can you give your soul to one who has already once lost his own, while both he and you, perhaps may never wholly overcome the smart of his servitude?'

"If you were to say no, Leah, I should understand why and be forced to bear the pain. I know that I was dear to you. You would have burned that book rather than have entrusted it to my care, if your heart had not resistlessly drawn you toward me. And yet, Leah, I should not think less of you if after the confession I have just made, your heart should draw back, your pride forbid you to be satisfied with that which I offer with this perfect candor. You've a right to expect and demand that the man to whom you give yourself will repay you for the treasure with such enthusiastic and passionate devotion, that even the thought that any other power could become dangerous to him, would never enter his mind. I, dearest Leah, am, as you see me, a fugitive, whose wounds are scarcely healed after a severe battle. I come to you because I know I can nowhere be safer, nowhere find a more inaccessible refuge than with you. What I feel for you--we've not yet come to Spinoza," he interrupted himself with a quiet smile, "so the phraseology of the schools is not familiar to you. He, the great philosopher, calls the feeling men have for that which he termed God--the absolute something which encompasses, does and wills everything--the exaltation of all emotions which follows when we become absorbed in the nature of this one and all, he calls 'intellectual love.' It's neither a jest nor a blasphemy, but the simple words of truth when I say that with such a love I love you, Leah! That blind, demoniacal passion, which is usually called love, has been washed out of my blood--I trust forever! What now lives in me is the happy consciousness that you're the best, purest, noblest creature that ever appeared on earth, the one being in whom my world is contained, and that the man whom you should love and to whom you consented to belong, would be the happiest of mortals!"

As he faltered the last words he knelt beside her couch, and taking her hands held them clasped in his, fixing his eyes upon her cool, slender fingers, unable to look her in the face. He remained for a long time absorbed in a blissful stupor; it was such a relief to have told her all, that he felt he scarcely feared her answer, although he was far from being sure of a favorable one.

She still remained silent. At last he grew anxious, looked at her, and instantly started up in alarm, for he could not doubt that she had fainted. He hastily seized a little bottle containing some powerful stimulant which he found on her table, and poured some on his handkerchief to rub her temples and restore the color to her pale lips. "Leah!" he exclaimed, "come to yourself again! Oh! do not punish me so fearfully for my thoughtlessness; oh, how could I, when I found you so ill--"

Her lips moved and she slowly opened her eyes. "Forgive me for alarming you, my beloved!" she murmured. "The happiness was too great--too sudden. But--I'm well again--I live--aye, I will live, now that I know, through you and for you--Edwin, is it possible!"

She raised her arm and timidly put it around his neck. He bent toward her face, now again glowing with blushes. "My wife!" he whispered. "You are mine! mine! mine! And so surely as I hope to be happy through you--" His lips, which met hers, stifled and sealed the vow of eternal love and constancy.