A careful glance, by daylight, around the humble apartment, revealed to Gotleib that Anna worked with her delicate, white, lady-looking hands, for the support of her dying mother.  A table, placed by the window, was covered with artificial flowers of exquisite workmanship, and, while he yet lingered in the chamber, Bettina, the maid, entered from the street door, with a basket filled with the same flowers—­looked at Anna, and shook her head mournfully.  The young girl’s lips quivered, and she pressed the tears back when she saw no purchaser had been found for her labour.  Gotleib saw and felt with the most intense sympathy all that was passing.  He lingered yet longer—­he made encouraging remarks to the sick mother, and, at length, ventured to approach the table, and gazed with admiration on the beautiful flowers, while his brain was busy in devising how he was to make them the medium of conveying aid to the suffering mother and daughter.  He turned to the faithful Bettina, who clung to those whom she served in their hard poverty—­he told her that if she would follow him he would find a purchaser for the pretty flowers.  Anna cast upon him a look of tearful smiling gratitude, and her simple, “I thank you,” as she held out her hand to him, bound him as with a magnetic chain to her being.  Bettina thought the Herr Doctor was a most generous man, for he more than doubled the paltry sum she asked for the flowers; though she did not consider it necessary to mention the fact to Anna, she merely stated to her that she had found a purchaser for as many flowers as she chose to make.

But Gotleib! what an Eden those flowers made of his chamber! with what a joy he returned to it after hours of absence; it seemed as if they brought him into contact with the sphere of a beloved existence.  He examined them with delight, and could not avoid covering them with kisses.  Never was patient visited or watched over more attentively than was Madame Hendrickson; and, as the mother revived, the daughter seemed to feel new life.  Light beamed from her soft eyes, and oftentimes Gotleib thought that the roses that bloomed in her delicate face were far more beautiful and bright than those that grew under her light and skilful touch.

For him she seemed to feel an earnest trustful gratitude.  She never concealed her glad recognition of his coming; she was too pure, and innocent, and good, to think it necessary to conceal anything.  And Gotleib’s visits were so pleasant, they grew longer and longer—­for he and Madame Hendrickson were of the same religious faith—­and he had a peculiar faculty for consoling her.  Gotleib spoke of the other world with such a definite perception of its existences and modes of being, that the dying woman never wearied of listening to him.  The high and true faith of the good Gotleib opened to him a world of beauty, which he poured forth in his earnest enthusiasm, more like a gifted poet than a being of mere prose.  Oftentimes, as he talked, the light of his intelligence