t you are speaking to your father?"

But her tortured heart did not notice this appeal; and only
remembering that perhaps at this moment her lover was suffering death
through her father's fault, she allowed herself to be carried away by
the overpowering force of her grief. She met the flashing eye of her
father with a smile of contempt, and said, coldly: "Oh yes, you may
look at me. I do not fear your angry glances. I am free; you yourself
have absolved me from any fear of you. You took from me my lover, and
at the same time deprived yourself of your child."

"O God!" cried Gotzkowsky in an undertone, "have I deserved this,
Father in heaven?" and he regarded his daughter with a touching
expression.

But she was inexorable; sorrow had unseated her judgment, and "Oh!"
cried she in a tone of triumph, "now I will confess every thing to
you, how I have suffered and what I have undergone."

"Elise!" cried he painfully, "have I not given you every thing your
heart could desire?"

"Yes!" cried she, with a cruel laugh, "you fulfilled all my wishes,
and thereby made me poor in wishes, poor in enjoyment. You deprived me
of the power of wishing, for every thing was mine even before I could
desire it. It was only necessary for me to stretch out my hand, and it
belonged to me. Cheerless and solitary I stood amidst your wealth, and
all that I touched was turned into hard gold. The rich man's daughter
envied the beggar woman in the street, for she still had wishes,
hopes, and privations."

Gotzkowsky listened to her, without interrupting her by a word or even
a sigh. Only now and then he raised his hand to his forehead, or cast
a wandering, doubtful look at his daughter, as if to convince himself
that all that was passing was not a mad, bewildering dream, but
painful, cruel reality.

But when Elise, breathless and trembling with excitement, stopped for
a moment, and he no longer heard her cutting accents of reproach, he
pressed both hands upon his breast, as if to suppress a wail over the
annihilation of his whole life. "O God!" muttered he in a low voice,
"this is unparalleled agony! This cuts into a father's heart!"

After a pause, Elise continued: "I too was a beggar, and I hungered
for the bread of your love."

"Elise, oh, my child, do you not know then that I love you
infinitely?"

But she did not perceive the loving, almost imploring looks which her
father cast upon her. She could see and think only of herself and he