Els, on the contrary, who had learned to read the sufferer's features and
understood her even without words when speech was difficult, had watched
every change in the expression of her features with the utmost attention.
Without reflecting or interpreting, she was sure that the movements of
her dying mother's lips had predicted to Eva that the "forge fire of
life" would exert its purifying and moulding influence on her also, and
wished that in the world, not in the convent, she might be as happy as
she herself had been rendered by her father's love.

After these farewell words Frau Maria's features became painfully
distorted, the lids drooped over her eyes, there was a brief struggle,
then a slight gesture from the physician announced to the weeping group
that her earthly pilgrimage was over.

No one spoke. All knelt silently, with clasped hands, beside the couch,
until Eva, as if roused from a dream, shrieked, "She will never come back
again!" and with passionate grief threw herself upon the lifeless form to
kiss the still face and beseech her to open her dear eyes once more and
not leave her.

How often she had remained away from the invalid in order to let her aunt
point out the path for her own higher happiness whilst Els nursed her
mother; but now that she had left her, she suddenly felt what she had
possessed and lost in her love. It seemed as if hitherto she had walked
beneath the shadow of leafy boughs, and her mother's death had stripped
them all away as an autumn tempest cruelly tears off the foliage.
Henceforth she must walk in the scorching sun without protection or
shelter. Meanwhile she beheld in imagination fierce flames blazing
brightly from the dark soot--the forge fire of life, to which the dead
woman's last words had referred. She knew what her mother had wished to