"If she cares!" he said bitterly.
His wife's hand tightened on his.
"I think she cares," she said with an almost awe-struck earnestness. "I am nearly sure. It is not alone that she is coming—it is something else. Kurt, haven't you ever had a letter—just an ordinary letter—from some one dear to you, and haven't you had the feeling that it contained a message of which the writer had written nothing—as though the words had absorbed the look of his eyes, the touch of his hand, and were trying to transmit to you all that which he had tried to hide behind them? That was how I felt when Nora's telegram came. It was just an ordinary, ugly telegram, and yet I knew that she cared—that she was sorry."
"Pray God he may live to see her!" he answered.
"Pray God that he may live to be happy with her!" she added reverently.
He shook his head.
"I don't pray that," he said. "I can't ask impossibilities of God. And how should Nora make Wolff happy now? She failed before, when her task was easy. What should give her the strength to succeed in the face of the distrust and hatred which she called to life by her own folly?"
"I shall help her," Elsa von Seleneck returned proudly. "I shall stand by her for Wolff's sake and because we were once friends. After all, she has atoned—she is coming back. That must be the hardest thing of all."
"She will need more than your help," was the grave answer.
"Then God will give it her!"