that she still loved him and
looked up to him. She managed, however, to come into his presence only
on the rarest occasions, and then she never spoke to him.

Divine worship in the Protestant church seemed to her like a sort of
bargain day on which the people assembled to do business with Heaven
instead of on work days. She missed the dignity; the sermons left her
cold; the ritual made not the slightest appeal to her.

She never heard from any one at any time a single sentence that really
enlightened her or remained fixed in her memory. It was the jejune
insipidity of an entire age, the stale flatness of the world that she
felt to the very depths of her soul. If she wished to make her heart
glow, if she became unusually fearful of the empty air and the empty
day, she stole secretly into the Church of Our Lady or into St.
Sebaldus, where the house of God was more solemnly decorated, where
there were more lights burning, where the prayers had a more mysterious
sound, the priests seemed to be more affected by what they were doing,
and where the worshipper could sense the awful meaning of life and
death.

All external beauty, however, was repulsive to her. She hated even
beautiful scenery and fair weather, regarding them as temptations to
mortal man intended to lead him into some sort of folly. She loved
nothing about herself, neither her face nor her voice. She was indeed
frightened at the sound of her own deep voice. She did not like her
hair, nor had she any use for her hands.

One winter evening she took from her hand the gold ring, an heirloom
from her mother, presented to her by her father, and threw it into the
creek. Then she bowed down over the ledge, and seemed to feel as if she
had relieved her soul of a great burden.

Eleanore tried time and time again to come near her sister, but each
time she was thrust back. Though Gertrude never conversed with people,
every word that was said about Eleanore reached her ears; she felt
ashamed of her sister. She could not bear the looks of Eleanore, took an
intense dislike to her, and in the end was obliged to summon all her
courage in order to return her greeting. It was impossible for her,
however, to reproach Eleanore; for that she did not have sufficient
command of language. In truth, her control of words was exceedingly
limited. Everything, grief as well as injustice, she was forced to
stifle within her own soul. She grieved about Eleanore, and became at
the same t