“Do so,” replied he.  “I am yours to command.”  She looked him straight in the face.

“First of all,” she began, “have you told any one else that I was. . .”

“That you were listening?  No—­not a living soul.”

“And will you promise never to betray me?”

“Willingly.  Now, what is the ‘secondly’ to this ‘first of all?’”

But there was no immediate answer; the water-wagtail evidently found it difficult.  However, she presently said, with downcast eyes: 

“I want. . . .  You will think me a greater fool than I am . . . nevertheless, yes, I will ask you, though it will involve me in fresh humiliation.—­I want to know the truth; and if there is anything you hold sacred, before I ask, you must swear by what is holiest to answer me, not as if I were a silly girl, but as if I were the Supreme judge at the last day.—­Do you hear?”

“This is very solemn,” said Orion.  “And you must allow me to observe that there are some questions which do not concern us alone, and if yours is such. . . .”

“No, no,” replied Katharina, “what I mean concerns you and me alone.”

“Then I see no reason for refusing,” he said.  “Still, I may ask you a favor in return.  It seems to me no less important than it did to you, to know what a great man like the patriarch finds to talk about, and since I place myself at your commands. . . .”

“I thought,” said the girl with a smile, “that your first object would be to discharge some small portion of your debt to me; however, I expect no excessive magnanimity, and the little I heard is soon told.  It cannot matter much to you either—­so I will agree to your wishes, and you, in return, must promise. . . .”

“To speak the whole truth.”

“As truly as you hope for forgiveness of your sins?”

“As truly as that.”

“That is well.”

“And what is it that you want to know?”

At this she shook her head, exclaiming uneasily: 

“Nay, nay, not yet.  It cannot be done so lightly.  First let me speak; and then open the door, and if I want to fly let me go without saying or asking me another word.—­Give me that chair; I must sit down.”  And in fact she seemed to need it; for some minutes she had looked very pale and exhausted, and her hands trembled as she drew her handkerchief across her face.

When she was seated she began her story; and while her words flowed on quickly but without expression, as though she spoke mechanically, Orion listened with eager interest, for what she had to tell struck him as highly significant and important.