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52 know well the cause. Yet thou painest me with thine angry look; and thou must not pain any creature that liveth without due cause. Listen to me, I pray thee, and have patience with me; and for my part I will seek to tell thee plainly what I mean."

Thereupon it was clear that she had bent herself to give a full and plain account of something that had hitherto been concealed. But suddenly she hesitated, as though some secret hand of restraint had been laid upon her, and with a quick shudder she burst into a flood of tears. Not a person there knew what to make of her in this case. They gazed at her in silence, filled with dim and vague apprehension. For a moment or two she rested thus, and then, wiping away her tears, she looked gravely and earnestly at the holy man, and spake as follows:

"Meseemeth that there is something strange and difficult to understand about the soul. It hath a beauty of its own, hath it not? And yet to me it appeareth full of dread and awe. I ask thee, Sir Priest, might we not all of us be in better case if we never shared so beautiful and so perilous a gift?" Once again Undine was silent, as though waiting for some reply, and her tears had ceased to flow. All those in the cottage had started from their seats at her strange words, and had stepped back from her with something akin to horror in their eyes. Nathless, she looked neither to right nor to left, but only bent her gaze on the holy man, with a yearning of curiosity on her face,