by
some passionate word a feeling which must not exist, and he appeared as
a sinner and a traitor! There was a short pause; then his mother asked,
with a sudden change of expression,--

"Why do you not answer me?"

"Ah, mother, I am still much more inexperienced than I thought myself;
I cannot put absolute trust in my judgment of people. I have no
knowledge of human nature, though my father used to say that psychology
was my _forte_. It may be so. I can follow a given trait of character
back to its remote causes, and forward to its consequences, but I have
no true knowledge of human nature."

The Mother listened quietly, with downcast eyes, to this long preamble,
in which Eric was trying to gain mastery of himself, but when he
stopped, she said:--

"You can at least say something, even if it is not very clear-sighted."

"Well, then, I think that in this highly-gifted woman a struggle is
going on between worldliness and renunciation of the world; between the
desire to _appear_ and the longing really to _be_. It seems to me as if
something had been repressed, checked, in the development of her life,
and as if she were not yet quite ripe for the beautiful work of making
life's evening full and perfect to so noble a man as Clodwig."

"Yes, he is a noble man, and to wrong him would be like the desecration
of a temple," said his mother significantly.

The words came out sharply, and she went on: "You have judged rightly,
the Prankens are a presumptuous and daring race. It was believed that
Bella would marry her music-master, with whom she played a great deal;
indeed she played with him in a double sense. But that's not to the
purpose. An apparently insignificant event brought about in Bella a
derangement--I don't know what to call it--a sort of overturn in
her character. In her youth, while she might still be considered
young,--she was twenty-two or twenty-three--she had to see her younger
sister married before her; she bore it with the greatest composure, but
I think that, from that time, a change came over her difficult to be
described; she had suddenly grown old, older than she would confess to
herself; there was something of the matron about her. This was
affected, but a bitter tone was real. Her sister died after a few
years, leaving no children. All these circumstances brought out
something discordant in Bella; she really hated her sister, and yet
behaved as if she were pining for her. She had no mother, or rat