By degrees the fever vanished; consciousness returned, his pain lessened, he could move himself again, and began to feel stronger.  At first he did not know where he was; then he recognized Ruth, and then his father.

How still, how dusky, how clean everything that surrounded him was!  Delightful repose stole over him, pleasant weariness soothed every stormy emotion of his heart.  Whenever he opened his eyes, tender, anxious glances met him.  Even when the pain returned he enjoyed peaceful, consoling mental happiness.  Ruth felt this also, and regarded it as a peerless reward.

When she entered the sick-room with fresh linen, and the odor of lavender her dead mother had liked floated softly to him from the clean sheets, he thought his boyhood had returned, and with it the wise, friendly doctor’s house.  Elizabeth, the shady pine-woods of his home, its murmuring brooks and luxuriant meadows, again rose before his mind; he saw Ruth and himself listening to the birds, picking berries, gathering flowers, and beseeching beautiful gifts from the “word.”  His father appeared even more kind, affectionate, and careful than in those days.  The man became the boy again, and all his former good traits of character now sprang up freshly under the bright light and vivifying dew of love.

He received Ruth’s unwearied attentions with ardent gratitude, and when he gazed into her faithful eyes, when her hand touched him, her soft, deep voice penetrated the depths of his soul, an unexampled sense of happiness filled his breast.

Everything, from the least to the greatest, embraced his soul with the arms of love.  It seemed as if the ardent yearning of his heart extended far beyond the earth, and rose to God, who fills the universe with His infinite paternal love.  His every breath, Ulrich thought, must henceforth be a prayer, a prayer of gratitude to Him, who is love itself, the Love, through and in which he lived.

He had sought love, to enjoy its gifts; now he was glad to make sacrifices for its sake.  He saw how Ruth’s beautiful face saddened when he was suffering, and with manly strength of will concealed inexpressible agony under a grateful smile.  He feigned sleep, to permit her and his father to rest, and when tortured by feverish restlessness, lay still to give his beloved nurses pleasure and repay their solicitude.  Love urged him to goodness, gave him strength for all that is good.  His convalescence advanced and, when he was permitted to leave his bed, his father was the first one to support him through the room and down the steps into the court-yard.  He often felt with quiet emotion the old man stroke the hand that rested on his arm, and when, exhausted, he returned to the sick-room, he sank with a grateful heart into his comfortable seat, casting a look of pleasure at the flowers, which Ruth had taken from her chamber window and placed on the table beside him.

His family now knew what he had endured and experienced, and the smith found a kind, soothing word for all that, a few months before, he had considered criminal and unpardonable.