He bent over the kneeling figure, laid his hands on her shoulders, and gazed into her face while something akin to a divine smile illumined his features.
"When I bade you farewell," he said softly, "I said that if I returned, I would ask you a momentous question.

Do you know what it was ?" She shrank and a burning blush crimsoned her cheeks, but she did not venture to reply, only gazed breathlessly at him with fixed eyes.
He bent close to her and, smiling, whispered: "Leonore, will you be my wife ?" With a cry of joy she sprang into his arms, laughing and weeping in her ecstasy.
Kolbielsky pressed her closely to his heart and laid his hand upon her head as if in benediction.
"You have atoned," he said solemnly.

"You shall be forgiven, for you have suffered heavily! You have come to me homeless.

Henceforth my heart shall be your home.

You have cast aside your name--I offer you mine in exchange.
Will you be my wife ?" She whispered a low, happy "yes." An hour later an officer of justice arrived to announce to Kolbielsky his change of sentence to perpetual imprisonment and inform him that the carriage was waiting to convey him to Leopoldstadt.
Kolbielsky now desired to see the priest whose ministration he had formerly refused, and when, half an hour later, he entered the carriage, Leonore was his wife.