"I knew for a fact that the door of the church is never locked. Your father has given orders that it shall always remain open. Every corner of this church has its sad history, but none more sad than the history of the door."
"You know it?"
"I heard it from the tormentor of my soul. It will be better for you not to know it; you have enough in your misfortune."
"I beg of you, tell me this story. The knowledge that another has suffered still more gives me consolation. Who was it?"
"Your older sister, Sophie."
"I remember her; she was tall and beautiful, with large dark eyes. How often I stroked her beautiful rosy cheeks, when she took me in her lap, for I was still a child. And then I remember when they laid her in her coffin, I stroked her cheeks again, but they were marble-white and cold."
"There she rests," said the young man, pointing to the wall, where two marble tablets were in sight, one large, one small; on one was a large cross, on the other a small one; then the date. On the smaller tablet one year more than on the larger, and that was all the inscription.
"Why is there neither name nor inscription?" asked Magdalene, stunned.
"There are two of them, mother and child."
"And why are their names not on the tablets?"