ould have done it,
might have done it, should have done it! It would not have been a sin;
it would have been a sin if she had not done so. And now it was a sin
because the other had defrauded him and her, the other who now
tormented her about what he himself had made sinful, who forced her to
sin--for be forced her to hate him, and that too was a sin and his
fault. With terribly sweet fear she thought of the nearness of the man
who should be a stranger to her, who was not a stranger to her, from
whom in the dread of her weakness she saw no escape. She fled from
him, from herself, into the room where her children slept, where her
mother had died. There, where such peace had come to her, she heard
the slight movement of the innocent little slumberers whose guardian
God had made her, heard their quiet breathing whispering into the
still, dark night. She went from bed to bed, sank motionless on her
knees before each, and pressed her forehead against the sharp edges of
the bedsteads.

From the tower of St. George's the bells rang as the step of time
passed over her; and he did not cease his march. She lay, her hot
hands clasped, a long, long time. Then from the gentle web of her
feelings there rose, silvery as the sound of Easter morning bells, the
thought: why are you afraid of him? And she saw all her angels
kneeling About her and he was one of her angels, the most beautiful
and the strongest and the gentlest. And she might look up to him as
one looks up to his angels. She rose and went back into the other
room. She spread the letters out on the table and then laid herself to
rest. She meant their possessor to know, when he came home and found
the letters, that she had read them. It was hard for her to part with
them; but they did not belong to her. She took away only the little
box with the withered flower, and meant to tell him in the morning
that she had done so.

Fritz Nettenmair still sat on all alone in the wine-tavern. His head
hung wearily down on his breast. He justified to himself his hatred
and his course of action. His brother and she were false; his brother
and she were guilty, not he who sat here squandering what belonged to
his children. He who had stolen her heart away from him might look
after them. Just at the moment when he had succeeded in convincing
himself, the door of the bedroom at home opened. His wife had got up
out of bed again and put back the box containing the flower with the
letters. Apoll