"I am convinced that you can save her," he cried; "that a word from you would pierce to her troubled mind through all the horrors of a fevered fancy, and that she would awake to a new life."
"And what would that word be?" asked Uncle Ernst.
"If your heart does not tell you, you would not understand it if I spoke it."
"My heart only tells me that it would be a lie," replied Uncle Ernst; "and as I understand life, no lie will restore it. What life would it be to which she would awake! Life at the side of a man whose courage holds out just so long as the darkness in which he has followed his course of intrigue; who only steps forth from that darkness when a villain tears off his mask, and he cannot endure his father's eye upon his miserable face; who would do what he must to-day, driven on by the reproaches of his conscience and fear of the world's opinion, only to repent it tomorrow from the same fear, and to hint it to her at first in a thousand different ways, and say it at last to her face. Is that a lot for a father to prepare for his child? No, never! Better a thousand times death, if she must needs die. Every man has his own way of looking at life, and this is mine; and no general officer, with I know not what confused ideas of honour and love, and no relation, however dear he may be to me, who in his good-nature would like to accommodate what never can be put straight, will ever teach me another. And if God Himself came and said to me, 'You are wrong,' I should answer, 'I do right in my own eyes,' and no God can demand more of man."
"But you ought not to have urged Ferdinanda to a decision which cannot possibly have come from her heart."
"Are not you attempting something of the same kind at this moment?"
"I have no authority over you, and your mind is not torn by conflicting feelings as Ferdinanda's must have been in that unhappy hour."
"So much the better, that one of us at least should know what he wishes and wills." That had been Uncle Ernst's last word, and he had said it with a calmness that to Reinhold was more terrible than the wildest outburst of passion would have been. And yet not so terrible as the smile with which the stubborn old man a few days later received the news that Ferdinanda was, in the doctor's opinion, out of danger. Reinhold could not forget that smile; it haunted him even in his dreams. He had never seen the like on any human face; he could not even describe it to Justus, to whom he had repeatedly mentioned it, till one day he stopped with a sudden exclamation at a face that stared at him from the wall in a remote corner of the studio.
"Good heavens, Anders, what is this!"
"The mask of the Rhondonini Medusa," said Justus, looking up from his work.