“Come on, let’s land,” said Hansei.

On the shore a figure in a fluttering garment was running up and down.  It suddenly collapsed when the wind carried a full sound of music across the lake.  Then it rose again, and vanished in the reeds.

“Have you seen nothing?” asked Walpurga.

“Rather!  If it were not broad daylight, and if it were not superstition, I should think it was the mermaid, herself.”

The boat at last touched the shore.  Walpurga was the first to jump out.  She hurried to the reed-bank, away from her people, and there, behind the willows, the apparition fell on her neck and broke down.

IV.—­The Countess Irma’s Atonement

Dr. Gunther received the first telegraphic news of his friend, Count Eberhard, having lost the power of speech through a stroke of paralysis.  He was to break the news to Irma.  For some time she had felt, through the physician’s reserve and sympathetic kindness, that he could read her secret.  And now she realised that sudden knowledge of her disgrace alone could have struck down her father, whose vigorous constitution had always kept illness at arm’s length.

They arrived at the manor house before midnight, and were shown into the sufferer’s room.  Count Eberhard’s eyelids moved quickly when he recognised Dr. Gunther’s voice, and he tried to extend his hand towards his friend, but it fell heavily on the coverlet.  Dr. Gunther seized it and held it in a firm grasp.  Irma knelt down before the bed, and her father’s trembling hand felt over her face, and was wetted by her tears.  Then he quickly withdrew it, as though he had touched a poisonous animal; he turned away his face and pressed his forehead against the wall.  Now he turned round again, and with a gentle movement indicated that he wished her to leave the room.

She was with him again next day.  He tried painfully to say something to her, to make her understand by signs—­she could not understand.  He bit upon his lips and tried to sit up.  His face was changed—­it assumed a strange colour, a strange expression.  Irma saw with a shudder what was happening.  She knelt down and laid her cheek upon his hand.  He withdrew the hand.  With supreme effort he wrote a word, a short word, with his finger upon her forhead.  She saw, she heard, she read it—­in the air, on her forehead, on her brain, in her soul—­she gave a scream, and fell senseless to the ground.  Dr. Gunther entered quickly, stepped over Irma, closed his friend’s eyes, and all was silence.

For many hours Irma was in her room, shut in with her despair, her remorse.  No one could gain admission.  She thought furiously, she raved, and then fell into a troubled sleep.  When she awake her resolution was made.  She asked for light and writing material, and wrote:  “My queen,—­ With death I atone for my guilt.  Forgive and forget!  IRMA.”  On the envelope she wrote:  “To be handed to the queen herself by Dr. Gunther.”  Then she took another sheet, and wrote: