o kind as to interest yourself
in the matter, and if you think it is really her heart's desire to marry
this man--which ought to be his salvation both for earth and heaven--I
shall be very glad to go halves with you in any place for setting them
up in the inn at Altenahr; only allow me to see that whatever money we
advance is well and legally tied up, so that it is secured to her. And
be so kind as to take no notice of what I have said about my having
found out that I have loved her; I named it as a kind of apology for my
hard words this morning, and as a reason why I was not a fit judge of
what was best." He had hurried on, so that I could not have stopped his
eager speaking even had I wished to do so; but I was too much interested
in the revelation of what was passing in his brave tender heart to
desire to stop him. Now, however, his rapid words tripped each other up,
and his speech ended in an unconscious sigh.

"But," I said, "since you were here Thekla has come to me, and we have
had a long talk. She speaks now as openly to me as she would if I were
her brother; with sensible frankness, where frankness is wise, with
modest reticence, where confidence would be unbecoming. She came to
ask me, if I thought it her duty to marry this fellow, whose very
appearance, changed for the worse, as she says it is, since she last
saw him four years ago, seemed to have repelled her."

"She could let him put his arm round her waist yesterday," said Herr
Mueller, with a return of his morning's surliness.

"And she would marry him now if she could believe it to be her duty.
For some reason of his own, this Franz Weber has tried to work upon this
feeling of hers. He says it would be the saving of him."

"As if a man had not strength enough in him--a man who is good for
aught--to save himself, but needed a woman to pull him through life!"

"Nay," I replied, hardly able to keep from smiling. "You yourself said,
not five minutes ago, that her marrying him might be his salvation both
for earth and heaven."

"That was when I thought she loved the fellow," he answered quick.
"Now----but what did you say to her, sir?"

"I told her, what I believe to be as true as gospel, that as she owned
she did not love him any longer now his real self had come to displace
his remembrance, that she would be sinning in marrying him; doing evil
that possible good might come. I was clear myself on this point, though
I should have been perplexed how to