I am sure."

"Perhaps they will return?"

Frau Lutzler shook her head, and smiled slightly.

"_Nee_, Fraeulein! Their places were filled immediately. They are
gone--_ganz und gar_."

I tried to listen to her, tried to answer her as she went on giving her
opinions upon men and things, but the effort collapsed suddenly. I had
at last to turn my head away and close my eyes, and in that weary, weary
moment I prayed to God that He would let me die, and wondered again, and
was almost angry with those who had nursed me, for having done their
work so well. "We have managed to save you," Frau Lutzler had said. Save
me from what, and for what?

I knew the truth, as I sat there; it was quite too strong and too clear
to be laid aside, or looked upon with doubtful eyes. I was fronted by a
fact, humiliating or not--a fact which I could not deny.

It was bad enough to have fallen in love with a man who had never showed
me by word or sign that he cared for me, but exactly and pointedly the
reverse; but now it seemed the man himself was bad too. Surely a
well-regulated mind would have turned away from him--uninfluenced.

If so, then mine was an ill-regulated mind. I had loved him from the
bottom of my heart; the world without him felt cold, empty and
bare--desolate to live in, and shorn of its sweetest pleasures. He had
influenced me, he influenced me yet--I still felt the words true:

"The _greater_ soul that draweth thee
Hath left his shadow plain to see
On thy fair face, Persephone!"

He had bewitched me; I did feel capable of "making a fool of myself" for
his sake. I did feel that life by the side of any other man would be
miserable, though never so richly set; and that life by his side would
be full and complete though never so poor and sparing in its
circumstances. I make no excuses, no apologies for this state of things.
It simply was so.

Gone! And Friedhelm with him! I should probably never see either of them
again. "I have made a mess of my life," Adelaide had said, and I felt
that I might chant the same dirge. A fine ending to my boasted artistic
career! I thought of how I had sat and chattered so aimlessly to
Courvoisier in the cathedral at Koeln, and had little known how large and
how deep a shadow his influence was to cast over my life.

I still retained a habit of occasionally kneeling by my bedside and
saying my prayers, and this night I felt the impulse to do so. I tried
to thank God for my