"Yes, I know that and—
"The world has praised me much since that time, but it is an empty thing. I am a lonesome man, sitting alone with honour. 'Loben ist nicht lieben?' Is it not so?"
The tears are in Helen's eyes. This man will win her yet. Bauer mutters again.
"Was vonHerzen kommt, geht zu Herzen," and then forgetting that Helen understands he says as if talking to himself, "'What comes from the heart goes to the heart.' May I come to-morrow or soon and—tell you what is in my heart?"
Helen smiles as she notes the old sign of distrust in himself that used to mark the old young Bauer she used to know. But she says with a new note of life in her own voice: "Yes, come to-morrow."
"There will be much for my heart to tell thine," he says dropping inevitably into the endearing pronoun.
And as he rises and goes away Helen follows his stalwart figure out of the doorway and then goes and sits down by the fire again.
Her mother finds her there.
"Mr. Bauer, Felix, is coming here to-morrow, mother. I know what he is coming to say."
Esther pauses. Helen answers her unspoken question.