nhappy neighbour's
suffering? The harder the duties imposed upon her in the service of love,
the better. She would set to work in the hope of making herself the true,
resolute woman which her mother, with the eyes of the soul, had seen her
fragile child become; but she could imagine nothing more difficult than
the tasks to be fulfilled here. This was the real fierce heat of the
forge fire to which the dead woman had wished to entrust her purification
and transformation. She would not shun, but hasten to it. While her lover
was wielding the sword she, too, had a battle to fight. She had heard
from Biberli that Heinz wished to undergo the most severe trials. This
was noble, and her enthusiastic nature, aspiring to the loftiest goal,
was filled with the same desire. Eager to learn how they would bear the
test, she scanned her young shoulders and gazed at the burden which she
intended to lay upon them.

When, the year before, her aunt took her to the hospital for the first
time, she had returned home completely unnerved. She had not even had the
slightest suspicion that there was such suffering on earth, such pain
amongst those near her, such depravity amongst those of her own sex. What
comparison was there between what Els had done for her gentle, patient
mother, or what she would do for old Herr Casper, who lay in a soft
bed--it had been shown to her as something of rare beauty, of ebony and
ivory--and the task of nursing these infamous gallows-birds bleeding from
severe wounds, and these depraved sick women? But if God's own Son gave
up His life amidst the most cruel suffering for sinful humanity, how
dared she, the weak, erring, slandered girl, who had no goodness save her
passionate desire to do what was right, shrink from helping the most
pitiable of her neighbours? Here in the hospital at Schweinau lay the
heavy burden which she wished to take upon herself.

She desired it also in order to maintain the bond which had united her to
the Saviour. She would be constantly reminded here of his own words,
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren,
ye have done it unto me." To become a bride of Jesus Christ and, closely
united to Him in her inmost soul, await the hour when He would open His
divine arms to her, had seemed the fairest lot in life. Now she had
pledged herself in the world to another, and yet she did not wish to give
up her Saviour. She desired to show Him that though she neither co