that in which she had been permitted to prove her might. The fire of the
forge, by whose means pieces of worthless iron were transformed into
swords and ploughshares, should use its influence upon her also. Let it
burn and torture her, if it only made her a genuine, noble woman, a woman
like her Aunt Christine, from whom her mother had heard the phrase of
"the forge fire of life," who aided and pointed out the right path to
hundreds, and probably, at her age, had needed neither an Els nor an
Abbess Kunigunde to keep her, body and soul, in the right way. She loved
both; but some impulse within rebelled vehemently against being treated
like a child, and--now that her mother was dead--subjecting her own will
to that of any other person than the man to whom she would have gladly
looked up as a master.

Whilst Heinz knelt in front of the chapel without noticing Sister
Perpetua, who was praying before the altar within, these thoughts darted
through Eva's brain like a flash of lightning. Now he rose and went to
his horse, but ere he mounted it the dog, barking furiously, again broke
from the thicket close at her side.

Heinz must have seen her white mourning robes, for her own name reached
her ears in a sudden cry, and soon after--she herself could not have told
how--Heinz was standing beside the basket amidst the flowers, with her
hand clasped in his, gazing into her eyes so earnestly and sadly that he
seemed a different person from the reckless dancer in the Town Hall,
though the look was equally warm and tender. Whilst doing so, he spoke
of the deep wound inflicted upon her by her mother's death. Fate had
dealt him a severe blow also, but grief taught him to turn whither she,
too, had directed him.

Just at that moment the blast of the horn summoning the Emperor's train