“Has your father told you about Jesus Christ?”

“Often!” replied Ruth.

“And do you love Him?”

“Dearly.  Father says He loved all children, and called them to Him.”

“Of course, of course!” replied the smith, blushing with shame for his own distrust.

The doctor did not follow the others, and as soon as his wife saw that they were alone, she beckoned to him.

Lopez sat down on the couch beside her, and took her hand.  The slender fingers trembled in his clasp, and when, with loving anxiety, he drew her towards him, he felt the tremor of her delicate limbs, while her eyes expressed bitter suffering and terrible dread.

“Are you afraid?” he asked, tenderly.

Elizabeth shuddered, threw her arms passionately around his neck, and nodded assent.

“The wagon will convey us to the Rhine Valley, please God, this very day, and there we shall be safe,” he continued, soothingly.  But she shook her head, her features assuming an expression of indifference and contempt.  Lopez understood how to read their meaning, and asked:  “So it is not the bailiffs you fear; something else is troubling you?”

She nodded again, this time still more eagerly, drew out the crucifix, which she had hitherto kept concealed under her coverlid, showed it to him, then pointed upward towards heaven, lastly to herself and him, and shrugged her shoulders with an air of deep, mournful renunciation.

“You are thinking of the other world,” said Lopez; then, fixing his eyes on the ground, he continued, in a lower tone:  “I know you are tortured by the fear of not meeting me there.”

“Yes,” she gasped, with a great effort, pressing her forehead against his shoulder.

A hot tear fell on the doctor’s hand, and he felt as if his own heart was weeping with his beloved, anxious wife.

He knew that this thought had often poisoned her life and, full of tender sympathy, turned her beautiful face towards him and pressed a long kiss on her closed eyes, then said, tenderly: 

“You are mine, I am yours, and if there is a life beyond the grave, and an eternal justice, the dumb will speak as they desire, and sing wondrous songs with the angels; the sorrowful will again be happy there.  We will hope, we will both hope!  Do you remember how I read Dante aloud to you, and tried to explain his divine creation, as we sat on the bench by the fig-tree.  The sea roared below us, and our hearts swelled higher than its storm-lashed waves.  How soft was the air, how bright the sunshine!  This earth seemed doubly beautiful to you and me as, led by the hand of the divine seer and singer, we descended shuddering to the nether world.  There the good and noble men of ancient times walked in a flowery meadow, and among them the poet beheld in solitary grandeur—­do you still remember how the passage runs?  ’E solo in parte vidi ‘l Saladino.’  Among them he also saw the Moslem Saladin, the conqueror of the Christians.  If any one possessed the key of the mysteries of the other world, Elizabeth, it was Dante.  He assigned a lofty place to the pagan, who was a true man—­a man with a pure mind, a zeal for goodness and right, and I think I shall have a place there too.  Courage, Elizabeth, courage!”