She arose and gazed anxiously into her husband's face. "Bow your human pride before a power that you do not understand."
The scholar looked at his wife with deep solicitude. "I do bow humbly before the thought that the great unity of human beings on this earth is not the highest power of life. The only difference between you and me is, that my mind is accustomed to hold intercourse With the higher powers of earth. They are to me revelations so holy and worthy of reverence, that I best love to seek the Eternal and Incomprehensible by this path. You are accustomed to find the inscrutable in the conceptions which have been impressed on your mind through pious traditions; and I again repeat what I before said, your faith and yearnings arise from the same source as mine, and we seek the same light, though in different ways. What the Gods, and also the Angels and Archangels were to the faith of earlier generations--higher powers which, as messengers of the Highest, hovered about and influenced the lives of men--the great intellectual unity of nations and mankind are in another sense to us, personalities which endure and yet pass away, though according to different laws from what individual men do. My endeavour to understand these laws is one form of my piety. You yourself will gradually learn to appreciate the modest and elevating conceptions of the holy sphere in which I live. You also will gradually discover that your faith and mine are about the same."
"No," cried Ilse, "I see only one thing, a great gulf which divides my thoughts from yours. Oh, deliver me from the anguish which tortures me in my concern for your soul."
"I cannot do it, nor can it be done in a day. It can only be done by our own lives, by thousands of impressions and by thousands of days, in which you will become accustomed to look upon the world as I do."
He drew his wife, who was standing as if transfixed, nearer to him. "Think of the text: 'In my father's house are many mansions.' He who so spoke knew that man and wife are one through the strongest of earthly feelings, which bears all and suffers all."
"But what can I be to you to whom the individual is so little?" asked Ilse, faintly.
"The highest and dearest being on earth, the flower of my nation, a child of my race in whom I love and honour what was before and will survive us."
Ilse stood alone among the strange books; without, the wind howled round the walls, the clouds flitted across the face of the moon; soon the room became dark, and then was lighted up by a pale glimmer. In the flickering light the walls seemed to spread and rise to an immeasurable height; strange figures rose from among the books, they glided by the walls, and were suspended from the ceiling, an army of grey shadows, which by day were banished to the bookshelves, now came trooping towards her, and the dead who continued to live as spirits on earth stretched out their arms to her and demanded her soul for themselves.
Ilse, with head erect, raised her hands on high, and called to her aid the beautiful images, which from her childhood had surrounded her life with blessing, white figures with shining countenances. She bent her head and prayed: "O guard the peace of my soul."
When Ilse entered her room she found a letter from her father on her table; she opened it hastily, and, after reading the first lines, sank down sobbing.