eplied her sister, "why do you sit
here on the ground, on this cold, wet evening? Oh, come home, come home
with me!"

"Do you go home, Leonore! this air is not proper for you! Go home to the
happy, and be merry, with them," returned Eva.

"Do you not remember," tenderly pleaded Leonore, "how I once, many years
ago, was sick both in body and mind? Do you know who it was then that
left the gay in order to comfort me? I prayed her to leave me--but she
went not from me--neither will I now go away from you."

"Ah, go! leave me alone!" repeated Eva, "I stand now alone in the
world!"

"Eva, you distress me!" said her sister, "you know that there is no one
in this world that I love like you: I mourned so much when you left us;
the house without you seemed empty, but I consoled myself with the
thought that Eva will soon come back again. You came, and I was so
joyful, for I believed that we should be so happy together. But I have
seen since then of how little consequence I am to you! still I love you
as much as ever, and if you think that I have not sympathised in your
sorrows, that I have not wept with you and for you, you do me certainly
injustice! Ah, Eva, many a night when you have believed perhaps that I
lay in sweet sleep, have I sat at your door, and listened how you wept,
and have wept for you, and prayed for you, but I did not dare to come in
to you because I imagined your heart to be closed to me!" And so saying,
Leonore wept bitterly.

"You are right, Leonore," answered Eva, "much has become closed in me
which once was opened. This feeling, this love for him--oh, it has
swallowed up my whole soul! For some time I believed I should be able to
conquer it--but now I believe so no longer----"

"Do you repent of your renunciation?" asked Leonore;--"it was so noble
of you! Would you yet be united to him!"

"No! no! the time for that is gone by," said Eva. "I would rather die
than that; but you see, Leonore, I loved him so--I have tasted love, and
have felt how rapturous, how divine life might be!--Oh, Leonore, the
bright sun-warm summer-day is not more unlike this misty evening hour,
than the life which I lived for a season is unlike the future which now
lies before me!"

"It seems so to you now, Eva--you think so now," answered her sister;
"but let a little time pass over, and you will see that it will be quite
otherwise; that the painful feelings will subside, and life will clear
up itself before you. Think only