p to his lips.

Later in the evening Henrik stood in one of the library windows looking
out into the moonlight. Leonore went up to him and looked into his face
with that mild, humbly questioning glance to which the heart so
willingly opened itself, and which was peculiar to her.

"You are so pale, Henrik," said she, disquieted.

"It is extraordinary," said he, half laughing at himself; "do you see,
Leonore, how the tops of the fir-trees there in the churchyard bow
themselves in the wind and beckon? I cannot conceive why, but this
nodding and beckoning distresses me wonderfully; I feel it in my very
heart."

"That comes naturally enough, Henrik," returned she, "because you are
not well. Shall we not go out a little? It is such lovely moonshine! The
fresh air will perhaps do you good."

"Will you go with me, Leonore?" said he. "Yes, that is a good idea!"

Gabriele found it, however, rather poor, and called her brother and
sister Samoyedes, Laplanders, Esquimaux, and such like, who would go
wandering about in the middle of a winter's night. Nevertheless these
two went forth jestingly and merrily arm in arm.

"Is it not too windy for you?" asked Henrik, whilst he endeavoured
carefully to shield his sister from the wind.

"The wind is not cold," replied Leonore, "and it is particularly
charming to me to walk by your side while it roars around us, and while
the snow-flakes dance about in the moonshine like little elves."

"Nay, you feel then like me!" said Henrik; "with you, sisters, I am
ever calm and happy; but I don't know how it is, but now for some time
other people often plague and irritate me----"

"Ah, Henrik," remarked Leonore, "is not that someway your own fault?"

"Are you thinking of Stjernhoek, Leonore?" asked he.

"Yes."

"So am I," continued he, "and perhaps you are right; yes, I will
willingly concede that I have often been unjust towards him, and
unreasonably violent, but he has excited me to it. Why has he made me so
often oppressively feel his superiority? so often taken away from me my
own joy in my own endeavours, and almost always treated me with coldness
and depreciation?"

Leonore made no answer, the moonlight lit a quiet tear in her eye, and
Henrik continued with increasing violence:

"I could have loved him so much! He had, through the originality of his
character, his strength, and his whole individuality, a great influence,
a great power over me; but he has misused it; he has trea