"How many are they?"
"A man and his son."
"Do you think the boy could conduct me to Marienberg?"
"To Marienberg?" said Beata, turning pale.
He did not answer for some time, then he said,
"It is so sultry and heavy in here; if you would do me a last service, help me up and lead me out into God's open air that I may collect my senses."
"You are still too weak to stand; have a little patience," she begged.
"Not a minute longer must I delay; I must go home to my brethren to share the danger which I could not avert." He rose from the bed, and the girl led him silent and tottering out into the air. The sky bent in ethereal blue over the mighty glaciers, an icy morning-wind blew down from them and waved the sick man's hair across his face, for it had grown long. He inhaled the pure air of the heights in long deep breaths like a man risen from the grave. Heaven sent him a greeting from the cloud-capped peaks, it invited him up there; he felt it, the flames of hell thirsted for him in vain; the child seated him on a stone bench by the door of the hut.
"Beata," he said in a hollow voice, "we must part." The child uttered a cry of pain that pierced him to the very heart. He went on, "Beata, I have erred and gone astray. I believed that I might escape love if I blinded myself, and I lulled my soul in that security, till temptation was upon me before I suspected it. It was so fair a dream, Beata, when we wandered on together in innocence, as in Paradise, but original sin has driven us out of it! From the first hour when your sweet charm stirred my soul with earthly longings, from that hour our Paradise was lost. Beata, hell would fain have power over the immortal part of us, let us snatch it from its power. It is yet time; I have as yet withstood that hellish temptation, but now let us part lest the darker deed should follow hard on the dark thought. I gave up my eyes that I might keep myself pure, now I will give you up too. Be strong, Beata, prove yourself worthy of the suffering I endure for your sake, and obey in silence."
"No, no! Require what you will of me but not that," shrieked the child. "Plant a knife in my heart and I will not shrink, but do not require me to part from you without crying out like some wild creature that is only half killed, and can neither live nor die."