more difficult than the tasks to be fulfilled here. This was the real
fierce heat of the forge fire to which the dead woman had wished to
entrust her purification and transformation. She would not shun, but
hasten to it. While her lover was wielding the sword she, too, had a
battle to fight. She had heard from Biberli that Heinz wished to undergo
the most severe trials. This was noble, and her enthusiastic nature,
aspiring to the loftiest goal, was filled with the same desire. Eager to
learn how they would bear the test, she scanned her young shoulders and
gazed at the burden which she intended to lay upon them.

When, the year before, her aunt took her to the hospital for the first
time, she had returned home completely unnerved. She had not even had
the slightest suspicion that there was such suffering on earth, such
pain amongst those near her, such depravity amongst those of her own
sex. What comparison was there between what Els had done for her gentle,
patient mother, or what she would do for old Herr Casper, who lay in a
soft bed--it had been shown to her as something of rare beauty, of ebony
and ivory--and the task of nursing these infamous gallows-birds bleeding
from severe wounds, and these depraved sick women? But if God's own Son
gave up His life amidst the most cruel suffering for sinful humanity,
how dared she, the weak, erring, slandered girl, who had no goodness
save her passionate desire to do what was right, shrink from helping the
most pitiable of her neighbours? Here in the hospital at Schweinau lay
the heavy burden which she wished to take upon herself.

She desired it also in order to maintain the bond which had united her
to the Saviour. She would be constantly reminded here of his own words,
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren,
ye have done it unto me." To become a bride of Jesus Christ and, closely
united to Him in her inmost soul, await the hour when He would open
His divine arms to her, had seemed the fairest lot in life. Now she had
pledged herself in the world to another, and yet she did not wish to
give up her Saviour. She desired to show Him that though she neither
could nor would resign her earthly lover, her heart still throbbed
for the divine One as tenderly as of yore. And could He who was Love
incarnate condemn her, when He saw how, without even being permitted
to hope that her lover would find his way back to her, she clung with
inviolable steadfas