When, the year before, her aunt took her to the hospital for the first time, she had returned home completely unnerved.  She had not even had the slightest suspicion that there was such suffering on earth, such pain amongst those near her, such depravity amongst those of her own sex.  What comparison was there between what Els had done for her gentle, patient mother, or what she would do for old Herr Casper, who lay in a soft bed—­it had been shown to her as something of rare beauty, of ebony and ivory—­and the task of nursing these infamous gallows-birds bleeding from severe wounds, and these depraved sick women?  But if God’s own Son gave up His life amidst the most cruel suffering for sinful humanity, how dared she, the weak, erring, slandered girl, who had no goodness save her passionate desire to do what was right, shrink from helping the most pitiable of her neighbours?  Here in the hospital at Schweinau lay the heavy burden which she wished to take upon herself.

She desired it also in order to maintain the bond which had united her to the Saviour.  She would be constantly reminded here of his own words, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”  To become a bride of Jesus Christ and, closely united to Him in her inmost soul, await the hour when He would open His divine arms to her, had seemed the fairest lot in life.  Now she had pledged herself in the world to another, and yet she did not wish to give up her Saviour.  She desired to show Him that though she neither could nor would resign her earthly lover, her heart still throbbed for the divine One as tenderly as of yore.  And could He who was Love incarnate condemn her, when He saw how, without even being permitted to hope that her lover would find his way back to her, she clung with inviolable steadfastness to her troth, though no one save He and His heavenly Father had witnessed her silent vow?

She belonged to Heinz, and he—­she knew it—­to her.  Even though later, after all the world had acknowledged her innocence, the walls of convent and monastery divided them, their souls would remain indissolubly united.  If there should be no meeting for them here below, in the other world the Saviour would lead them to each other the more surely, the more obediently they strove to fulfil His divine command.  As Heinz desired to take up the cross in imitation of Christ she, too, would bear it.  It was to be found beside the straw pallets of the wounded criminals.  The fulfilment of every hard duty which she voluntarily performed seemed like a step that brought her nearer to the Saviour, and at the same time to the union with her lover, even though in another world.