“You would have gone to prison for her.”

“Yes; to prison.  Gladly would I go to prison for my Anna, if, by doing so, I could save her one moment’s pain.”

“Well, I’m going to suggest a thing not half so hard as that.  I will give consent to my son’s marriage to your daughter if you will agree to give her up entirely—­to give her up entirely.  You understand?  You must never see her any more.”

This was too much.  The old man drew back with a cry of pain.  “I give my Anna up!  I never see her any more!  Madame, do you know what you ask?”

She was not vividly impressed.  “I suppose it may be hard, at first,” she went on, casually, “but—­”

He interrupted.  “Hard!  I am old—­and poor.  I have nothing—­nothing—­but that little girl.  All my whole life long I work for her.  My love for her has grown so close—­close—­close around my heart that from my breast you could not tear it out without, at the same time, tearing from that breast the heart itself.  You hear, Madame?  She is my soul—­my life—­all I have got—­all—­all—­”

“But am I not giving up a great deal, too?  I had hoped my son would marry well—­perhaps, even, among the foreign nobility.  That’s what I took him off to Europe with me for.  I’m simply wild to be presented at some court!  Surely if I give all that up for my son’s sake, you can do as much, at least, for Anna’s.”

“As much?  Why, what you ask of me, Madame, is to abandon all!”

Mrs. Vanderlyn became impatient.  It seemed to her that he was most unreasonable.

“I tell you that unless you do, I shall do nothing for them,” she cried petulantly.  “My son has no idea of money.  He’s never had to earn a dollar and he don’t know how.  They’ll starve, if you don’t yield, and it will be your fault—­entirely your fault.”

Herr Kreutzer bowed his head.  His heart cried out within him at the horrible injustice of this woman, but, as he saw life, to yield was all that he could do.  To stand in Anna’s light, at this late day, when, all his life, he had, without the slightest thought of self, made sacrifices for her, would be too illogical, too utterly absurd.  “Madame, I yield,” he said.  “I know too well what poverty can be—­what misery!  Yes, Madame, I will go.  But sometimes I shall see her.”

“Absolutely no!” said Mrs. Vanderlyn.  “I’ll run no risk of disagreeable comment.  I have social enemies who would be too glad to pull me down.  You must give her up to-day and go out of her life forever.”

“I do not think she will consent to that.  She, Madame—­why, she loves her poor old father just a little.”

“Of course, of course,” she grudgingly admitted, “but she’ll get over it.  Ah, wait!  I have it.  You must find some way to make her think it’s all your fault—­that it’s exactly what you want—­”

“What I want!  To give my little Anna up?”

“Certainly.  If you are going to do it, you must burn your bridges behind you.”