sty, accustomed to desire nothing save what she
could have confessed to her sister and the abbess, seemed as if it had
cast off every fetter and boldly resolved to risk the most daring deeds.
The somnambulist had longed for the moment when, after Heinz Schorlin's
confession that he loved her, she could throw her arms around his neck
with rapturous gratitude.

If, while awake, she had desired only to speak to him of her saint and
of his duty to overthrow the foes of the Church, she had wished while
gazing at the moon from the stairs, and in front of the house door,
to whisper sweet words of love, listen to his, and in so doing forget
herself, the world, and everything which did not belong to him, to her,
and their love.

And she remembered this longing and yearning in a way very unlike a mere
dream. It seemed rather as if, while the moon was attracting her by its
magic power, something, which had long slumbered in the depths of her
soul, had waked to life; something, from which formerly, ere her heart
and mind had been able rightly to understand it, she had shrunk with
pious horror, had assumed a tangible form.

Now she dreaded this newly recognised sinful part of her own nature,
which she had imagined a pure vessel that had room only for what was
noble, sacred, and innocent.

She, too--she knew it now--was only a girl like those on whose desire
for love she had looked down with arrogant contempt, no bride of heaven
or saint.

She had not yet taken the veil, and it was fortunate, for what would
have become of her had she not discovered until after her profession
this part of her nature, which she thought every true nun, if she
possessed it, must discard, like the hair which was shorn from her head,
before taking the vow of the order.

During this self-inspection it became more and more evident that she was
not one person, but two in one--a twofold nature with a single body and
two distinct souls; and this conviction caused her as much pain as if
the cut which had produced the separation were still bleeding.

Just at that moment her eyes fell upon the image of the Virgin opposite,
and the usual impulse to lift her soul in prayer took possession of her
even more powerfully than a short time before.

With fervent warmth she besought her to release her from this newly
awakened nature, which surely could not be pleasing in the sight of
Heaven, and let her once more become what she was before the unfortunate
ramble i