Some days passed before the king sought his wife’s forgiveness.  The interview was brief and decisive.  The king spoke nobly, manly and sincerely; the queen was bitter, sharp and irreconcilable.  Her duty as a queen demanded that the rift should not appear in public; her injured pride as a woman refused to admit more.  He demanded to know whether her friend and adviser, Dr. Gunther, knew of her decision.  She replied he was too noble to let thoughts of anger or revenge enter his great heart.

“This great being can be made small!”

“You will not rob me of my only friend?”

“Your only friend?  I do not know this title.  To my knowledge there is no such office at court.  Be what you will!  Be alone and seek for support in yourself.”

He stripped the wedding-ring from his hand, placed it on the table, and moved towards the door.  He hesitated a moment—­will she call him back?  She looked after him—­will he turn around?  The moment passed.  The door closed.

In the evening a court was held, and the queen appeared, pale, but smiling, on her husband’s arm.  They spoke confidentially, and nobody noticed the missing ring.

Next day the journals announced that the king’s physician had tendered his resignation.

And court gossip had it that Walpurga had bought a farm with the gold she had earned as intermediary between the king and the unfortunate Countess Wildenort.

VI.—­Forgiving and Forgiven

Irma had passed four years at Hansei’s mountain farm.  Her secret had been well kept.  Even Hansei, who had promised his wife never to ask any questions about their permanent guest, was in complete ignorance about her identity.  Irma, who, after having tried her hand at various domestic occupations, had taken up wood-carving with considerable success, enabling her to discharge at least the material part of her debt of gratitude, was generally held to be a half-witted relation of Walpurga’s.

Her despair and remorse had gradually given way to resigned sadness.  Self-communion had to make up for lack of intellectual intercourse, and sharpened her perception.  In her diary she entered the profound thoughts suggested to her active intelligence by her observation of events in themselves insignificant, and analysed with cool aloofness the working of her mind.  She never entertained the thought of finding a refuge in the convent—­her atonement was to be wrought, not by compulsion, but by free will.  And so the weeks passed, and the months, and the years.

They had all helped in the building of a wooden cowherd’s hut on the height of the mountain, a few hours’ climb from the farm.  Now Irma felt the need for more complete solitude, away even from her simple friends.  Up there, on the height, she would find peace and complete her atonement.  And so it was decided to let her have her way, and to let her stay in the hut, with Peter and his daughter.