"Did you really think so?" asked Helen, raising herself and looking at Sophie fixedly with her large sorrowful eyes.
Sophie cast down her own before this look. She did not wish to say No; and she was too honest to say Yes. But she never hesitated long. Now or never was the moment to tell Helen all she had had on her heart for so long a time.
"Helen!" she said, looking up frankly and calmly with her deep blue eyes; "I cannot feign and will not feign for any one, and least of all for you whom I love dearly. Come, sweetheart, sit down by me on the sofa here, and let us talk like two sisters; and let us be sisters, if never again, at least for this hour. If you did not wish me to speak candidly to you, I think you would have hardly come to me, when you have so many brighter and greater friends. Am I right?"
"Go on!" said Helen, as if it were comfort and consolation merely to hear the voice of her friend.
"You ask me," continued Sophie, gathering courage as she spoke, "whether I really thought you were happy. I do not. You do not look like a happy woman. Your beautiful, pale face says No, even if your tongue should say Yes. I have often read in your face--I have read there long, long stories of which your lips did not say a word, and I will tell you what I read. Shall I do it?"
"Go on!" said Helen.
"I read on your brow that your mind is not satisfied with anything except what is great and extraordinary, and even not always with that; and I have read in your wondrously-beautiful eyes that your heart longs for love as much as human heart can wish for it. Thus, there has always been a struggle between your mind and your heart. You wish to rule and to love at the same time, and that cannot be done. Helen! love, true love--and there is no other love--must be humble; it bears all thing's and believes all things; it wants only to be one with the person loved, one in joy and one in sorrow Look, sweetheart! such love has fallen to my share, and therefore I know what I say. Franz and I have but one will: he wants to do what is right, and so do I; and even if our views ever should be apart, our hearts are always united. All joys are doubly great, and all sorrows are diminished by half. I felt that when my dear papa died. What would have become of me if Franz had not been there?"
"I had no one when my father died!" Helen said, sadly.
"I know it, darling; and often, when I thought how lonely you were, and how you did not have a soul to whom you could pour out your grief, I have thrown myself on Franz's bosom, who many a time could not imagine what brought me to him so suddenly and so passionately. You stand alone, even now when you are on the point of being married; and what is a thousand times worse, you are quite sure in your heart that it will always be so--that your husband will never be your friend, your brother, your beloved, before whom your soul lies open and clear, like a crystal-clear mountain lake, into which the sun looks brightly down to the very bottom."
"Never! never!" whispered Helen.