n solitude, which lacks no
feather on its wings, no tiniest hair on its feelers, as warmly and
carefully as the vast, unlimited universe whose duration ends only with
eternity."

Eva, with labouring breath, had fairly hung upon the lips of the revered
woman, who at last gazed upwards with dilated eyes like a prophetess.

When she paused the young girl nodded assent. Her teacher and friend
seemed to have crushed her resistance.

Like the eagle which had disappeared before the pilgrim's eyes in the
azure vault of heaven, the radiant light on the pure summit summoned her
pure soul to dare the flight.

The abbess watched with delight the influence of her words upon the soul
of her darling, who, gazing thoughtfully at the floor, now seemed to be
pondering over what she had urged.

But suddenly Eva raised her bowed head, and her eyes, sparkling with a
brighter light, sought those of the abbess.

Her quick intellect had attentively considered what she had heard, and
her vivid power of imagination had enabled her to transfer to reality the
picture which had already half won her over to her friend's wishes.

"No, Aunt Kunigunde, no!" she began, raising her hands as if in repulse.
"Your radiant height strongly allures me also, yet, gladly as I believe
that, for many the world would be easily forgotten above, where no sound
from it reaches us and the mist conceals individual figures from our
eyes, for me, now that love has filled my heart, it would be impossible
to ascend the peak alone and without him.

"Hear me, aunt!

"What was it that attracted me so powerfully from the beginning? At
first, as you know, the hope of making him a combatant for the
possessions which I have learned through you to regard as the highest and
most sacred. Then, when love came, when a new power, heretofore unknown,
awoke within me and--everything must be told--I longed for his wooing and
his embrace, I also felt that our union could take root and put forth
blossoms only in the full harmony of our mutual love for God and the
Saviour. And though since the mass for the dead was celebrated for my
mother--it wounded me, and defiance and the wish to punish him urged me
to put the convent walls between us--no further token of his love has
come, though I know as well as you that he desired to quit the world,
this by no means impairs--nay, it only strengthens--the confidence I feel
that our souls belong to one another as inseparably as though the
sac