Life in the house with the green shutters grew more and more sultry.  The new clouds which had gathered invisibly about it threatened a storm severer than that in which the old ones had been dispelled.  The young widow had no choice but to play the part of the affianced; she was rallied about her wedding garment, and, adjusting herself to the situation, she began preparations.  Tears fell upon her work, and joy had an ever smaller and smaller part in it.  She saw the condition of the man she loved become hourly worse; and she could not fail to know that the approaching marriage was to blame.  The paler and more fragile he became, the gentler and more full of respect was his conduct toward her.  There was something in it that seemed like pitying pain and an unexpressed prayer for forgiveness of a wrong, an insult of which he felt himself guilty toward her.

Apollonius was compelled to come to a decision.  He could not.  The yawning discord in his soul became ever greater.  If he resolved to renounce happiness, the phantom of guilt disappeared and happiness stretched out alluring arms toward him.  She loved him and had always loved him, only him; all the world approved, in fact demanded it of him.  He saw her before she had been stolen from him, how she had laid the little blue-bell down for him, all rosy beneath the brown curling locks which struggled to be free; then, pale under the ill-treatment of the brother who had stolen her from him, pale for him; then trembling before his brother’s threats, trembling for him; then laughing, weeping, full of anguish and full of happiness in his arms.  His brother’s fall had made this woman free.  He had known that when he let his brother fall.  If he should wed his brother’s wife, who had become free through the fall, he would make himself guilty of this fall.  If he received the reward of the deed, the deed was also his.  If he took her, the feeling would never leave him; he would be unhappy and would make her unhappy with him.  For her sake and for his he must refrain.  When he came to this decision, he realized how unsubstantial his conclusions were, viewed with the clear eye of the spirit; and yet, if he tried to reach out for happiness, the dark feeling of guilt hovered over him like an icy frost about a flower, and his soul could do nothing against its annihilating power.  And the bells of St. George’s continued to ring their warning.  What made Apollonius’ agitation even more feverish was the knowledge that the flaw in his work had not been corrected.  It rained incessantly, the gap yawned wide, the boarding greedily drank in the water, the wood was bound to rot.  If the winter cold increased, the water would freeze in the wood and injure the slate.  The town, which trusted to his sense of duty, would suffer harm through him.  Each night the stroke of two awakened him from sleep.  Shadows mingled with his fever-dreams.  The reproaches of his inward and outward yearning for purity blended.  The open