Carlen herself cut the gordian knot.

“Brother,” she whispered, “why do you think Wilhelm is not good?”

“I said not that, Carlen,” he replied evasively.  “I only say we know nothing; and it is dangerous to trust where one knows nothing.”

“It would not be trust if we knew,” answered the loyal girl.  “I believe he is good; but, John, John, what misery in his eyes!  Saw you ever anything like it?”

“No,” he replied; “never.  Has he never told you anything about himself, Carlen?”

“Once,” she answered, “I took courage to ask him if he had relatives in Germany; and he said no; and I exclaimed then, ‘What, all dead!’ ’All dead,’ he answered, in such a voice I hardly dared speak again, but I did.  I said:  ’Well, one might have the terrible sorrow to lose all one’s relatives.  It needs only that three should die, my father and mother and my brother,—­only three, and two are already old,—­and I should have no relatives myself; but if one is left without relatives, there are always friends, thank God!’ And he looked at me,—­he never looks at one, you know; but he looked at me then as if I had done a sin to speak the word, and he said, ‘I have no friends.  They are all dead too,’ and then went away!  Oh, brother, why cannot we win him out of this grief?  We can be good friends to him; can you not find out for me what it is?”

It was a cruel weapon to use, but on the instant John made up his mind to use it.  It might spare Carlen grief, in the end.

“I have thought,” he said, “that it might be for a dead sweetheart he mourned thus.  There are men, you know, who love that way and never smile again.”

Short-sighted John, to have dreamed that he could forestall any conjecture in the girl’s heart!

“I have thought of that,” she answered meekly; “it would seem as if it could be nothing else.  But, John, if she be really dead—­” Carlen did not finish the sentence; it was not necessary.

After a silence she spoke again:  “Dear John, if you could be more friendly with him I think it might be different.  He is your age.  Father and mother are too old, and to me he will not speak.”  She sighed deeply as she spoke these last words, and went on:  “Of course, if it is for a dead sweetheart that he is grieving thus, it is only natural that the sight of women should be to him worse than the sight of men.  But it is very seldom, John, that a man will mourn his whole life for a sweetheart; is it not, John?  Why, men marry again, almost always, even when it is a wife that they have lost; and a sweetheart is not so much as a wife.”

“I have heard,” said the pitiless John, “that a man is quicker healed of grief for a wife than for one he had thought to wed, but lost.”

“You are a man,” said Carlen.  “You can tell if that would be true.”

“No, I cannot,” he answered, “for I have loved no woman but you, my sister; and on my word I think I will be in no haste to, either.  It brings misery, it seems to me.”