"Ah, God grant that they may!" the Princess said, wearily sinking again before the cross.
While Wolfram stood gazing sadly at her dear face, she suddenly turned her head, and a look of rapt attention came into her eyes.
"Listen!" she exclaimed softly while she sprang again to her feet. "Listen! do you not hear it? It is their song!"
It was indeed the far-off chant of the pilgrims which her quick ear had caught. They were returning at last!
Soon the little company came in sight, and then filed slowly by, rejoicing that their penance had been accepted and their sins forgiven. But to the eager eyes of the two onlookers one figure did not appear. Tannhäuser was not among them.
"He will never return!" said Elizabeth quietly; and giving one last despairing glance down the valley she fell upon her knees and made a last pitiful little prayer. It was that death might soon come to ease her aching heart. Until then she vowed devoted service to the church, and she asked in return that Tannhäuser might still be forgiven.
The prayer ended, Elizabeth rose and slowly walked away toward the castle. Wolfram looked after her, as long as she was in sight, with a strange foreboding clutching at his heart-strings,—it was that he would never see her again alive.
The sun had long since sunk, and the twilight was deepening, but Wolfram still lingered by the little cross made sacred by her presence. As he tarried, the evening star rose above the rim of hills and began to glow with peaceful brilliancy. It seemed to Wolfram as though the soul of Elizabeth were there, shining in that far-off sky. He began to sing a beautiful measure filled with this thought and beginning,
"O thou sublime, sweet evening star!"
Scarcely were the last notes silent when a pilgrim drew near. He was tattered, footsore and dejected, yet at the first glance Wolfram knew him.