ill only love me just as
well now that I am to remain as I was, we may still be very happy."

But he was not so easily to be comforted, and the doctor had to insist
on their being parted. Clement was taken into the larger room, where
the villagers came pressing round him, shaking hands with him by turns,
with cordial words and wishes. The crowd half stunned him, and he only
kept repeating: "Marlene is still blind; she will never see! have you
heard?" he would say, and burst into tears afresh.

It was high time to tie the bandage on again, and lead him to his own
cool quiet room--there he lay exhausted with joy and grief and weeping.
His father came to him, and spoke tenderly and piously; which did not
much avail him. He cried even in his sleep, and appeared to be
disturbed by distressing dreams.

On the following day, however, wonder, joy, and curiosity asserted
their rights again; sorrow for Marlene only appeared to touch him
nearly when he had her before his eyes. The first thing in the morning
he had been to see her, and with affectionate anxiety to enquire
whether she felt no change--no more hopeful symptom? Then he became
absorbed in the variegated world that was expanding before his eyes.
When he returned to Marlene, it was only to describe some new wonder to
her, although sometimes, in his fullest flow of narrative, he would
stop suddenly, reminded by a look at the poor little friend beside him,
how painful to her his joy must be. But in reality, she did not find it
painful. For herself she wanted nothing--listening to the enthusiasm of
his delight was joy enough for her. Only when by-and-by he came more
rarely, or remained silent, for the reason that all he could have said,
appeared as nothing to what he did not dare to say--only then she began
to feel uneasy. Hitherto, by day, she had hardly ever been without him,
but now she often sat alone. Her mother would come to keep her company;
but her mother, once so lively, in losing her dearest hope, had also
lost her cheerfulness.

She could find nothing to say to her child save words of comfort, which
her own sighs belied, and which therefore could not reach her heart.
How much of what the young girl now was suffering had she not foreseen
with terror! And yet the feeling of what she had lost, came upon her
with pangs of unknown bitterness.

She would still sit spinning in her father's garden, and when Clement
came, these poor blind eyes of hers would light up s