rer, who only
uttered low moans, up the stairs and laid him carefully on his bed. In
the midst of their efforts to restore him to consciousness, while still
fearing that he might open his eyes and see them both at his side,
Edwin returned and entered the room in the highest spirits.

With what anguish the sight that met his gaze overwhelmed him, they
only can understand, who have lived long enough to experience the cruel
mockery with which fate delights in suddenly hurling mortals from the
greatest happiness into the deepest misery.

CHAPTER VI.

After Christiane had seen the couple in the carriage and fled from the
wide avenue into the more densely wooded portions of the park, she had
wandered about for hours without aim or object, at times pausing
breathless to rest upon some bench.

The fog had become so impenetrable that the crescent of the moon hung a
pale line of light in the grey sky and total darkness brooded over the
intricate paths of the Thiergarten. It was no night for a solitary
pedestrian, but she met no one, and she felt no fear. What indeed could
happen to her? To be sure she might be attacked, robbed, or even killed
by some drunken vagabond. But she was quite willing to run the risk of
this, and the thought of other dangers to which a woman might be
exposed in such a nocturnal ramble did not alarm her. When Adele had
once asked how she dared to go out so boldly at all hours of the
evening, she replied: "I always go about with my face unveiled, I need
no better protection." To-night in particular, with all the tortures of
a hopeless love in her heart, she had become more firmly convinced than
ever that she was a discarded step-child of Mother Nature condemned to
perpetuate self-sacrifice; she felt a sort of bitter pleasure in the
thought that she had nothing in common with the rest of mankind, either
in love or hatred, but was as it were a peculiar being, allied to
unknown creatures of darkness, who were as ugly as she, and therefore
wise enough to avoid the daylight. In this wild mood which gradually
obtained more and more the mastery over her, she would scarcely have
been alarmed, if at some crossing in the paths she had chanced upon a
crowd of spectres and been bidden to make one of their company.
Anything would be better than to return to mankind, the best and
noblest of whom had always made her the most miserable without even
suspecting the fact. She shed no