her in the face.

Whoever is acquainted with human nature, and with the German peasantry
in particular, will fully appreciate the goodness exercised by Melchior
in never reproaching his sister with her fall. On the contrary, he did
his best to restore her love of life. Most people make themselves paid
for their sympathy with misfortune by immediately giving full vent to
their friendly mortification and their wise admonitions. This treatment
may do for children and for people who know not what they have done or
what has befallen them; but for those who feel the arrow rankling in
their flesh it is sheer cruelty to harry them still further, instead of
drawing it out with care and tenderness.

They held counsel together what was to be done, and agreed that the
main thing was to keep quiet and adjust the whole affair secretly. With
a resolution quite unlike him, Melchior made his wife give him money,
and started in his little wagon in pursuit of Brenner. Vefela wished to
go too, and seemed desperate at the thought of having nothing to do but
stay at home and weep; but Melchior kindly persuaded her not to
undertake the journey.

Days and weeks passed in silent wretchedness. Those who had known
Vefela before would have been frightened at the change in her. But she
saw nobody, and lived a life of hopelessness which was hardly life. She
ate and drank, slept and waked, but seemed to know nothing of what she
was doing, and looked straight before her, like a mad woman. She could
not even weep any more. Her soul seemed to be buried alive in her body.
She saw and heard the world around her, but she could not find and
could not understand herself.

When Melchior returned without having seen a trace of the runaway,
Vefela heard his story with heart-rending calmness. She seemed
incapable of surprise. For days she hardly spoke a word. Only when she
heard that Brenner was pursued with warrants giving an exact
description of his appearance did she break out into loud wailings. A
million tongues seemed to proclaim her sorrows and her shame throughout
the land. And yet--so inexhaustible is love--she wept almost more for
Brenner than for herself.

Yet her misery had not yet reached its climax. When Melchior's wife
discovered her condition she became more wicked than ever. Vefela bore
all this with patience; the double life within her seemed to give her
strange new powers of mind and body, which bore her safely through her
troubles. But