if he loses you; you will have assisted him at the
beginning only to injure him in the end."

"Destiny has not dealt with me with too gentle a hand," replied Ottilie;
"and whoever loves me has perhaps not much better to expect. Our friend
is so good and so sensible, that I hope he will be able to reconcile
himself to remaining in a simple relation with me; he will learn to see
in me a consecrated person, lying under the shadow of an awful calamity,
and only able to support herself and bear up against it by devoting
herself to that Holy Being who is invisibly around us, and alone is able
to shield us from the dark powers which threaten to overwhelm us."

All this, which the dear girl poured out so warmly, Charlotte privately
reflected over; on many different occasions, although only in the
gentlest manner, she had hinted at the possibility of Ottilie's being
brought again in contact with Edward; but the slightest mention of it,
the faintest hope, the least suspicion, seemed to wound Ottilie to the
quick. One day when she could not evade it, she expressed herself to
Charlotte clearly and peremptorily on the subject.

"If your resolution to renounce Edward," returned Charlotte, "is so firm
and unalterable, then you had better avoid the danger of seeing him
again. At a distance from the object of our love, the warmer our
affection, the stronger is the control which we fancy that we can
exercise on ourselves; because the whole force of the passion, diverted
from its outward objects, turns inward on ourselves. But how soon, how
swiftly is our mistake made clear to us, when the thing which we thought
that we could renounce, stands again before our eyes as indispensable to
us! You must now do what you consider best suited to your
circumstances. Look well into yourself; change, if you prefer it, the
resolution which you have just expressed. But do it of yourself, with a
free consenting heart. Do not allow yourself to be drawn in by an
accident; do not let yourself be surprised into your former position. It
will place you at issue with yourself and will be intolerable to you. As
I said, before you take this step, before you remove from me, and enter
upon a new life, which will lead you no one knows in what direction,
consider once more whether really, indeed, you can renounce Edward for
the whole time to come. If you have faithfully made up your mind that
you will do this, then will you enter into an engagement with me, that
y