girl like herself than the alleviation of her unhappy neighbour's
suffering? The harder the duties imposed upon her in the service of
love, the better. She would set to work in the hope of making herself
the true, resolute woman which her mother, with the eyes of the soul, had
seen her fragile child become; but she could imagine nothing more
difficult than the tasks to be fulfilled here. This was the real fierce
heat of the forge fire to which the dead woman had wished to entrust her
purification and transformation. She would not shun, but hasten to it.
While her lover was wielding the sword she, too, had a battle to fight.
She had heard from Biberli that Heinz wished to undergo the most severe
trials. This was noble, and her enthusiastic nature, aspiring to the
loftiest goal, was filled with the same desire. Eager to learn how they
would bear the test, she scanned her young shoulders and gazed at the
burden which she intended to lay upon them.

When, the year before, her aunt took her to the hospital for the first
time, she had returned home completely unnerved. She had not even had
the slightest suspicion that there was such suffering on earth, such pain
amongst those near her, such depravity amongst those of her own sex.
What comparison was there between what Els had done for her gentle,
patient mother, or what she would do for old Herr Casper, who lay in a
soft bed--it had been shown to her as something of rare beauty, of ebony
and ivory--and the task of nursing these infamous gallows-birds bleeding
from severe wounds, and these depraved sick women? But if God's own Son
gave up His life amidst the most cruel suffering for sinful humanity, how
dared she, the weak, erring, slandered girl, who had no goodness save her
passionate desire to do what was right, shrink from helping the most
pitiable of her neighbours? Here in the hospital at Schweinau lay the
heavy burden which she wished to take upon herself.