he was looking, with an
expression of pain and indecision, toward the door. With a vast
effort--the greatest my regard for him had yet made--I took it upon
myself, laid my hand on his arm, and coercing him again into the chair
from which he had half risen, whispered:

"I will tell him. You can not. _Nicht wahr?_"

A look was the only, but a very sufficient answer.

I went into the inner room and closed the door. A dim whiteness of
moonlight struggled through the shutters, and very, very faintly showed
me the outline of the child who was dear to me. Stooping down beside
him, I asked if he were awake.

"_Ja, ich wache_," he replied, in a patient, resigned kind of small
voice.

"Why dost thou not sleep, Sigmund? Art thou not well?"

"No, I am not well," he answered; but with an expression of double
meaning. "_Mir ist's nicht wohl._"

"What ails thee?"

"If you know what ails him, you know what ails me."

"Do you not know yourself?" I asked.

"No," said Sigmund, with a short sob. "He says he can not tell me."

I slipped upon my knees beside the little bed, and paused a moment. I am
not ashamed to say that I prayed to something which in my mind existed
outside all earthly things--perhaps to the "Freude" which Schiller sung
and Beethoven composed to--for help in the hardest task of my life.

"Can not tell me." No wonder he could not tell that soft-eyed,
clinging warmth; that subtle mixture of fire and softness, spirit and
gentleness--that spirit which in the years of trouble they had passed
together had grown part of his very nature--that they must part! No
wonder that the father, upon whom the child built his every idea of what
was great and good, beautiful, right and true in every shape and form,
could not say, "You shall not stay with me; you shall be thrust forth to
strangers; and, moreover, I will not see you nor speak to you, nor shall
you hear my name; and this I will do without telling you why"--that he
could not say this--what had the man been who could have said it?

As I knelt in the darkness by Sigmund's little bed, and felt his pillow
wet with his silent tears, and his hot cheek touching my hand, I knew it
all. I believe I felt for once as a man who has begotten a child and
must hurt it, repulse it, part from it, feels.

"No, my child, he can not tell thee, because he loves thee so dearly,"
said I. "But I can tell thee; I have his leave to tell thee, Sigmund."

"Friedel?"

"Thou art a very lit