A lengthy silence settled over them once more. Slowly Marion’s head moved up and down with the movement of Heinrich’s deep-breathing lungs. Nowhere in all the world did either of them feel so contented, she with her head nestled close to his chest, he with his broad arm stretched around her shoulder and waist. In all ways they had grown to be as one, but here was that oneness most deeply and richly felt.

“Do you fear death, Heinrich?” asked Marion at length, her voice barely above a whisper.

The baron sighed deeply and thought a long time before answering.

“I don’t know,” he said after some time. “I have always prayed to have courage when the moments of greatest confrontation against evil and darkness come.”

He paused, his lungs breathing in and out slowly as he pondered the question that had been inwardly occupying more and more of his prayers as omens and portents of the future became more clear.

“Certainly I possess fears,” he said. “It would be a lie to say I do not fear death. My flesh of course fears it. You cannot imagine, Marion, what a weak man I feel like inside. So many people look to me for direction and protection and help and guidance. You and Sabina and so many others over the years—I think sometimes you all consider me as a tower of strength. But I tell you, deep inside there are times I am just a frightened little boy, wondering who this grown man is that people call the baron von Dortmann.

“Ah yes… I have fears. I wonder what kind of man I will prove to be when the moment of severest danger comes—a moment I sense is close at hand. If I did not have you beside me, and was not able to look into your eyes so that we might silently say to one another, All is well… we are secure in the shelter of our Father’s arms—if I could not share that with you, Marion, I think I would crumble from the weight of my fears.

“I cannot say I do not fear death. But I do not fear what death may do to us. Indeed, it can do nothing. It can only touch the flesh, and that does not concern me. It might be able to separate us for a season. To be apart from you is the greatest injury death could inflict. But only a brief season. Our Father will make all things right, and sooner than we think. My belief in that overarching truth is far stronger than the culmination of all my temporal fears. My confidence in that right-making enables me even to endure the thought of having to say auf Wiedersehen to you—until we see each other again! Not even death would cause me to say good-bye.”

“Do you think we will have to part, Heinrich?”