to his father in his room, when, seeing Christiane fall fainting to the ground, he hastened toward her.  Now he held her in his arms.  Slowly her deep blue eyes opened.  She looked at him and recognized him.  She did not know how she had come into his arms, she did not know that she lay there, she knew only that he lived.  She wept and laughed at the same time, and put both arms around him to be sure that he was there.  She asked in yearning, anxious eagerness:  “Is it you?  Are you really here?  Are you still alive?  You didn’t fall?  I didn’t kill you?  You are you, and I am I?  But he—­he may come.”  She gazed about wildly.  “He will kill you.  He will not rest till he has killed you.”  She clasped him to her as if she wanted to cover him with her body from the enemy, then she forgot all fears in the certainty that he still lived, and she laughed and wept and asked him again if it were really he, and if he were alive.  But she must warn him.  She must tell him everything that the other had done—­and what he had threatened to do to him.  She must do it quickly; any minute he might come.  Warning, sweet unconscious love-words, weeping, laughter, blessed gladness, fear, anguish over lost happiness, bride-like embarrassment, forgetfulness of the world in the one moment which was life to her—­all this trembled through each quivering word she uttered.  “He lied to you and to me.  He told me that you jeered at me and that you had offered my flower to the highest bidder.  You know, at the Whitsun feast, the little blue-bell that I laid there.  And you sent it to him.  I saw it.  I did not know why I was sorry for you.  Then he told me during the dance that you had laughed at me.  You went away, and he told me you made fun of me in your letters.  That hurt me.  You don’t know how it hurt, even though I did not know why.  Father wanted me to marry him.  And when you came I was afraid of you, but I was still sorry for you and I loved you though I did not know it.  It was he who first told me so.  Then I avoided you—­I didn’t want to become a bad woman—­and I still don’t want to.  Then he compelled me to lie.  And he made threats of what he would do to you.  He would see to it that you fell and were killed.  It was only a joke, he said, but if I told you, then he would do it in earnest.  Since then I have not slept a night, I have sat up in my bed and been full of deadly fear.  I saw you in danger and could not tell you and could not help you.  And he made slits in the rope with the ax the night before you went to Brambach.  Valentine told me that our neighbor had seen him creeping into the shed.  I thought you were dead, and I wanted to die too.  For I was the cause of your death, when I would die a thousand times to save you.  And now you are alive and I cannot grasp it.  Everything is just as it was, the trees, the shed, the sky, and you are not dead.  And I wanted to die because you were dead.  And now you are alive, and I don’t know whether it is true or whether I am dreaming.  Is it true?  Tell me, is it true?  I will believe anything you say.  And if you tell me that I must die, I will die.  But he may be coming!  Perhaps he has been listening!  Tell Valentine to go to the court and have him taken away, so that he can do you no more harm.”