?"

"Then think that God Himself has taken your wife at your hands."

Paul's face, that had worn a look of deep dejection, became distorted
with pain. "Oh, it is horrible! And this cloister is to be your
marriage-bed!"

"Hush! All is peace here. Good-bye, dearest Paul. Be brave, my husband."

"Brave? Before death a man may be brave; but in the face of a calamity
like this, what man could be brave?"

"God will turn it away."

"God grant it. But I tremble to ask for the truth. The future is not
more awful to me now than the past."

"Keep up heart, dear Paul. You know how pleasant it is to fall asleep
amid storms that shake the trees, and to awake in the stillness and the
sunshine, and amid the songs of the birds. To-morrow the falsehood will
be outfaced, and you will return to fetch me."

"Yes," said Paul, "or else drag out my days as an outcast in the world."

"No, no, no. Good-bye, dearest." Then the voice of the comforter failed
her, and she dropped her head on his breast.

The choir within chanted the matin service. Paul removed the iron bar
that crossed the door, and opened it. The opposite side of the street
was a blank wall, with gaunt boughs of leafless trees behind it and
above it, and beyond all was the dim sanctuary. Traffic's deep buzz
flowed in the distance. The dawn had reddened the eastern sky, and the
towers of the abbey were black against the glory of the coming day.

"It may be that there is never a sunrise on this old city but it awakens
some one to some new calamity," said Paul; "yet surely this is the
heaviest stroke of all Good-bye, my darling!"

"Good-bye, my husband!"

"Yonder gray old fabric has looked on the scarred ruins of many a life,
but never a funeral that has passed down its aisles was so sad as this
parting. Good-bye, dearest wife, good-bye!"

"Good-bye, Paul!"

He struck his breast and drew his breath audibly, "I must go. The thing
is not to be thought of and endured!"

"Good-bye, Paul!" Her face was buried in his breast, to hide it from his
eyes.

"They say that the day a dear friend is lost to us is purer and calmer
in remembrance than the day before. May it be so with us!"

"Hush! You will soon be back to take me away." And Greta nestled closer
to his breast.

"If not--if not"--his hot breathing beat fast on her drooping head--"if
not, then--as the world is dead to both without the other's love--remain
here--in this house--forever. Good-bye! Good-bye!"

He di