One can
forgive sin, but can never admire it."
Hartmut bit his lips and gave the slender, white robed figure who stood
near him a threatening glance.
"Ah, what a hard sentence to meet my drama at the outset, for I have
expended all my strength in transfiguring just such love and death. What
if the world's judgment is like yours--I beg your pardon, madame."
He crossed to the divan upon which she had been sitting, where her fan
and the camelia blossom yet lay.
"I thank you," said Adelheid, extending her hand for them, but he only
handed her the fan.
"I beg your pardon--I wrote my 'Arivana' upon the veranda of a little
Indian house where these lovely flowers were gleaming through the dark
foliage on all sides, and to-day they greet me here again in the cold
north. May I not keep this blossom?"
Adelheid made a little impatient motion.
"No; for what reason?"
"For what reason? As a reminder of the harsh sentence which my poem has
received from the lips of a woman who bears the same name as my heroine.
There were many white blossoms, baroness, but you broke off
unconsciously the deep purple-red. Poets are superstitious above all
things. Let me keep this as a token that my work may yet find favor in
your eyes, when you learn to know it. You do not know how much it
contains.
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