Thus the feverish woman went on raving, laughing and weeping in his arms.  Forgetting everything, like a child playing on the edge of an abyss of which it knows nothing, she unconsciously called into life a danger more deadly than the one which had just been averted, more threatening than the one from which she wanted to guard the man with her body.  She did not realize what her passionate movements, the sweetness of her reckless abandon, her caresses, her warm, throbbing embraces must arouse in the man who loved her; that she was doing everything that could make the man whose uprightness and honor she trusted so blindly, forget uprightness and honor in the tumult of his blood.  She had no idea what a conflict she was kindling in him, and how hard, if not impossible she was making the victory.  Now he knew that the woman in his arms was his, that his brother had defrauded him of her and her of him.  Now he knew it, while the woman in his arms revealed to him the greatness of the happiness of which his brother had robbed him.  The brother had stolen her and had ill-treated her; and for all that he had suffered and done for his brother’s sake, he now persecuted him and sought his life.  Did the woman belong to him who had stolen and ill-treated her, to him whom she hated—­or to him from whom she had been infamously stolen, who loved her and whom she loved?  These were not clearly defined thoughts, but countless detached sensations which, borne along in a stream of deep, wild feeling, rushed through his veins and made taut the muscles in his arms—­to clasp to his heart that which was his!  But a vague, dark fear rose counter to this current and stiffened his muscles in a convulsive cramp—­the feeling that he wanted to do something and did not know what it was or where it might lead him, a far-off recollection that he had made a vow and would break it if he now let himself be carried away.  He struggled for a long time beneath the flow of intoxicating sounds before he realized that he was struggling and that the thing for which he struggled was clearness, the fundamental requirement of his nature.  At last this clearness came to him and said:  “The vow that you have made is to uphold the honor of your house, and what you want to do now will destroy it forever.”  He was the man, and must answer for himself and for her.  The treachery of which he with a touch, with a glance, might be guilty toward this woman whose trust in him was so unbounded, stood before him in all its blackness.  There still stood, protectingly, a holy reserve between him and her, which a single touch, a single glance might dispel forever.  He looked anxiously about for a helper.  If only Valentine would come!  Then he would have to let her go from his arms.  Valentine did not come.  But shame at his weakness that sought help from without, became his helper.  He gently laid the defenseless woman down.  Not until he felt the soft limbs slip from his grasp did he lose her.  He had to turn