"And from the waves, which gave her her death, you rescued for me and yourself the highest, our child and our love," said his wife softly. "See, there comes our Reinhold. Will you show the child this heavily clouded brow?"
Little Reinhold put his head in at the door, and when he saw his parents in the room sprang completely inside, so rosy and fresh, so full of life and fun, that the father's gloom and the mother's seriousness could not resist his coaxing and romping. Ella kissed her boy's forehead tenderly, while Reinhold drew her and the child to himself. They had held him very indissolubly, these fetters, which once, in youthful infatuation, he had burst and broken, until he learnt to feel yonder in the life so ardently longed for, amidst all the dreamed-of treasures, that he had left the best at home; until the longing for the past awoke, and forced its way powerfully and irresistibly; until he could obtain once more, fighting through sin and the horrors of death, that which he himself had thrust from him--his wife and child; and in the gaze with which he now looked down upon both there stood written plainly and clearly the confession which his lips did not speak--that the happiness, so long and restlessly sought for, and ever denied him, was found again here at last.