eam of a new day could have fallen.

Hartmut's eyes rested on the distant shimmer, but he heeded not its
light; all was dark and gloomy within him this night. He had not spoken
to Adelheid von Wallmoden since the memorable day in the forest, until
he met her to-day walking beside her bleeding and unconscious husband,
whom they were bearing to his death bed. The moment forbade everything
but action, and Rojanow had not attempted to enter the sick room, but
had waited outside for the physician's reports. Neither had he showed
himself when Frau von Eschenhagen appeared, but he had spoken later with
Herr von Schoenau and Willibald. Now all was over, Herbert von Wallmoden
was no longer numbered among the living, and his wife, his widow, was
free!

Hartmut breathed heavily at this thought, but it brought him no joy. His
feelings were changed since that hour when he had staked his all and
lost, for he loved this woman now, madly. This sudden death had showed
him the chasm which yawned between them, a chasm no less because
Adelheid's marriage bonds were broken. Her aversion had been for the man
who believed in nothing, and to whom nothing was sacred, and that man
was as great a scoffer, as great an unbeliever to-day as ever.

He had pleaded for forgiveness in the character to which he had given
her name in "Arivana," but that Ada had disappeared again in the heights
above after giving her warning cry, leaving to their fate the creatures
she had exhorted, with their earthly passionate hates and loves. Hartmut
Rojanow could not force the wild blood in his veins to run in quiet
grooves, he could not bend to a life of strict and narrow duty, and he
would not! What were the use of all those gifts which he felt were his,
if they did not lift him out of the old ruts, did not raise him above
the duties and limits of the commonplace world? He knew well that those
great blue eyes urged him to follow the paths which he hated so
bitterly, and which, he told himself over and over again, he could never
take.

The rosy shimmer yonder over the forest had grown deeper as it mounted
higher in the heavens. Unmovable it shone in the north, mysterious, far
and high--the great northern light in its dawning splendor!

A roll of carriage wheels and sound of horses' hoofs coming at great
speed waked Hartmut from his dream. It was past nine, who could be
coming at so late an hour? Perhaps the second physician, who had been
sent for early in the day