O Wolff, why is everything made so much harder for us than for others?
Now this evening, it would have been so pleasant to go to the ball with you." "Yet, how often, dearest, I have urged you in vain----" he began, but she hastily interrupted "Yes, it was certainly no fault of yours, but one of us must remain with my mother, and Eva----" "Yesterday she complained to me with tears in her eyes that she would be forced to go to this dance, which she detested." "That is the very reason she ought to go," explained Els.

"She is eighteen years old, and has never yet been induced to enter into any of the pleasures other girls enjoy.

When she isn't in the convent she is always at home, or with Aunt Kunigunde or one of the nuns in the woods and fields.

If she wants to take the veil later, who can prevent it, but the abbess herself advises that she should have at least a glimpse of the world before leaving it.

Few need it more, it seems to me, than our Eva." "Certainly," Wolff assented.