perceived that her severe illness had cost her her magnificent golden
hair. Still wavy, it now fell only to her neck, and gave her the
appearance of a wonderfully handsome boy.

The hand she extended to him was transparently thin, and when he clasped
it in his, which was only a little larger, and did not seem much
stronger, and she had hoarsely whispered a friendly greeting, his eyes
filled with tears. For a time both were silent. Barbara was the first
to find words and, raising her large eyes beseechingly to his, said:
"If you come to reproach me--But no! You look pale, as though you had
only partially recovered yourself, yet kind and friendly. Perhaps you do
not know that it was through my fault that all these terrible things have
befallen you."

Here a significant smile told her that he was much better informed than
she supposed, and, lowering her eyes in timid embarrassment, she asked,

"Then you know who it was for whom this foolish heart----"

Here her breath failed, and while she pressed her hand upon her bosom,
Wolf said softly: "If you had only trusted me before! Many things would
not have happened, and much suffering might have been spared. You did
wrong, Wawerl, certainly, but my guilt is the greater, and we were both
punished--oh, how sorely!"

Barbara, amid low sobbing, nodded assent, but he eagerly continued:
"Quijada confided everything to me, and if he--you know--now forgets all
other matters in the war and the anxieties of the general, and, you need
my counsel and aid, we will let what came between us he buried, and think
that we are brother and sister."