id. If the dread truth were only determined. One can
take his position against a manifest wrong, but against suspicion there
is none. It renders one weak and unsteady; nothing is fixed; the very
earth under one's feet seems to tremble.

The queen was not ill. She could easily enough have gone to the
apartments of her son; but she could not have looked into his face and
smiled--for her heart was filled with a bitter thought against the
father.

She arose quickly, and was about to send for the king. She would tell
him all. She wished him to release her from the torment of suspicion.
She would believe him. She would only ask him honestly to acknowledge
whether he was still true and at one with her. "At heart he's frank and
truthful," said she to herself, and love for her husband welled up from
the depths of her heart. Still, if he but swerved from himself, he has
already been untrue: and would he acknowledge it? Can one expect a man
to answer on his conscience, when he has already denied that
conscience? And if he were to acknowledge the horrible fact, she would
still bear it in silence. Anything was better than this suspicion that
poisoned her heart and hardened her soul. Could it be that evil, nay,
the mere suspicion of evil, destroys everything that lies within its
reach?

She sat down again; she could not ask the king.

"Be it so," said she at last; "I must overcome this temptation, and the
spirit of truth will lend me strength."

She thought for a moment of making Gunther her confidant. He was her
fatherly friend. "But no," she exclaimed to herself, "I am not weak. I
will not seek help from others. If I must learn the terrible truth, I
will do it by myself; and if it is a delusion, I mean to conquer it
unaided."

At table and in the social circle, the queen's behavior toward the king
and Irma was more loving than ever. When she looked at her friend, she
felt as if she ought to ask forgiveness for having, even for a moment,
thought basely of her; but when she was alone she felt her soul carried
away toward him and her. She longed to know what they were thinking of,
what they were doing or saying.--They were speaking of her, smiling at
and ridiculing her. Who knows? perhaps wishing her dead.

She, indeed, wished that she were dead.

CHAPTER X.

"I'm going to the theater this evening," said Baum to Walpurga, in the
afternoon of the 22d of January. "They're going to play a