I will not, cannot
leave him!"

She paused, hiding her face in her hands, but Ulrich paced to and fro,
violently agitated. At last he said firmly: "Yet you must part from him.
He or I! I will have nothing to do with the lover of my father's wife. I
am Adam's son, and will be constant to him. Ah, mother, I have been
deprived of you so long. You can tend strangers' orphaned children, yet
you make your own son an orphan. Will you do this? No, a thousand times,
no, you cannot! Do not weep so, you must not weep! Hear me, hear me! For
my sake, leave this Spaniard! You will not repent it. I have just been
dreaming of the nest I will build for you. There I will cherish and care
for you, and you shall keep as many orphan children as you choose. Leave
him, mother, you must leave him for the sake of your child, your Ulrich!"

"Oh, God! oh, God!" she sobbed. "I will try, yes, I will try. . . . My
child, my dear child!"

Ulrich clasped her closely in his arms, kissed her hair, and said,
softly: "I know, I know, you need love, and you shall find it with me."

"With you!" she repeated, sobbing. Then releasing herself from his
embrace she hurried to the feverish woman, at whose summons she had left
her tent.

As morning dawned, she returned home and found Zorrillo still awake. He
enquired about her patient, and told her he had given the child something
to drink while she was away.

Flora could not help weeping bitterly again, and Zorrillo, noticing it,
exclaimed chidingly: "Each has his own griefs to bear, it is not wise to
take strangers' troubles so deeply to heart."

"Strangers' troubles," she repeated, mournfully, and went to rest.

White-haired woman, why have you remained so young? All the cares and
sorrows of youth and age are torturing you at the same time! One love is
fighting a mortal battle with another in your breast. Which will conquer?

She knows, she knew it ere she entered the tent. The mother fled from the
child, but she cannot abandon her new-found son. Oh, maternal love, thou
dost hover in radiant bliss far above the clouds, and amid choirs of
angels! Oh, maternal heart, thou dost bleed pierced with swords, more
full of sorrows than any other!

Poor, poor Florette! On this July morning she was enduring superhuman
tortures, all the sins she had committed arrayed themselves against her,
shrieking into her ear that she was a lost woman, and there could be no
pardon for her either in this world or the next. Y