unmoved. Then she resumed her defence.

"There can be no doubt that he is mad! I shouldn't be surprised if he
tried to poison me.... I suffer unbearable pains in my inside.... But
no, it's hardly probable ... perhaps I ought to fly to Finland.... What
do you think?... Only it would kill him, for he loves the children...."

What was this, if not the outpourings of an evil conscience?... Stung
with remorse, she was terror-stricken and sought refuge on the bosom
of a woman! She was a perverted child; an unfaithful wife, a criminal;
but, above all, she was an unhappy woman.

I lay awake all night, a prey to my tormenting thoughts. At two o'clock
in the morning I heard her moaning in her sleep. Full of pity, I
knocked on the floor to dispel the visions which terrified her. It was
not the first time that I had done this.

She thanked me on the following morning for having awakened her from
her nightmare. I made much of her, and begged her to tell me, her best
friend, everything.

"Tell you what?... I have nothing to tell."

I should have given her absolution for whatever crime she had confessed
to me at that moment, for my heart was full of compassion. I loved
her with an infinite love, despite of, or perhaps because of, all the
misery she had wrought. She was but an unhappy woman. How could I raise
my hand against her?

But instead of delivering me once and for all from the terrible doubts
which haunted me, she offered me the most strenuous resistance. She had
persuaded herself that I was insane; her instinct of self-preservation
had built up a legend behind which she could shield herself from the
attacks of her anguished conscience.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Sunwards_.

Not a single ray of sunlight had gladdened the little village of Gersau
on the shore of the Lake of Lucerne for three long weeks, not, in fact,
since the beginning of October, when the Foehn began to blow. There had
been a dead calm; after sunset I had fallen asleep and slept until I
was awakened, in the middle of the night, by the r