* * * * *

The rumor which the old gentleman had heard on his way to St. George’s, had penetrated to the street where the house with the green shutters stands.  One passer-by said to another:  “Have you heard the news?  A slater has been killed in Brambach.”  The young wife sprang from her chair but sank fainting to the floor.  A second time Valentine forgot his fears for Apollonius in his anxiety about her.  He sat near her as she lay on the floor and held her head in his trembling hands.  At last she made a slight movement.  He helped her raise the upper part of her body and supported her.  She brushed her disheveled hair from her face and looked about her.  Her gaze was such a strange tense one that Valentine’s fear increased.  She nodded her head and said in a low voice, “Yes!” Valentine knew that she was saying to herself that she had really heard the terrible news and had not dreamed it.  She sat for a long time motionless, hearing no word of all that Valentine spoke to her—­not even when he tried to prove that Apollonius could not be dead, that he was too careful and too good for an accident to happen to him.  He would have given his life to help her, but he knew not how.  So he talked on and on, hoping by ceaseless chatter to help her and himself over the anguish of the moment.

At last she found tears.  Valentine lived again; he saw that she was saved.  He read it in her face, which, open as she herself, could conceal nothing.  He sat and listened with joyful attention to her weeping, as if it were a beautiful song she was singing him.  He listened to the pure melody of her voice as she wept, the melody which she had not lost when, leaning over little Anne’s dying bed, she had uttered the twofold cry of pain and horror.  She wept her heart out and arose without help from Valentine.  Then she prepared to go out.  There was something solemn and resolute in her bearing.  Valentine perceived it with astonishment and dread.  He asked anxiously if she were going anywhere.  She nodded her head.  “But I must not let you,” he said.  “The old gentleman made me solemnly vow.”

“I must,” she replied.  “I must go to the court.  I must say that I am guilty.  I must suffer my punishment.  Their grandfather will take care of my children.  I would like to tell them to lay him by little Anne’s side, he loved her so.  I should like to lie there too, but they won’t allow that.  No, I won’t say anything to them about that.”

“Won’t you stay until the old gentleman comes back?  Then I shall be free of my responsibility.”  He hoped that Herr Nettenmair would find some way to dissuade her from her purpose.

The young wife nodded assent.  “I will wait that long,” she said.

Anxiety and hope drove Valentine out of the house to see if Herr Nettenmair were anywhere in sight.  Christine took her hymn-book from the desk and sat down at the table.