etter that she should keep out of the way of the wife of an
honest man who knew her. All fellowship hereafter with the wives and
daughters of honest men must be denied to her. She had felt this very
strongly when she had first seen herself in the dawn of the morning.

But now there had fallen upon her a trouble of another kind, which
almost crushed her,--in which she was not as yet able to see that,
by God's mercy, salvation from utter ruin might yet be extended to
her. What should she do now,--now, at this moment? The Black Bear,
to which her lover had directed her, was so spoken of that she did
not dare to ask to be directed thither. When a compassionate railway
porter pressed her to say whither she would go, she could only totter
to a seat against the wall, and there lay herself down and sob. She
had no friends, she said; no home; no protector except him who had
just been carried away to prison. The porter asked her whether the
man were her husband, and then again she was nearly choked with sobs.
Even the manner of the porter was changed to her when he perceived
that she was not the wife of him who had been her companion. He
handed her over to an old woman who looked after the station, and the
old woman at last learned from Linda the fact that the wife of Max
Bogen the lawyer had once been her friend. About two hours after that
she was seated with Max Bogen himself, in a small close carriage,
and was being taken home to the lawyer's house. Max Bogen asked her
hardly a question. He only said that Fanny would be so glad to have
her;--Fanny, he said, was so soft, so good, and so clever, and so
wise, and always knew exactly what ought to be done. Linda heard it
all, marvelling in her dumb half-consciousness. This was the Fanny
Heisse of whom her aunt had so often told her that one so given to
the vanities of the world could never come to any good!

Max Bogen handed Linda over to his wife, and then disappeared. "Oh,
Linda, what is it? Why are you here? Dear Linda." And then her old
friend kissed her, and within half an hour the whole story had been
told.

"Do you mean that she eloped with him from her aunt's house in the
middle of the night?" asked Max, as soon as he was alone with his
wife. "Of course she did," said Fanny; "and so would I, had I been
treated as she has been. It has all been the fault of that wicked old
saint, her aunt." Then they put their heads together as to the steps
that must be taken. Fanny propo