a thing unlikely. She insisted on binding up my arm, which still bled. I let her do it; but as I watched her preparing the bandages with such sorrowful anxiety, I felt a great discouragement come over me. 'I have done worse for him than that,' I said, gloomily. 'They tell me he can scarcely live.'
"Anna looked at me with scared eyes.
"'Who is he?' she asked. 'You must tell me, Vincenz.'
"'It is Conrad Perlenberg,' I said.
"I shall never forget the look which Anna gave me, and the cry which she uttered; it was the death-knell of her youth. The bandage she was holding dropped out of her hands, and she fell fainting on to the chair beside her. It was long before she came to her senses, and then I learned the whole truth. She had loved Conrad Perlenberg, whose acquaintance she had made in my absence, and only a few days ago they had become secretly engaged. It was the first secret she had ever kept from me; and, by heavens, the innocent mystery cost her dear! God knows what she can have seen in that pink-and-white face which made her love him! But I have found since then that those are the sort of men who know how to catch a woman's fancy." How bitter sounded the sigh which went along with these words!
"There followed a fearful week," said Vincenz, continuing his story. "From the very day of the catastrophe, Anna fell into a dreadful illness. I was half distracted; every moment that I could spare from my sister I stole away and stood in the unfrequented street, where straw had been laid down before one gloomy house, watching the window of the room where Conrad lingered between life and death. It was winter, but I passed half the night at my post, wrapped in my cloak, and with my eyes on the light of that sick-room. On the eighth day I came there early, and, looking up as usual, I saw that both windows were flung wide open. It was a bitterly cold January day, and those open windows could mean but one thing."
His voice shook for a moment, and he broke off abruptly. They had come to a rough part of the pathway, and as Vincenz put out his hand as a support, Gretchen fancied it was not as steady as usual. She stole a glance up into his face, and saw the painful emotion which had been called up by that recollection.
"You should not have told me this," she whispered; "it pains you."
He looked down at her quickly, and then dropped her hand.
"It does pain me; but what matters the pain? I should like you to know it all. People have sometimes been kind enough to call me a quiet, sensible man: there is no great merit in being sensible after that one experience I have had. From that fatal day in the office, Anna's life and mine were violently transformed. I sent in my resignation myself, but I had one more short interview with Conrad's father. For the sake of his old friend's memory, Count Perlenberg declined to prosecute me, for the fatal termination of the duel brought me within reach of the law. 'But it could not give back my Conrad,' he said to me, sorrowfully. I might go where I liked, only I was never to come under his eyes again. So we went, Anna and I, like a pair of outcasts: we left Vienna, and quietly vanished out of the circles of the capital. Anna remained an invalid from
