she did not know how she
was able to return Heliodora's greeting, and to ask her how she could
possibly play the lute with a headache.

"Just gliding my fingers over the strings calms and refreshes my blood,"
she replied pleasantly. "But you, child, look as if you were suffering
far worse than I.--Did you come home in the chariot that drove up just
now?"

"Yes," replied Katharina. "I have been to see our dear old bishop. He is
very ill, dying; he will soon be taken from us. Oh, what a fearful
day! First Orion's mother, then Paula, and now this to crown all! Oh,
Heliodora, Heliodora!"

She fell on her knees by the bed and pressed her face against her
pitying friend's bosom. Heliodora saw the tears which had risen with
unaffected feeling to the girl's eyes; her tender soul was full of
sympathy with the sorrow of such a gladsome young creature, who had
already had so much to suffer, and she leaned over the child, kissing
her affectionately on the brow, and murmuring words of consolation.
Katharina clung to her closely, and pointing to the top of her head
where that burning hand had pressed it, she said: "There, kiss there:
there is where the pain is worst!--Ah, that is nice, that does me good."

And, as the tender-hearted Heliodora's fresh lips rested on the
plague-tainted hair, Katharina closed her eyes and felt as a gladiator
might who hitherto has only tried his weapons on the practising
ground, and now for the first time uses them in the arena to pierce his
opponent's heart. She had a vision of herself as some one else,
taller and stronger than she was; aye, as Death itself, the destroyer,
breathing herself into her victim's breast.

These feelings entirely possessed her as she knelt on the soft carpet,
and she did not notice that another woman was crossing it noiselessly
to her comforter's bed-side, with a glance of intelligence at Heliodora.
Just as she exclaimed: "Another kiss there-it burns so dreadfully,"
she felt two hands on her temples and two lips, not Heliodora's, were
pressed on her head.

She looked up in astonishment and saw the smiling face of her mother,
who had come after her to ask how the bishop was, and who wished to take
her share in soothing the pain of her darling.

How well her little surprise had succeeded!

But what came over the child? She started to her feet as if lightning
had struck her, as if an asp had stung her, looked horror-stricken into
her mother's eyes, and then, as Susann