While he spoke the expression of the countenance of both changed surprisingly.  Both evinced determination, defiance, and anger, and the charm which love had laid for a moment on their antagonistic souls was destroyed.  Gotzkowsky was no longer the tender father, easily appeased by a word, but the patriot injured in his holiest right, his most delicate sense of honor.  Elise was no longer the humble, penitent daughter, but a bride threatened with the loss of her lover.

“You would, then, never give your consent?” asked she, passionately.  “But if this war were ended, if Russia were no longer the enemy of Germany; if—­”

“Russia remains ever the enemy of Germany, even if she does not appear against her in the open field.  It is the antagonism of despotic power against culture and civilization.  Never can the free German be the friend of the barbarous Sclavonian.  Let us hear nothing more of this—­you know my mind; I cannot change it, even if you should, for that reason, doubt my love.  True love does not consist only in granting, but still more in denying.”

Elise stood with bowed head, and murmured some low, unintelligible words.  Gotzkowsky felt that it would be better for both to break off this conversation before it had reached a point of bitterness and irritation.  At the same time he felt that, after so much excitement, his body needed rest.  He, therefore, approached his daughter and extended his hand toward her for a friendly farewell.  Elise seized it, and pressed it with passionate feeling to her lips.  He then turned round and traversed the room on the way to his bedchamber.

Elise looked after him with painful longing, which increased with each step he took.  As he was in the act of leaving the room she rushed after him, and uttered in a tone of gentle pleading, the single word, “Father!”

Gotzkowsky felt the innermost chord of his heart touched.  He turned round and opened his arms to her.  With a loud cry of joy she threw herself on his breast, and rested there for a moment in happy, self-forgetting delight.  They looked at one another, and smilingly bade each other good-by.  Again Gotzkowsky turned his steps toward his bedroom.  And now he was gone; she saw him no more.  Father and daughter were separated.

But Elise felt an unutterable grief in her heart, a boundless terror seized her.  It seemed as if she could not leave her father; as if it would be a disgrace for her, so secretly, like a criminal, to sneak out of her father’s house, were it even to follow her lover to the altar.  She felt as if she must call her father back, cling to his knees, and implore him to save her, to save her from her own desires.  Already had she opened her lips, and stretched forth her arms, when she suddenly let them fall, with a shudder.

She had heard the loud rolling of a carriage, and she knew what it meant.  This carriage which stopped at her door—­could it be the one in which Feodor had come to take her?  “It is too late—­I cannot go back,” muttered she low, and with drooping head she slowly left her father’s room in order to repair to her own chamber.