s to love and to
be loved by somebody, and then maybe you would not think so very hardly
of Tabea after she has gone."

There was a tone of beseeching in these last words which Tabea had not
been wont to use.

The director looked more numb now than ever. Tabea's words had given
him a rude blow, and he could not at once recover. His lips moved
without speaking, and his face assumed a look betokening inward
suffering.

"Great God of wisdom, must I then tell her?" said Friedsam when he got
breath. He stood up and gazed out of the square window in indecision.

"Tabea," he said presently, turning full upon her and looking into her
now pale face upturned to the light, "I thought my secret would die in
my breast, but you wring it from me. You say that I have no
infirmities--no desire for companionship like other men or women. It is
the voice of Sophia, the wisdom of the Almighty, that bids me humble
myself before you this day."

Here he paused in visible but suppressed emotion. "These things," he
said, pointing to his wooden couch, "these hardships of the body, these
self-denials of my vocation, give me no trouble. I have one great
soul-affliction, and that is what you reproach me for lacking, namely,
the longing to love and to be loved. And that trial you laid upon me
the first time I saw your face and heard your words in your mother's
house on the Wissahickon. O Tabea, you are not like the rest! you are
not like the rest! Even when you go wrong, it is not like the rest. It
is the vision of the life I might have led with such a woman as you
that troubles my dreams in the night-time, when, across the impassable
gulf of my irrevocable vow, I have stretched out my hands in entreaty
to you."

This declaration changed instantly the color of Tabea's thoughts of
life. Daniel Scheible and his little love scrawls seemed to her lofty
spirit as nothing now that she saw herself in the light thrown upon her
by the love of the great master whose spirit had evoked Ephrata, and
whose genius uttered itself in angelic harmonies. She loathed the
little life that now opened before her. There seemed nothing in heaven
or earth so desirable as to possess the esteem of Friedsam. But she
stood silent and condemned.

"I have had one comfort," proceeded Brother Friedsam after a while.
"When I have perceived your strength of character, when I have heard
your exquisite voice uttering the melodies with which I am inspired, I
have thought my work