"Indeed? Then you expect still to be believed? Yes, fine, noble, good, magnanimous man, I possess a great deal, but not what you ask,—faith in you. I had this faith once, it was my last illusion. I don't swear it; but I know that it's my last illusion."
"I entreat Roland's father and Manna's father"—Eric's voice trembled,—"I entreat him, as a child, to be just towards me. You will yet learn that I spoke the truth at that time, and speak it now."
"Truth? Whew, truth! Leave me, I wish to be alone: I must be alone."
Eric and Manna left the room, holding each other by the hand. They waited outside for a long time. Joseph, who had been summoned, now entered Sonnenkamp's room. When he came out, he told Manna that Herr Sonnenkamp had sent to the city for a notary.
Eric and Manna went into the garden. And this is the power of love: in the midst of the most direful pain and suffering, they were inwardly cheerful as if all misery had been removed far away from them.
"You must take it from me," said Manna, after they had walked together for a long time in silence. "I don't know what it signifies; but it will not leave me. At that time, when the Prince visited us, his kind message to you affected me as if he had bestowed a benefit upon myself Do you remember? I delivered the message to you. At that time he said you were to remember that you had been the companion of his boyhood, and that he would like to prove to you that he was not forgetful of the fact. Now, don't you believe that you could do something for us? I don't know what; but I think—well, I don't know what I do think."
"It's the same with me," replied Eric. "I remember it as if it were the present moment; but I have no idea how to begin to avail myself of this gracious favor. O Manna! that was the first time it broke upon me how you felt towards me."
And the lovers lost all idea of their anxieties in recalling the past, how they wanted to avoid each other, and could not. All present sorrow vanished away.
On Manna's face there was a light as of an inextinguishable gleam of sunshine: her large dark-eyes glowed, for a free and strong soul shone through them.
"What are you smiling at now?" she suddenly asked Eric.