"What I have told you: that I did not know him, that if he were living I should not love and reverence him as my father, but hate and despise him as the wretch who ruined my mother!" She had half raised herself, and had spoken with a strength and energy that Berger had not believed possible. Now she sank back on her couch.
He sighed deeply. "And you adhered to that," he began again, "whatever Father Rohn might say? He told you that on the threshold of--that in your situation one should not hate, but forgive, that whoever hopes for God's mercy must not himself condemn unmercifully!"
"Yes," she replied, "he said so, if perhaps in gentler words. For he seemed to feel that I did not require to depend on God's mercy, but only on His justice."
"Forgive me!" muttered Berger. "For I know your fate and know you. But just because I know your affectionate nature and your need of affection----" He stopped. "Gently," he thought, "I must be cautious." "Don't consider me unfeeling," he then continued, "if I dwell upon this matter, however painful it may be to you. Just this one thing: does it follow that this man must be a wretch? Were there not perhaps fatal circumstances that bound him against his will and prevented him doing his duty to your poor mother?"
"No," she answered. "I know there were not!"
"You know there were not?" murmured Berger in the greatest consternation. "But do you know him?"
"Yes. I know his heart, his character, and that is enough. What does it matter to me what his name is, or his station? Whether he is living or dead? To me he has never lived! I know him from my mother's judgment, and that she, the gentlest of women, could not judge otherwise, proves his unworthiness. Only one single time did she speak to me of him, when I was old enough to ask and to be told why people sometimes spoke of us with a shrug of the shoulders. 'If he had been thoughtless and weak,' she said to me, 'I could have forgiven him. But I have never known a man who viewed life more earnestly and intelligently: none who was so strong and brave and resolute as he. It was only from boundless selfishness, after mature, cold-blooded calculation that he delivered me to dishonor, because I was an obstacle in his career.' You see he was more pitiless than the man whom I trusted."
"No," cried Berger in the greatest excitement. "You do him injustice!"
"Injustice! How do you know that? Do you know him?"
He turned away and was silent. "No," he then murmured, "how should I know him?"