ld might not follow her own mother to the cemetery.

With a drooping head Katharina withdrew to her room and there stood
looking out into the garden. It all was hers now; she was mistress of it
all and of much besides, as free and unfettered to command as hitherto
she had been over the birds, her little dog, or the jewels that lay on
her toilet-table. She could make hundreds happy with a word, a wave of
the hand--but not herself. She had never felt so grown-up, independent,
womanly, nay powerful, and at the same time so unutterably wretched and
helpless as she felt in this hour.

What did she care for all these vanities? They could not suffice to
check one sigh of disappointed yearning.

She had parted from her mother with a promise; the fervent longing that
filled her soul was never still; and now the patriarch's letter had
given her a hint as to how she might fulfil the one and silence the
other. She hastily took the document up again, and read it through once
more.

Its instructions were precise to stop the proceedings of the misguided
Memphites with stern promptitude. It explained that the death of the
Christ Jesus, who shed His blood to redeem the world, had satisfied
the need for a human victim. Throughout the wide realms which the Cross
overshadowed with blessing human sacrifice must therefore be accounted
a useless and accursed abomination. It went on to point out how the
heathen had devised their gods in the image of weak, sinful, earthly
beings, and chosen victims in accordance with this idea. "But our God,"
it said, "is as high above men as the Spirit is above the flesh, and the
sacrifice He demands is not of the flesh, but of the spirit. Will He
not turn away in wrath and sorrow from the blinded Christians of Memphis
who, in their straits, feel and are about to act like the cruel and
foolish heathen? They take for their victim a heretic and a stranger,
deeming that that will diminish the abomination in the eyes of the Lord;
but it moves Him to loathing all the same, for no human blood may stain
the pure and sacred altars of our mild faith, which gives life and not
death.

"Ask your blind and misguided flock, my brother: Can the Father of
Love feel joy at the sight of one of His children, even an erring
one, suffocated in the waters to the honor of the Most High, while
struggling, and cursing her executioners?

"If, indeed, there were a pure maiden, possessed with the blessed
intoxication of the love o