[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
entire meal of them. D.W.]





BARBARA BLOMBERG

By Georg Ebers

Volume 10.


CHAPTER XVI.

On the way home Barbara often pressed her left hand with her right to
assure herself that she was not dreaming.

This time she found her husband in the house. At the first glance
Pyramus saw that something unusual had happened; but she gave him no time
to question her, only glanced around to see if they were alone, and then
cried, as if frantic: "I will bear it no longer. You must know it too.
But it is a great secret." Then she made him swear that he, too, would
keep it strictly, and in great anxiety he obeyed.

He, like Barbara's father, had supposed that the Emperor's son had
entered the world only to leave it again. Barbara's "I no longer have a
child; it was taken from me," he had interpreted in the same way as the