ight of? Why is not the ideal of life also to be made light of,
and why is not all feeling only a plausible lie?"

In a hoarse voice he added:--

"But I do not believe that love has the right to lay everything in
ruins; but then perhaps it may be said, it is not real love. Pluck up
heart, look at the world for yourself, see how pleasantly, respectably,
and shrewdly it lies, the women tricked out with artificial beauty, and
the men with superficial knowledge. Do you see the abyss on whose brink
I stood? And here I said to myself. We are placed in the world in order
to live, and knowledge and culture have been given us that we may get
from them life and not death. And how could I look a noble man in the
face, how could I look up to the sun in heaven, how was I to educate a
human being, to stand erect in the world, to abhor crime, to discern
the holy; how was I to take the word mother upon my lips, with the
consciousness that I was myself the vilest of all, and that there was
no moment in which I, and another also, must not tremble, and be filled
with cowardly fear and despair."

Eric paused and placed his hand on his forehead; his voice choked,
tears stood in his eyes.

"Go on!" cried Bella, "I am listening."

"It is well. This once do I speak thus to you, and only this once. You
have courage to hear the truth. Our relation is not love, must not be
love; for love cannot thrive on murder, hypocrisy, and treachery. I
clasp your hand--no, I clasp it not, for I know I could not let it go,
if I did. Here I stand--I speak to you, you listen to me--I speak to
you, as if I were miles away, as if I were dead; there must be
distance, there must be death, before there is any life."

"What do you mean?" interposed Bella.

She looked at Eric's hand as if he were about to draw a weapon from his
bosom.

Breathing deep, he went on: "It must be possible for human beings who
have been made conscious of where they are, to find again the right
path from which they have wandered. My friend! you are happy if you
understand the happiness, and you can and must learn to appreciate it;
and I am happy. Howsoever my heart may be shattered, I know I shall
come to understand my duty and my happiness. I have been, heretofore,
so proud, I thought I had mastered the world and brought it under my
feet, and so did you; and that we have met, is to be not for our
destruction, but rather for our awakening into a new life.

"I foresee that the days