h upon that bed--place him safe and sound in his
father's arms.

Is it not hard, you father of many children, to lose one of them? Do you
not grudge Death his prize? But this man had but the one; the love
between them was such a love as one meets perhaps once in a life-time.
The child's life had been a mourning to him, the father's a burden, ever
since they had parted.

I felt it strange that I should be trying to comfort him, and yet it was
so; it was his brow that leaned on my shoulder; it was he who was faint
with anguish, so that he could scarce see or speak--his hand that was
cold and nerveless. It was I who said:

"Do not despair, I hope still."

"If he is dying," said Eugen, "he shall die in my arms."

With which, as if the idea were a dreary kind of comfort, he started
up, folded Sigmund in a shawl, and lifted him out of bed, infolding him
in his arms, and pillowing his head upon his breast.

It was a terrible moment, yet, as I clung to his arm, and with him
looked into our darling's face, I felt that von Francius' words, spoken
long ago to my sister, contained a deep truth. This joy, so like a
sorrow--would I have parted with it? A thousand times, no!

Whether the motion and movement roused him, or whether that were the
crisis of some change, I knew not. Sigmund's eyes opened. He bent them
upon the face above him, and after a pause of reflection, said, in a
voice whose utter satisfaction passed anything I had ever heard: "My own
father!" released a pair of little wasted arms from his covering, and
clasped them round Eugen's neck, putting his face close to his, and
kissing him as if no number of kisses could ever satisfy him.

Upon this scene, as Eugen stood in the middle of the room, his head bent
down, a smile upon his face which no ultimate griefs could for the
moment quench, there entered the countess.

Her greeting after six years of absence, separation, belief in his
dishonesty, was a strange one. She came quickly forward, laid her hand
on his arm, and said:

"Eugen, it is dreadfully infectious! Don't kiss the child in that way,
or you will take the fever and be laid up too."

He looked up, and at his look a shock passed across her face; with
pallid cheeks and parted lips she gazed at him speechless.

His mind, too, seemed to bridge the gulf--it was in a strange tone that
he answered:

"Ah, Hildegarde! What does it matter what becomes of me? Leave me this!"

"No, not that, Eugen," said I,