Startled by the expression the minister was giving to her secret thoughts, Benigna exclaimed, "And yet what can be done?"
"Nothing," he answered. "If Loretz should yield to Spener, and if I should—do you not see he has had everything his own way here?—he would feel that nothing could stand in opposition to him. If he were a different man! And they are both so young!"
"I know that Elise has a conscience that will hold her fast to duty," said Benigna, but she did not speak hopefully: she spoke deliberately, however, thinking that these words conscience and duty might arrest the minister's attention, and that he would perhaps, by some means, throw light upon questions which were constantly becoming more perplexing to her. Was conscience an unfailing guide? Was one person's duty to be pronounced upon by another without scruple, and defined with unfaltering exactness? But the words had not arrested the minister's attention.
"If they could only see that there is nothing to be done!" said he. "Oh, they will, Benigna! Had they only the faith, Benigna!"
"Yet how vain their sacrifice, for they have it not!" said she. And as if she would not prolong an interview which must be full of pain, because no light could proceed from any words that would be given them to speak, Sister Benigna turned abruptly toward the basement door when she had said this, and entered it without bestowing a parting glance even on the minister.
He walked away after an instant's hesitation: indeed there was nothing further to be said, and she did well to go.
Going homeward by a path which led along the hillside above the village street, he must pass the small house separated from all others—the house which was the appointed resting-place of all who lived in Spenersberg to die there—known as the Corpse-house. To it the bodies of deceased persons were always taken after death, and there they remained until the hour when they were carried forth for burial.
As Mr. Wenck approached he saw that the door stood open: a few steps farther, and this fact was accounted for. A bent and wrinkled old woman stood there with a broom in her hand, which she had been using in a plain, straight-forward manner.
"Ah, Mary," he said, "what does this mean, my good woman?"
"It is the minister," she answered in a low voice, curtseying. "I was moved to come here this morning, sir, and see to things. It was time to be brushing up a little, I thought. It is a month now since the last."