"I can guess the drift of it, and now understand your last letter.

I thought you would probably be in a frame of mind to need a friend near you, and so I came without delay." "I will not leave you to guess anything," Wilhelm returned, and pressed Schrotter's hand.

"I will tell you all; it is an absolute necessity to me, and will, at the same time, be a kind of atonement." And he began his confession in a low, dull voice, and with downcast eyes, like a sinner acknowledging a shameful deed, and Schrotter listened to him gravely and in silence, like a priest before whom some poor oppressed soul is casting down its burden of guilt.

Wilhelm kept nothing back, neither the mad intoxication of the first weeks, nor the bitter humiliation of the last.

He disclosed Pilar's passion and his own weakness, the pagan sensuality and the artifices of the woman's insatiable love, and the unworthy part he had played in her house before the servants and strangers.