ance rested on
him for an instant: "Go away!" she whispered, scarcely above her
breath. "You are only joking. It was very wrong of you to follow us
here. I still have six paternosters to repeat, and it is a positive
sin--"

"It's a sin of your papa, sweet Nanny mine, to shut you up like a nun
and let you go nowhere but to church, as if a young creature needed
nothing but to be pious. When should one be merry, then, unless it is
when one is young? Come, Fraeulein Nanny, if your father had not been so
angry yesterday, and I were sitting by your side--not here in the dark
corner, but in your own house on the sofa--and were whispering all
sorts of silly love-talk in your ear, and your sister, who was left to
matronize us, should find her presence absolutely necessary in the
kitchen, and--"

The round red face in the window-niche assumed a highly displeased
expression, for the two heads near the red columns had approached so
near together that their hair touched, and the softest whispering
sufficed to make itself understood. Over opposite, where the other
couple were, a space two spans broad still intervened between the two
kneeling figures. But even there not a syllable appeared to be lost.

"I know I have no right to hope for any great happiness," whispered
Elfinger. "I am a poor cripple. If you reply by saying that it is a
piece of audacity for me to hope, with my single eye, to find favor in
the most beautiful pair of eyes that ever read in a prayer-book, I find
it very natural. Yes, you will even do me a favor, Fraeulein Fanny, if
you will tell me so--if you will confess to me that a man who looks
as I do can never win your heart. I would try then to come to my
senses--that is to say, to become quite hopeless. Will you do me this
favor?"

Deep silence. Nevertheless she hardly seemed inclined to make such a
declaration.

"You are cruel!" he continued; "I am neither to live nor die. But of
what account am I? If I could believe that _you_ would be happy--O
Fanny, I would really suppress my own feelings and call the convent a
paradise in which you lived and were content. But I shudder to think
that you may regret what you have done when it is too late; that then
even a life by the side of such an ugly, insignificant, unknown man as
I am, who loves you more than himself and would do everything for you,
and who finds his whole world in you--"

He raised his voice so loud as he said this that she looked up in
affright