. What does that cold, calculating diplomat know of love? The
Court, his position, his advancement, is all in all to him; his wife is
nothing. He exults over the possession of a treasure whom he knows not
how to prize, and to whose happiness and peace he gives not a thought."

Adelheid's lips trembled. She knew only too well that all he said was
true. She did not answer.

"And what binds you to this man?" continued Rojanow, coming closer. "A
word, a single 'yes,' which you have spoken without knowing its
significance, without knowing yourself. Shall you permit it to bind you
for your whole life? Shall you allow it to make us both miserable for
all time? No, Ada, love, that eternal, undying right of the human heart,
must have its own. Men prate of guilt, others of destiny. It is destiny
which is beckoning us to-day, and we must follow after. A feeble word
cannot separate us."

At this moment a lightning flash parted the heavy, distant clouds, and
cast a long, narrow, dazzling light over the great forest, and gleamed
across Hartmut's face and figure where he stood.

Surely he was his mother's son now. He never looked more like her than
at this moment, with his dark, destroying beauty, and his peculiar,
passionate, demoniacal glance. Perhaps it was this glance which brought
Adelheid to her senses, perhaps it was the something concealed behind
all the fire and passion.

"A freely given and freely received word is an oath," she said, slowly,
"and who breaks it breaks his honor."

Hartmut breathed hard; keen and cruel like a lightning's flash, came a
memory to his soul, the memory of that hour in which he had freely given
his word--and broken it.

Adelheid von Wallmoden looked straight at Hartmut now; her face was
pale, and her voice trembled as she addressed him again:

"I wish you to cease this persecution, which has been going on for weeks
now. You fill me with horror--your eyes, your words, your manner. I feel
that everything which emanates from you is false, and no one can love
that which is false."

"Ada." There was a tone of passionate entreaty in his voice, but hers
had gained in steadfastness now, and she continued earnestly:

"And you do not love me. I have seen for some time that your pursuance
of me was from hate, not love. You and your kind have not the capacity
for loving."

Rojanow was silent from surprise. Who had taught her to read him so
nearly aright?

He had not even acknowledged to himself