MAURICE GUEST

by

Henry Handel Richardson

Part I

 S'amor non e che dunque e quel ch'io sento? Ma s'egli e amor, per Dio, che cosa e quale?

PETRARCH

I. 

One noon in 189-, a young man stood in front of the new Gewandhaus inLeipzig, and watched the neat, grass-laid square, until then white andsilent in the sunshine, grow dark with many figures. 

The public rehearsal of the weekly concert was just over, and, from thehalf light of the warm-coloured hall, which for more than two hours hadheld them secluded, some hundreds of people hastened, with renewedanticipation, towards sunlight and street sounds. There was a medley oftongues, for many nationalities were represented in the crowd thatsurged through the ground-floor and out of the glass doors, and muchnoisy ado, for the majority was made up of young people, at an age thatenjoys the sound of its own voice. In black, diverging lines theypoured through the heavy swinging doors, which flapped ceaselessly toand fro, never quite closing, always opening afresh, and on descendingthe shallow steps, they told off into groups, where all talked at once, with lively gesticulation. A few faces had the strained look thatindicates the conscientious listener; but most of these young musicianswere under the influence of a stimulant more potent than wine, whichmanifested itself in a nervous garrulity and a nervous mirth. 

They hummed like bees before a hive. Maurice Guest, who had come outamong the first, lingered to watch a scene that was new to him, ofwhich he was as yet an onlooker only. Here and there came a member ofthe orchestra; with violin-case or black-swathed wind-instrument inhand, he deftly threaded his way through the throng, bestowing, as hewent, a hasty nod of greeting upon a colleague, a sweep of the hat onan obsequious pupil. The crowd began to disperse and to overflow in thesurrounding streets. Some of the stragglers loitered to swell the groupthat was forming round the back entrance to the building; here thelank-haired Belgian violinist would appear, the wonders of whosetechnique had sent thrills of enthusiasm through his hearers, and whoseclose proximity would presently affect them in precisely the same way. Others again made off, not for the town, with its prosaic suggestion ofwork and confinement, but for the freedom of the woods that lay beyond. 

Maurice Guest followed them. 

It was a blowy day in early spring. Round white masses of cloud movedlightly across a deep blue sky, and the trees, still thin and naked, bent their heads and shook their branches, as if to elude the gambolsof a boisterous playfellow. The sun shone vividly, with restored power, and though the clouds sometimes passed over his very face, the shadowsonly lasted for a moment, and each returning radiance seemed brighterthan the one before. In the pure breath of the wind, as it gustilyswept the earth, was a promise of things vernal, of the tender beautiesof a coming spring; but there was still a keen, delightful freshness inthe air, a vague reminder of frosty starlights and serene whitesnow--the untrodden snow of deserted, moon-lit streets--that quickenedthe blood, and sent a craving for movement through the veins. Thepeople who trod the broad, clean roads and the paths of the wood walkedwith a spring in their steps; voices were light and high, and eachbreath that was drawn increased the sense of buoyancy, of undilutedsatisfaction. With these bursts of golden sunshine, so other than thepallid gleamings of the winter, came a fresh impulse to life; and themost insensible was dimly conscious how much had to be made up for, howmuch lived into such a day. 

Maurice Guest walked among the mossgreen tree-trunks, each of whichvied with the other in the brilliancy of its coating. He was under thesway of a twofold intoxication: great music and a day rich in promise. From the flood of melody that had broken over him, the frenzied stormsof applause, he had come out, not into a lamplit darkness that wouldhave crushed his elation back upon him and hemmed it in, but into thespacious lightness of a fair blue day, where all that he felt couldexpand, as a flower does in the sun. 

His walk brought him to a broad stream, which flashed through the woodlike a line of light. He paused on a suspension bridge, and leaningover the railing, gazed up the river into the distance, at the horizonand its trees, delicate and feathery in their nakedness against thesky. Swollen with recent rains and snows, the water came hurryingtowards him--the storm-bed of the little river, which, meandering infrom the country, through pleasant woods, in ever narrowing curves, ranthrough the town as a small stream, to be swelled again on theoutskirts by the waters of two other rivers, which joined it at rightangles. The bridge trembled at first, when other people crossed it, ontheir way to the woods that lay on the further side, but soon the laststragglers vanished, and he was alone. 

As he looked about, eager to discover beauty in the strip of landscapethat stretched before him--the line of water, its banks of leaflesstrees--he was instinctively filled with a desire for something grander, for a feature in the scene that would answer to his mood. There, wherethe water appeared to end in a clump of trees, there, should bemountains, a gently undulating line, blue with the unapproachable blueof distance, and high enough to form a background to the view; insummer, heavy with haze, melting into the sky; in winter, lined andedged with snow. From this, his thoughts sprang back to the music hehad heard that morning. All the vague yet eager hopes that had run riotin his brain, for months past, seemed to have been summed up and madeclear to him, in one supreme phrase of it, a great phrase in C major, in the concluding movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. First soundedby the shrill sweet winds, it had suddenly been given out by thestrings, in magnificent unison, and had mounted up and on, to thejubilant trilling of the little flutes. There was such a courageoussincerity in this theme, such undauntable resolve; it expressed moreplainly than words what he intended his life of the next few years tobe; for he was full to the brim of ambitious intentions, which he hadnever yet had a chance of putting into practice. He felt so ready forwork, so fresh and unworn; the fervour of a deep enthusiasm was rampantin him. What a single-minded devotion to art, he promised himself hisshould be! No other fancy or interest should share his heart with it, he vowed that to himself this day, when he stood for the first time onhistoric ground, where the famous musicians of the past had foundinspiration for their immortal works. And his thoughts spread theirwings and circled above his head; he saw himself already of thesemasters' craft, their art his, he wrenching ever new secrets from them, penetrating the recesses of their genius, becoming one of themselves. In a vision as vivid as those that cross the brain in a sleeplessnight, he saw a dark, compact multitude wait, with breath suspended, tocatch the notes that fell like raindrops from his fingers; saw himselfthe all-conspicuous figure, as, with masterful gestures, he compelledthe soul that lay dormant in brass and strings, to give voice to, tointerpret to the many, his subtlest emotions. And he was overcome by atremulous compassion with himself at the idea of wielding such powerover an unknown multitude, at the latent nobility of mind and aim thispower implied. 

Even when swinging back to the town, he had not shaken himself free ofdreams. The quiet of a foreign midday lay upon the streets, and therewere few discordant sounds, few passers-by, to break the chain of histhought. He had movement, silence, space. And as is usual withactive-brained dreamers, he had little or no eye for the real lifeabout him; he was not struck by the air of comfortable prosperity, ofthriving content, which marked the great commercial centre, and he letpass, unnoticed, the unfamiliar details of a foreign street, thetrifling yet significant incidents of foreign life. Such impressions ashe received, bore the stamp of his own mood. He was sensible, forinstance, in face of the picturesque houses that clustered together inthe centre of the town, of the spiritual GEMUTLICHKEIT, the absence ofany pomp or pride in their romantic past, which characterises the oldbuildings of a German town. These quaint and stately houses, wedged oneinto the other, with their many storeys, their steeply sloping roofsand eye-like roof-windows, were still in sympathetic touch with thetrivial life of the day which swarmed in and about them. He wanderedleisurely along the narrow streets that ran at all angles off theMarket Place, one side of which was formed by the gabled RATHAUS, withits ground-floor row of busy little shops; and, in fancy, he peopledthese streets with the renowned figures that had once walked them. Helooked up at the dark old houses in which great musicians had lived, died and been born, and he saw faces that he recognised lean out of theprojecting windows, to watch the life and bustle below, to catch thelast sunbeam that filtered in; he saw them take their daily walk alongthese very streets, in the antiquated garments of their time. Theypassed him by, shadelike and misanthropic, and seemed to steal down theopposite side, to avoid his too pertinent gaze. Bluff, preoccupied, hiskeen eyes lowered, the burly Cantor passed, as he had once done dayafter day, with the disciplined regularity of high genius, of thehonest citizen, to his appointed work in the shadows of the organ-loft;behind him, one who had pointed to the giant with a new burst ofardour, the genial little improviser, whose triumphs had been those ofthis town, whose fascinating gifts and still more fascinatingpersonality, had made him the lion of his age. And it was only anotherstep in this train of half-conscious thought, that, before a largelettered poster, which stood out black and white against the reds andyellows of the circular advertisement-column, and bore the word"Siegfried, " Maurice Guest should not merely be filled with theanticipation of a world of beauty still unexplored, but that the worldshould stand to him for a symbol, as it were, of the easeful andluxurious side of a life dedicated to art--of a world-wide fame; thesociety of princes, kings; the gloss of velvet; the dull glow ofgold. --And again, tapering vistas opened up, through which he couldpeer into the future, happy in the knowledge, that he stood firm in apresent which made all things possible to a holy zeal, to anunhesitating grasp. 

But it was growing late, and he slowly retraced his steps. In therestaurant into which he turned for dinner, he was the only customer. The principal business of the day was at an end; two waiters sat dozingin corners, and a man behind the counter, who was washing metal-toppedbeer-glasses, had almost the whole pile polished bright before him. Maurice Guest sat down at a table by the window; and, when he hadfinished his dinner and lighted a cigarette, he watched the passers-by, who crossed the pane of glass like the figures in a moving photograph. 

Suddenly the door opened with an energetic click, and a lady came in, enveloped in an old-fashioned, circular cloak, and carrying on one arma pile of paper-covered music. This, she laid on the table next that atwhich the young man was sitting, then took off her hat. When she hadalso hung up the unbecoming cloak, he saw that she was young andslight. For the rest, she seemed to bring with her, into the warm, tranquil atmosphere of the place, heavy with midday musings, a breathof wind and outdoor freshness--a suggestion that was heightened by thequick decisiveness of her movements: the briskness with which shedivested herself of her wrappings, the quick smooth of the hair oneither side, the business-like way in which she drew up her chair tothe table and unfolded her napkin. 

She seemed to be no stranger there, for, on her entrance, the youngerand more active waiter had at once sprung up with officious haste, andalmost before she was ready, the little table was newly spread and set, and the dinner of the day before her. She spoke to the man in afriendly way as she took her seat, and he replied with a pleased andsmiling respect. 

Then she began to eat, deliberately, and with an overemphasised nicety. As she carried her soup-spoon to her lips, Maurice Guest felt that shewas observing him; and throughout the meal, of which she ate butlittle, he was aware of a peculiarly straight and penetrating gaze. Itended by disconcerting him. Beckoning the waiter, he went through thebusiness of paying his bill, and this done, was about to push back hischair and rise to his feet, when the man, in gathering up the money, addressed what seemed to be a question to him. Fearful lest he had madea mistake in the strange coinage, Maurice looked up apprehensively. Thewaiter repeated his words, but the slight nervousness that gained onthe young man made him incapable of separating the syllables, whichwere indistinguishably blurred. He coloured, stuttered, and feltmortally uncomfortable, as, for the third time, the waiter repeated hisremark, with the utmost slowness. 

At this point, the girl at the adjacent table put down her knife andfork, and leaned slightly forward. 

"Excuse me, " she said, and smiled. "The waiter only said he thought youmust be a stranger here: DER HERR IST GEWISS FREMD IN LEIPZIG?" Herrather prominent teeth were visible as she spoke. 

Maurice, who understood instantly her pronunciation of the words, wasnot set any more at his ease by her explanation. "Thanks very much. " hesaid, still redder than usual. "I . .. Er . .. Thought the fellow wassaying something about the money. "

"And the Saxon dialect is barbarous, isn't it?" she added kindly. "Butperhaps you have not had much experience of it yet. "

"No. I only arrived this morning. "

At this, she opened her eyes wide. "Why, you are a courageous person!"she said and laughed, but did not explain what she meant, and he didnot like to ask her. 

A cup of coffee was set on the table before her; she held a lump ofsugar in her spoon, and watched it grow brown and dissolve. "Are yougoing to make a long stay?" she asked, to help him over hisembarrassment. 

"Two years, I hope, " said the young man. 

"Music?" she queried further, and, as he replied affirmatively: "Thenthe Con. Of course?"--an enigmatic question that needed to beexplained. "You're piano, are you not?" she went on. "I thought so. Itis hardly possible to mistake the hands"--here she just glanced at herown, which, large, white, and well formed, were lying on the table. "With strings, you know, the right hand is as a rule shockinglydefective. "

He found the high clearness of her voice very agreeable after the deeproundnesses of German, and could have gone on listening to it. But shewas brushing the crumbs from her skirt, preparatory to rising. 

"Are you an old resident here?" he queried in the hope of detaining her. 

"Yes, quite. I'm at the end of my second year; and don't know whetherto be glad or sorry, " she answered. "Time goes like a flash. --Now, lookhere, as one who knows the ways of the place, would you let me give youa piece of advice? Yes?--It's this. You intend to enter theConservatorium, you say. Well, be sure you get under a good man--that'shalf the battle. Try and play privately to either Schwarz or Bendel. Ifyou go in for the public examination with all the rest, the people inthe BUREAU will put you to anyone they like, and that is disastrous. Choose your own master, and beard him in his den beforehand. "

"Yes . .. And you recommend? May I ask whom you are with?" he saideagerly. 

"Schwarz is my master; and I couldn't wish for a better. But Bendel isgood, too, in his way, and is much sought after by theAmericans--you're not American, are you? No. --Well, the English colonyruns the American close nowadays. We're a regular army. If you don'twant to, you need hardly mix with foreigners as long as you're here. Wehave our clubs and balls and other social functions--and ourgeniuses--and our masters who speak English like natives . .. Butthere!--you'll soon know all about it yourself. "

She nodded pleasantly and rose. 

"I must be off, " she said. "To-day every minute is precious. Thatwretched PROBE spoils the morning, and directly it is over, I have torush to an organ-lesson--that's why I'm here. For I can't expect aPENSION to keep dinner hot for me till nearly three o'clock--can I?Morning rehearsals are a mistake. What?--you were there, too?Really?--after a night in the train? Well, you didn't get much, didyou, for your energy? A dull aria, an overture that 'belongs in thetheatre, ' as they say here, an indifferently played symphony that onehas heard at least a dozen times. And for us poor pianists, not a freshdish this season. Nothing but yesterday's remains heated up again. "

She laughed as she spoke, and Maurice Guest laughed, too, not beingable at the moment to think of anything to say. 

Getting the better of the waiter, who stood by, napkin on arm, smilingand officious, he helped her into the unbecoming cloak; then took upthe parcel of music and opened the door. In his manner of doing this, there may have been a touch of over-readiness, for no sooner was sheoutside, than she quietly took the music from him, and, without evenoffering him her hand, said a friendly but curt good-bye: almost beforehe had time to return it, he saw her hurrying up the street, as thoughshe had never vouchsafed him word or thought. The abruptness of thedismissal left him breathless; in his imagination, they had walked atleast a strip of the street together. He stepped off the pavement intothe road, that he might keep her longer in sight, and for some time hesaw her head, in the close-fitting hat, bobbing along above the headsof other people. 

On turning again, he found that the waiter was watching him from thewindow of the restaurant, and it seemed to the young man that the pale, servile face wore a malicious smile. With the feeling of disconcertionthat springs from being caught in an impulsive action we have believedunobserved, Maurice spun round on his heel and took a few quick stepsin the opposite direction. When once he was out of range of the window, however, he dropped his pace, and at the next corner stoppedaltogether. He would at least have liked to know her name. And what inall the world was he to do with himself now?

Clouds had gathered; the airy blue and whiteness of the morning hadbecome a level sheet of grey, which wiped the colour out of everything;the wind, no longer tempered by the sun, was chilly, as it whirled downthe narrow streets and freaked about the corners. There was littletemptation now to linger on one's steps. But Maurice Guest was loath toreturn to the solitary room that stood to him for home, to shut himselfup with himself, inside four walls: and turning up his coat collar, hebegan to walk slowly along the curved GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE. But thestreets were by this time black with people, most of whom came hurryingtowards him, brisk and bustling, and gay, in spite of the prevailingdullness, at the prospect of the warm, familiar evening. He wascontinually obliged to step off the pavement into the road, to allow abunch of merry, chattering girls, their cheeks coloured by the windbeneath the dark fur of their hats, or a line of gaudy capped, thicksetstudents, to pass him by, unbroken; and it seemed to him that he wasmore frequently off the pavement than on it. He began to feeldisconsolate among these jovial people, who were hastening forward, with such spirit, to some end, and he had not gone far, before heturned down a side street to be out of their way. Vaguely damped by hisenvironment, which, with the sun's retreat, had lost its charm, he gavehimself up to his own thoughts, and was soon busily engaged in thinkingover all that had been said by his quondam acquaintance of thedinner-table, in inventing neatly turned phrases and felicitousreplies. He walked without aim, in a leisurely way down quiet streets, quickly across big thoroughfares, and paid no attention to where he wasgoing. The falling darkness made the quaint streets look strangelyalike; it gave them, too, an air of fantastic unreality: the dark oldhouses, marshalled in rows on either side, stood as if lost incontemplation, in the saddening dusk. The lighting of the street-lamps, which started one by one into existence, and the conflict with thefading daylight of the uneasily beating flame, that was swept from sideto side in the wind like a woman's hair--these things made hissurroundings seem still shadowier and less real. 

He was roused from his reverie by finding himself on what wasapparently the outskirts of the town. With much difficulty he made hisway back, but he was still far from certain of his whereabouts, when anunexpected turn to the right brought him out on the spaciousAUGUSTUSPLATZ, in front of the New Theatre. He had been in this squareonce already, but now its appearance was changed. The big buildingsthat flanked it were lit up; the file of droschkes waiting for fares, under the bare trees, formed a dotted line of lights. A double row ofhanging lamps before the CAFE FRANCAIS made the corner of theGRIMMAISCHESTRASSE dazzling to the eyes; and now, too, the massivewhite theatre was awake as well. Lights shone from all its highwindows, streamed out through the Corinthian columns and low-porcheddoorways. Its festive air was inviting, after his twilight wanderings, and he went across the square to it. Immediately before the theatre, early corners stood in knots and chatted; programme--and text-vendorscried and sold their wares; people came hurrying from all directions, as to a magnet; hastily they ascended the low steps and disappearedbeneath the portico. 

He watched until the last late-comer had vanished. Only he was left; heagain was the outsider. And now, as he stood there in the desertedsquare, which, a moment before, had been so animated, he had a suddensinking of the heart: he was seized by that acute sense of desolationthat lies in wait for one, caught by nightfall, alone in a strangecity. It stirs up a wild longing, not so much for any particular spoton earth, as for some familiar hand or voice, to take the edge off anintolerable loneliness. 

He turned and walked rapidly back to the small hotel near the railwaystation, at which he was staying until he found lodgings. He was tiredout, and for the first time became thoroughly conscious of this; butthe depression that now closed in upon him, was not due to fatiguealone, and he knew it. In sane moments--such as the present--whenneither excitement nor enthusiasm warped his judgment, he was under noillusion about himself; and as he strode through the darkness, headmitted that, all day long, he had been cheating himself in the usualway. He understood perfectly that it was by no means a matter of merelystretching out his hand, to pluck what he would, from this tree thatwaved before him; he reminded himself with some bitterness that hestood, an unheralded stranger, before a solidly compact body of thingsand people on which he had not yet made any impression. It was the oldstory: he played at expecting a ready capitulation of the whole--godsand men--and, at the same time, was only too well aware of thelaborious process that was his sole means of entry and fellowship. Again--to instance another of his mental follies--the pains he had beenat to take possession of the town, to make it respond to his forcedinterpretation of it! In reality, it had repelled him--yes, he waschilled to the heart by the aloofness of this foreign town, to whichnot a single tie yet bound him. 

By the light of a fluttering candle, in the dingy hotel bedroom, he satand wrote a letter, briefly announcing his safe arrival. About to closethe envelope, he hesitated, and then, unfolding the sheet of paperagain, added a few lines to what he had written. These cost him moretrouble than all the rest. 

ONCE MORE, HEARTY THANKS TO YOU BOTH, MY DEAR PARENTS, FOR LETTING MEHAVE MY OWN WAY. I HOPE YOU WILL NEVER HAVE REASON TO REGRET IT. ONETHING, AT LEAST, I CAN PROMISE YOU, AND THAT IS, THAT NOT A DAY OF MYTIME HERE SHALL BE WASTED OR MISSPENT. YOU HAVE NOT, I KNOW, THE SAMEFAITH IN ME THAT I HAVE MYSELF, AND THIS HAS OFTEN BEEN A BITTERTHOUGHT TO ME. BUT ONLY HAVE PATIENCE. SOMETHING STRONGER THAN MYSELFDROVE ME TO IT, AND IF I AM TO SUCCEED ANYWHERE, IT WILL BE HERE. AND IMEAN TO SUCCEED, IF HUMAN WILL CAN DO IT. 

He threw himself on the creaking wooden bed and tried to sleep. But hisbrain was active, and the street was noisy; people talked late in theadjoining room, and trod heavily in the one above. It was long aftermidnight before the house was still and he fell into an uneasy sleep. 

Towards morning, he had a strange dream, from which he wakened in acold sweat. Once more he was wandering through the streets, as he haddone the previous day, apparently in search of something he could notfind. But he did not know himself what he sought. All of a sudden, onturning a corner, he came upon a crowd of people gathered round someobject in the road, and at once said to himself, this is it, here itis. He could not, however, see what it actually was, for the people, who were muttering to themselves in angry tones, strove to keep himback. At all costs, he felt, he must get nearer to the mysteriousthing, and, in a spirit of bravado, he was pushing through the crowd toreach it, when a great clamour arose; every one sprang back, and fledwildly, shrieking: "Moloch, Moloch!" He did not know in the least whatit meant, but the very strangeness of the word added to the horror, andhe, too, fled with the rest; fled blindly, desperately, up streets anddown, watched, it seemed to him, from every window by a cold, malignanteye, but never daring to turn his head, lest he should see the awfulthing behind him; fled on and on, through streets that grew ever vaguerand more shadowy, till at last his feet would carry him no further: hesank down, with a loud cry, sank down, down, down, and wakened to findthat he was sitting up in bed, clammy with fear, and that dawn wasstealing in at the sides of the window. 

II. 

In Maurice Guest, it might be said that the smouldering unrest of twogenerations burst into flame. As a young man, his father, then a poorteacher in a small provincial town, had been a prey to certain dreamsand wishes, which harmonised ill with the conditions of his life. When, for example, on a mild night, he watched the moon scudding a silvery, cloud-flaked sky; when white clouds sailed swiftly, and soft springbreezes were hastening past; when, in a word, all things seemed to bemaking for some place, unknown, afar-off, where he was not, then he, too, was seized with a desire to be moving, to strap on a knapsack andbe gone, to wander through foreign countries, to see strange cities andhear strange tongues, was unconsciously filled with the desire totaste, lighthearted, irresponsible, the joys and experiences of theWANDERJAHRE, before settling down to face the matter-of-factnesss oflife. And as the present continually pushed the realisation of hisdreams into the future, he satisfied the immediate thirst of his soulby playing the flute, and by breathing into the thin, reedy tones hedrew from it, all that he dreamed of, but would never know. For hepresently came to a place in his life where two paths diverged, and hewas forced to make a choice between them. It was characteristic of theman that he chose the way of least resistance, and having married, moreor less improvidently, he turned his back on the visions that hadhaunted his youth: afterwards, the cares, great and small, that came inthe train of the years, drove them ever further into the background. Want of sympathy in his home-life blunted the finer edges of hisnature; of a gentle and yielding disposition, he took on thecommonplace colour of his surroundings. After years of unhesitatingtoil, it is true, the most pressing material needs died down, but thedreams and ambitions had died, too, never to come again. And as it isin the nature of things that no one is less lenient towards romanticlongings than he who has suffered disappointment in them, who hasfailed to transmute them into reality, so, in this case, the son'sfirst tentative leanings to a wider life, met with a moredeeply-rooted, though less decisive, opposition, on the part of thefather than of the mother. 

But Maurice Guest had a more tenacious hold on life. 

The home in which he grew up, was one of those cheerless, middle-classhomes, across which never passes a breath of the great gladness, theideal beauty of life; where thought never swings itself above thematerial interests of the day gone, the day to come, and existencegrows as timid and trivial as the petty griefs and pleasures thatintersperse it. The days drip past, one by one, like water from a spoutafter a rain-shower; and the dull monotony of them benumbs allwholesome temerity at its core. Maurice Guest had known days of thiskind. For before the irksomeness of the school-bench was well behindhim, he had begun his training as a teacher, and as soon as he hadlearnt how to instil his own half-digested knowledge into the minds ofothers, he received a small post in the school at which his fathertaught. The latter had, for some time, secretly cherished a wish tosend the boy to study at the neighbouring university, to make a scholarof his eldest son; but the longer he waited, the more unfavourable didcircumstances seem, and the idea finally died before it was born. 

Maurice Guest looked back on the four years he had just come through, with bitterness; and it was only later, when he was engrossed heart andsoul in congenial work, that he began to recognise, and be vaguelygrateful for, the spirit of order with which they had familiarised him. At first, he could not recall them without an aversion that was almostphysical: this machine-like regularity, which, in its disregard of moodand feeling, had something of a divine callousness to human stirrings;the jarring contact with automaton-like people; his inadequacy anddistaste for a task that grew day by day more painful. His ownknowledge was so hesitating, so uncertain, too slight forself-confidence, just too much and too fresh to allow him to generalisewith the unthinking assurance that was demanded of him. Yet had anyone, he asked himself, more obstacles to overcome than he, in his efforts toset himself free? This silent, undemonstrative father, who surroundedhimself with an unscalable wall of indifference; this hard-faced, careworn mother, about whose mouth the years had traced deep lines, andfor whom, in the course of a single-handed battle with life, the truereality had come to be success or failure in the struggle for bread. What was art to them but an empty name, a pastime for the drones andidlers of existence? How could he set up his ambitions before them, tobe bowled over like so many ninepins? When, at length, after muchheartburning and conscientious scrupling, he was mastered by ahealthier spirit of self-assertion, which made him rebel against theuselessness of the conflict, and doggedly resolve to put an end to it, he was only enabled to stand firm by summoning to his aid all thestrengthening egoism, which is latent in every more or less artisticnature. To the mother, in her honest narrowness, the son's choice of acalling which she held to be unfitting, was something of a tragedy. Sheallowed no item of her duty to escape her, and moved about the house asusual, sternly observant of her daily task, but her lips werecompressed to a thin line, and her face reflected the anger that burntin her heart, too deep for speech. In the months that followed, Mauricelearnt that the censure hardest to meet is that which is never put intowords, which refuses to argue or discuss: he chafed inwardly againstthe unspoken opposition that will not come out to be grappled with, andoverthrown. And, as he was only too keenly aware, there was more to befaced than a mere determined aversion to the independence with which hehad struck out: there was, in the first place, a pardonably human senseof aggrievedness that the eldest-born should cross their plans andwishes; that, after the year-long care and thought they had bestowed onhim, he should demand fresh efforts from them; and, again, mostharassing of all and most invulnerable, such an entire want of faith inthe powers he was yearning to test--the prophet's lot in the meanblindness of the family--that, at times, it threatened to shake hishard-won faith in himself. --But before the winter drew to a close hewas away. 

Away!--to go out into the world and be a musician--that was his longingand his dream. And he never came to quite an honest understanding withhimself on this point, for desire and dream were interwoven in hismind; he could not separate the one from the other. But when he weighedthem, and allowed them to rise up and take shape before him, it wasinvariably in this order that they did so. In reality, although hehimself was but vaguely conscious of the fact, it was to some extent asmeans to an end, that, when his eyes had been opened to its presence, he clutched--like a drowning man who seizes upon a spar--clutched andheld fast to his talent. But the necessary insight into his powers hadfirst to be gained, for it was not one of those talents which, from thebeginning, strut their little world with the assurance of the peacock. He was, it is true, gifted with an instinctive feeling for the valueand significance of tones--as a child he sang by ear in a small, sweetvoice, which gained him the only notice he received at school, and heeasily picked out his notes, and taught himself little pieces, on theold-fashioned, silk-faced piano, which had belonged to his mother as agirl, and at which, in the early days of her marriage, she had sung ina high, shrill voice, the sentimental songs of her youth. But here, forwant of incentive, matters remained; Maurice was kept close at hisschool-books, and, boylike, he had no ambition to distinguish himselfin a field so different from that in which his comrades won theirspurs. It was only when, with the end of his schooldays in sight, hewas putting away childish things, that he seriously turned hisattention to the piano and his hands. They were those of the pianist, broad, strong and supple, and the new occupation soon engrossed himdeeply; he gave up all his spare time to it, and, in a few months, attained so creditable a proficiency, that he went through a course ofinstruction with a local teacher of music, who, scenting talent, dismissed preliminaries with the assurance of his kind, and initiatedhis pupil into all that is false and meretricious in the literature ofthe piano--the cheaply pathetic, the tinsel of transcription, thetitillating melancholy of Slavonic dance-music--to leave him, but foran increased agility of finger, not a whit further forward than he hadfound him. Then followed months when the phantom of discontent stalkedlarge through Maurice's life, grew, indeed, day by day more tangible, more easily defined; for there came the long, restless summer evenings, when it seemed as if a tranquil darkness would never fall and bar offthe distant, the unattainable; and as he followed some flat, whitecountry road, that was lost to sight on the horizon as a tapering line, or looked out across a stretch of low, luxuriant meadows, the veryplacidity of which made heart and blood throb quicker, in a sense ofopposition: then the desire to have finished with the life he knew, grew almost intolerable, and only a spark was needed to set his resolveablaze. 

It was one evening when the summer had already dragged itself to aclose, that Maurice walked through a drizzling rain to the neighbouringcathedral town, to attend a performance of ELIJAH. It was the firstimportant musical experience of his life, and, carried away by thevolumes of sound, he repressed his agitation so ill, that it becameapparent to his neighbour, a small, wizened, old man, who was leaningforward, his hands hanging between his knees and his eyes fixed on thefloor, alternately shaking and nodding his head. In the intervalbetween the parts, they exchanged a few words, halting, excited onMaurice's part, interrogative on his companion's; when the performancewas over, they walked a part of the way together, and found so much tosay, that often, after this, when his week's work was behind him, Maurice would cover the intervening miles for the pleasure of a fewhours' conversation with this new friend. In a small, dark room, theair of which was saturated with tobacco-smoke, he learned, by degrees, the story of the old musician's life: how, some thirty yearspreviously, he had drifted into the midst of this provincialpopulation, where he found it easy to earn enough for his needs, andwhere his position was below that of a dancing-master; but how, longago, in his youth--that youth of which he spoke with a far-away tone inhis voice, and at which he seemed to be looking out as at a fadingshore--it had been his intention to perfect himself as a pianist. Lifehad been against him; when, the resolve was strongest, poverty andill-heath kept him down, and since then, with the years that passed, hehad come to see that his place would only have been among the multitudeof little talents, whose destiny it is to imitate and vulgarise thestrivings of genius, to swell the over-huge mass of mediocrity. And so, he had chosen that his life should be a failure--a failure, that is, inthe eyes of the world; for himself, he judged otherwise. The truth thatcould be extracted from words was such a fluctuating, relative truth. Failure! success!--what WAS success, but a clinging fast, unabashed bysmile or neglect, to that better part in art, in one's self, thatcannot be taken away?--never for a thought's space being untrue to theideal each one of us bears in his breast; never yielding jot or tittleto the world's opinion. That was what it meant, and he who was proudlyconscious of having succeeded thus, could well afford to regard thelives of others as half-finished and imperfect; he alone was at onewith himself, his life alone was a harmonious whole. 

To Maurice Guest, all this mattered little or not at all; it was merelythe unavoidable introduction. The chief thing was that the old man hadknown the world which Maurice so desired to know; he had seen life, hadlived much of his youth in foreign lands, and had the conversation beenskilfully set agoing in this direction, he would lay a wrinkled hand onhis listener's shoulder, and tell him of this shadowy past, with shorthoarse chuckles of pleasure and reminiscence, which invariably ended ina cough. He painted it in vivid colours, and with the unconsciousheightening of effect that comes natural to one who looks back upon ahappy past, from which the countless pricks and stings that make upreality have faded, leaving in their place a sense of dreamy, unrealbrightness, like that of sunset upon distant hills. He told him ofGermany, and the gay, careless years he had spent there, working at hisart, years of inspiriting, untrammelled progress; told him of famousmusicians he had seen and known, of great theatre performances at whichhe had assisted, of stirring PREMIERES, long since forgotten, ofburning youthful enthusiasms, of nights sleepless with holy excitement, and days of fruitful, meditative idleness. Under the spell of thesereminiscences, he seemed to come into touch again with life, and hiseyes lit with a spark of the old fire. At moments, he forgot hiscompanion altogether, and gazed long and silently before him, noddingand smiling to himself at the memories he had stirred up in his brain, memories of things that had long ceased to be, of people who had longbeen quiet and unassertive beneath their handful of earth, but for whomalone, the brave, fair world had once seemed to exist. Then he wouldlose himself among strange names, in vague histories of those who hadborne these names, and of what they had become in their subsequentjourneyings towards the light, for which they had set out, side byside, with so much ardour (and oftenest what he had to tell was amodest mediocrity); but the greater number of them had lost sight oneof the other; the most inseparable friends had, once parted, soonforgotten. And the bluish smoke sent upwards as he talked, in cloudsand spirals that mounted rapidly and vanished, seemed to Mauricesymbolic of the brief and shadowy lives that were unrolled before him. But, after all this, when the lights came, the piano was opened, andthen, for an hour or two, the world was forgotten in a different way. It was here that the chief landmarks of music emerged from the mists inwhich, for Maurice, they had hitherto been enveloped; here he learnedthat Bach and Beethoven were giants, and made uncertain efforts atappreciation; learnt that Gluck was a great composer, Mozart a geniusof many parts, Mendelssohn the direct successor in this line of kings. Sonatas, symphonies, operas, were hammered out with tremendous forceand precision on the harsh, scrupulously tuned piano; and all weredominated alike by the hoarse voice of the old man, who never wavered, never faltered, but sang from beginning to end with all his might. Eachone of the pleasant hours spent in this new world helped to deepenMaurice's resolution to free himself while there was yet time; each onegave more clearness and precision to his somewhat formless desires;for, in all that concerned his art, the nameless old musician hated hisnative land, with the hatred of the bigot for those who are hostile orindifferent to his faith. 

With a long and hot-chased goal in sight, a goal towards which ourhearts, in joyous eagerness, have already leapt out, it is astonishinghow easy it becomes to make light of the last, monotonous stretch ofroad that remains to be travelled. Is there not, just beyond, aresting-place?--and cool, green shadows? Events and circumstances whichhad hitherto loomed forth gigantic, threatening to crush, now appearedto Maurice trivial and of little moment; he saw them in otherproportions now, for it seemed to him that he was no longer in theirmidst: he stood above them and overlooked them, and, with his eyesfixed upon a starry future, he joyfully prepared himself for his newlife. What is more, those around him helped him to this altered view ofthings. For as the present marched steadily upon the future, devouringas it went; as the departure this future contained took on the shape ofa fact, the countless details of which called for attention, it beganto be accepted as even the most unpalatable facts in the long runusually are, with an ungracious resignation in face of the inevitable. Thus, with all his ardour to be gone, Maurice Guest came to see thelast stage of his home-life almost in a bright light, and even with atouch of melancholy, as something that was fast slipping from him, never to be there in all its entirety, exactly as it now was, again:the last calm hour of respite before he plunged into the triumphs, butalso into the tossings and agitations of the future. 

III. 

It was April, and a day such as April will sometimes bring: one ofthose days when the air is full of a new, mysterious fragrance, whenthe sunshine lies like a flood upon the earth, and high clouds hangmotionless in the far-distant blue--a day at the very heels of which itwould seem that summer was lurking. Maurice Guest stood at his window, both sides of which were flung open, drinking in the warm air, andgazing absently up at the stretch of sky, against which the darkroof-lines of the houses opposite stood out abruptly. His hands were inhis pockets, and, to a light beat of the foot, he hummed softly tohimself, but what, he could not have told: whether some fragment ofmelody that had lingered in a niche of his brain and now came to hislips, or whether a mere audible expression of his mood. The strong, unreal sun of the afternoon was just beginning to reach the house; itslanted in, golden, by the side of the window, and threw on the wallabove the piano, a single long bar of light. 

He leaned over and looked down into the street far below--still no onethere! But it was only half-past four. He stretched himself long andluxuriously, as if, by doing so, he would get rid of a restlessnesswhich arose from repressed physical energy, and also from an impatienceto be more keenly conscious of life, to feel it, as it were, quicken inhim, not unakin to that passionate impulse towards perfection, which, out-of-doors, was urging on the sap and loosening firm green buds: hehad a day's imprisonment behind him, and all spring's magic was at workto ferment his blood. How small and close the room was! He leaned outon the sill, as far out as he could, in the sun. It was shining fulldown the street now, gilding the canal-like river at the foot, andthrowing over the tall, dingy houses on the opposite side, a tawdrybrightness, which, unlike that of the morning with its suggestion ofdewy shade, only served to bring out the shabbiness of broken plasterand paintless window; a shamefaced yet aggressive shabbiness, wherehigh-arched doorways and wide entries spoke to better days, and also toa subsequent decay, now openly admitted in the little placards whichdotted them here and there, bearing the bold-typed words GARCON LOGIS, and dangling bravely yellow from the windows of the cheap lodgings theyproclaimed vacant. It was very still; the hoarse voice of afruit-seller crying his wares in the adjoining streets, was to be heardat intervals, but each time less distinctly, and from the distance camethe faint tones of a single piano. How different it was in the morning!Then, if, pausing a moment from his work, he opened the window andleaned out for a brief refreshment, what a delightful confusion ofsounds met his ear! Pianos rolled noisily up and down, ploughing onethrough the other, beating one against the other, key to key, rhythm torhythm, each in a clamorous despair at being unable to raise its voiceabove the rest, at having to form part of this jumble of discord: someso near at hand or so directly opposite that, none the less, it wasoccasionally possible to follow them through the persistentreiterations of a fugue, or through some brilliant glancing ETUDE, thenotes of which flew off like sparks; others, further away, of whichwere audible only the convulsive treble outbursts and the tonelessrumblings of the bass, now and then cut shrilly through by the piercingsharpness of a violin, now and then, at quieter moments, borne up andaccompanied by the deep, guttural tones of a neighbouring violoncello. This was always discovered at work upon scales, uncertain, hesitatingscales on the lower strings, and, heard suddenly, after the otherinstruments' genial hubbub, it sounded like some inarticulate animalmaking uncouth attempts at expression. At rare intervals there came alull, and then, before all burst forth again together, or fell in, oneby one, a single piano or the violin would, like a solo voice in asymphony, bear the whole burden; or if the wind were in the west, itwould sometimes carry over with it, from the woods on the left, themournful notes of a French horn, which some unskilful player had goneout to practise. 

This was that new world of which he was now a part--into which he hadbeen so auspiciously received. 

Yes, the beginning and the thousand petty disquiets that go withbeginnings, were behind him; he had made a start, and he believed agood one--thanks to Dove. He was really grateful to Dove. A chanceacquaintance, formed on one of those early days when he loitered, timidand unsure, about the BUREAU of the Conservatorium, Dove had taken himup with what struck even the grateful new-comer as extraordinarygood-nature, going deliberately out of his way to be of service to him, meeting him at every turn with assistance and advice. It was Dove whohad helped him over the embarrassments of the examination; it wasthrough Dove's influence that he had obtained a private interview withSchwarz, and, in Dove's opinion, Schwarz was the only master in Leipzigunder whom it was worth while to study; the only one who could berelied on to give the exhaustive TECHNIQUE that was indispensable, without, in the process, destroying what was of infinitely moreaccount, the individuality, the TEMPERAMENT of the student. This andmore, Dove set forth at some length in their conversations; then, warming to his work, he would go further: would go on to speak ofphrasings and interpretations; of an artistic use of the pedals, andthe legitimate participation of the emotions; of the confines ofabsolute music as touched in the Ninth Symphony: would referincidentally to Schopenhauer and make Wagner his authority, using termsthat were new to his hearer, and, now and then, by way of emphasis, bringing his palm down flat and noiselessly upon the table. --It had nottaken them long to become friends; fellow-countrymen, of the same age, with similar aims and interests, they had soon slipped into one of theeasy-going friendships of youth. 

A quarter to five! As the strokes from the neighbouring church--clockdied away, the melody of Siegfried's horn was whistled up from thestreet, and looking over, Maurice saw his friend. He seized his musicand went hastily down the four flights of stairs. 

They crossed the river and came to newer streets. It was delightfulout-of-doors. A light breeze met them as they turned, and a few ragged, fleecy clouds that it was driving up, only made the sky seem bluer, Thetwo young men walked leisurely, laughing and talking rather loudly. Maurice Guest had already, in dress and bearing, taken on a touch ofmusicianly disorder, but Dove's lengthier residence had left no traceupon him; he might have stepped that day from the streets of theprovincial English town to which he belonged. His well brushed clothessat with an easy inelegance, his tie was small, his linen clean, andthe only concession he made to his surroundings, the broad-brimmed, soft felt hat, looked oddly out of place on his close-cut hair. Hecarried himself erectly, swinging a little on his hips. 

As they went, he passed in review the important items of the day:so-and-so had strained a muscle, so-and-so had spoilt a second piano. But his particular interest centred upon that evening'sABENDUNTERHALTUNG. A man named Schilsky, whom it was no exaggeration tocall their finest, very finest violinist was to play Vieuxtemps'Concerto in D. Dove all but smacked his lips as he spoke of it. Inreply to a query from Maurice, he declared with vehemence that thisSchilsky was a genius. Although so great a violinist, he could playalmost every other instrument with case; his memory had become aby-word; his compositions were already famous. At the present moment, he was said to be at work upon a symphonic poem, having for its base anew and extraordinary book, half poetry, half philosophy, a book whichhe, Dove, could confidently assert, would effect a revolution in humanthought, but of which, just at the minute, he was unable to rememberthe name. Infected by his friend's enthusiasm, Maurice here recalledhaving, only the day before, met some one who answered to Dove'sdescription: the genial Pole had been storming up the steps of theConservatorium, two at a time, with wild, affrighted eyes, and a haloof dishevelled auburn hair. --Dove made no doubt that he had been seizedwith a sudden inspiration. 

Gewandhaus and Conservatorium lay close together, in a new quarter ofthe town. The Conservatorium, a handsome, stone-faced building, threelofty storeys high, was just now all the more imposing in appearance asit stood alone in an unfinished street-block, and as, opposite, hoardings still shut in all that had yet been raised of the greatlibrary, which would eventually overshadow it. The severe plainness ofits long front, with the unbroken lines of windows, did not fail toimpress the unused beholder, who had not for very long gone daily outand in; it suggested to him the earnest, unswerving efforts, imperativeon his pursuit of the ideal; an ideal which, to many, was as it werepersonified by the concert-house in the adjoining square: it washither, towards this clear-limned goal, that bore him, like a magiccarpet, the young enthusiast's most ambitious dream. --But in the lifethat swarmed about the Conservatorium, there was nothing of a tediousausterity. It was one of the briskest times of day, and the shortstreet and the steps of the building were alive with young people ofboth sexes. Young men sauntered to and from the cafe at the corner, orstood gesticulating in animated groups. All alike were conspicuous fora rather wilful slovenliness, for smooth faces and bushy hair, whilethe numerous girls, with whom they paused to laugh and trifle, were, for the most part, showy in dress and loudly vivacious in manner. Onthe kerbstone, a knot of the latter, tittering among themselves, shotfurtive glances at Dove and Maurice as they passed. Here, a pretty, laughing face was the centre of a little circle; there, a bevy of girlsclustered about a young man, who, his hands in his pockets, leanedcarelessly against the door-arch; and again, another, plump and muchbefeathered, with a string of large pearlbeads round her fat, whiteneck, had isolated herself from the rest, to take up, on the steps, amore favourable stand. A master who went by, a small, jovial man in abig hat, had a word for all the girls, even a chuck of the chin for oneunusually saucy face. Inside, classes were filing out of the variousrooms, other classes were going in; there was a noisy flocking up anddown the broad, central staircase, a crowding about the notice-board, agoing and coming in the long, stone corridors. The concert-hall wasbeing lighted. 

Maurice slowly made his way through the midst of all these people, while Dove loitered, or stepped out of hearing, with one friend afteranother. In a side corridor, off which, cell like, opened a line ofrooms, they pushed a pair of doubledoors, and went in to take theirlesson. 

The room they entered was light and high, and contained, besides acouple of grand pianos, a small table and a row of wooden chairs. Schwarz stood with his back to the window, biting his nails. He was ashort, thickset man, with keen eyes, and a hard, prominent mouth, whichwas rather emphasised than concealed, by the fair, scanty tuft of hairthat hung from his chin. Upon the two new-comers, he bent a cold, deliberate gaze, which, for some instants, he allowed to restchillingly on them, then as deliberately withdrew, having--so at leastit seemed to those who were its object--having, without the tremor ofan eyelid, scanned them like an open page: it was the look, impenetrable, all-seeing, of the physician for his patient. At thepiano, a young man was playing the Waldstein Sonata. So intent was heon what he was doing, that his head all but touched the music standingopen before him, while his body, bent thus double, swayed vigorouslyfrom side to side. His face was crimson, and on his forehead stood outbeads of perspiration. He had no cuffs on, and his sleeves were alittle turned back. The movement at an end, he paused, and drawing asoiled handkerchief from his pocket, passed it rapidly over neck andbrow. In the ADAGIO which followed, he displayed an extreme delicacy oftouch--not, however, but what this also cost him some exertion, for, previous to the striking of each faint, soft note, his hand described acurve in the air, the finger he was about to use, lowered, the othersslightly raised, and there was always a second of something likesuspense, before it finally sank upon the expectant note. But suddenly, without warning, just as the last, lingering tones were dying to theclose they sought, the ADAGIO slipped over into the limpid gaiety ofthe RONDO, and then, there was no time more for premeditation: then hishands twinkled up and down, joining, crossing, flying asunder, alertwith little sprightly quirks and turns, going ever more nimbly, untilthe brook was a river, the allegretto a prestissimo, which flew wildlyto its end amid a shower of dazzling trills. 

Schwarz stood grave and apparently impassive; from time to time, however, when unobserved, he swept the three listeners with a rapidglance. Maurice Guest was quite carried away; he had never heardplaying like this, and he leaned forward in his seat, and gazed full atthe player, in open admiration. But his neighbour, a pale, thin man, with one of those engaging and not uncommon faces which, in mould offeature, in mildness of expression, and still more in the cut of hairand beard, bear so marked a likeness to the conventionalChrist-portrait: this neighbour looked on with only a languid interest, which seemed unable to get the upper hand of melancholy thoughts. Maurice, who believed his feelings shared by all about him, was chilledby such indifference: he only learned later, after they had becomefriends, that nothing roused in Boehmer a real or lasting interest, save what he, Boehmer, did himself. Dove sat absorbed, as reverent asif at prayer; but there were also moments when, with his head a littleon one side, he wore an anxious air, as if not fully at one with theplayer's rendering; others again, after a passage of peculiarbrilliancy, when he threw at Schwarz a humbly grateful look. WhileSchwarz, the sonata over, was busy with his pencil on the margin of themusic, Dove leaned over to Maurice and whispered behind his hand:"Furst--our best pianist. "

Now came the turn of the others, and the master's attention wandered;he stretched himself, yawned, and sighed aloud, then, in the search forsomething he could not find, turned out on the lid of the second pianothe contents of sundry pockets. While Dove played, he wrote as if forlife in a bulky notebook. 

Maurice remarked this without being properly conscious of it, soimpressed had he been by the sonata. The exultant beauty of the greatfinal theme had permeated his every fibre, inciting him, emboldeninghim, and, still under the sway of this little elation when his own turnto play came, he was the richer by it, and acquitted himself withunusual verve. 

As the class was about to leave the room, Schwarz signed to Maurice toremain behind. For several moments, he paced the floor in silence; thenhe stopped suddenly short in front of the young man, and, with legsapart, one hand at his back, he said in a tone which wavered betweenbeing brutal and confidential, emphasising his words with a series ofsmart pencil-raps on his hearer's shoulder:

"Let me tell you something: if I were not of the opinion that you hadability, I should not detain you this evening. It is no habit of mine, mark this, to interfere with my pupils. Outside this room, most of themdo not exist for me. In your case, I am making an exception, because. .. "--Maurice was here so obviously gratified that the speaker madehaste to substitute: "because I should much like to know how it is thatyou come to me in the state you do. " And without waiting for a reply:"For you know nothing, or, let us say, worse than nothing, since whatyou do know, you must make it your first concern to forget. " He paused, and the young man's face fell so much that he prolonged the pause, toenjoy the discomfiture he had produced. "But give me time, " hecontinued, "adequate time, and I will undertake to make something ofyou. " He lowered his voice, and the taps became more confidential. "There is good stuff here; you have talent, great talent, and, as Ihave observed to-day, you are not wanting in intelligence. But, " andagain his voice grew harsher, his eye more piercing, "understand me, ifyou please, no trifling with other studies; let us have no fiddling, nocomposing. Who works with me, works for me alone. And a lifetime, Irepeat it, a lifetime, is not long enough to master such an instrumentas this!"

He brought his hand down heavily on the lid of the piano, and glared atMaurice as if he expected the latter to contradict him. Then, noisilyclearing his throat, he began anew to pace the room. 

As Maurice stood waiting for his dismissal, with very varied feelings, of which, however, a faint pride was uppermost; as he stood waiting, the door opened, and a girl looked in. She hesitated a moment, thenentered, and going up to Schwarz, asked him something in a low voice. He nodded an assent, nodded two or three times, and with quite anotherface; its hitherto unmoved severity had given way to an indulgentfriendliness. She laid her hat and jacket on the table, and went to thepiano. 

Schwarz motioned Maurice to a chair. He sat down almost opposite her. 

And now came for him one of those moments in life, which, unlooked-for, undivined, send before them no promise of being different, in any way, from the commonplace moments that make up the balance of our days. Nogently graduated steps lead up to them: they are upon us with theviolent abruptness of a streak of lightning, and like this, they, too, may leave behind them a scarry trace. What such a moment holds withinit, is something which has never existed for us before, something ithas never entered our minds to go out and seek--the corner of earth, happened on by chance, which comes most near the Wineland of ourdreams; the page, idly perhaps begun, which brings us a new god; theface of the woman who is to be our fate--but, whatever it may be, letit once exist for us, and the soul responds forthwith, catching inblind haste at the dimly missed ideal. 

For one instant Maurice Guest had looked at the girl before him withunconcern, but the next it was with an intentness that soon becameintensity, and feverishly grew, until he could not tear his eyes away. The beauty, whose spell thus bound him, was of that subtle kind whichleaves many a one cold, but, as if just for this reason, is almostalways fateful for those who feel its charm: at them is lanced itsaccumulated force. The face was far from faultless; there was noregularity of feature, no perfection of line, nor was there more than atouch of the sweet girlish freshness that gladdens like a morning inMay. The features, save for a peremptory turn of mouth and chin, wereunremarkable, and the expression was distant, unchanging . .. But whatwas that to him? This deep white skin, the purity of which was onlybroken by the pale red of the lips; this dull black hair, which layback from the low brow in such wonderful curves, and seemed, of itself, to fall into the loose knot on the neck--there was something romantic, exotic about her, which was unlike anything he had ever seen: she madehim think of a rare, hothouse flower; some scentless, tropical flower, with stiff, waxen petals. And then her eyes! So profound was theirdarkness that, when they threw off their covering of heavy lid, itseemed to his excited fancy as if they must scorch what they rested on;they looked out from the depths of their setting like those of a wildbeast crouched within a cavern; they lit up about them like stars, andwhen they fell, they went out like stars, and her face took on thepallor of early dawn. 

She was playing from memory. She gazed straight before her withfar-away eyes, which only sometimes looked down at her hands, to aidthem in a difficult passage. At her belt, she wore a costly yellowrose, and as she once leaned towards the treble, where both hands wereat work close together, it fell to the floor. Maurice started forward, and picking it up, laid it on the piano; beneath the gaslight, it sanka shadowy gold image in the mirror-like surface. As yet she had paid noheed to him, but, at this, she turned her head, and, still continuingto play, let her eyes rest absently on him. 

They sank their eyes in each other's. A thrill ran through Maurice, aquick, sharp thrill, which no sensation of his later life outdid inkeenness and which, on looking back, he could always feel afresh. Thecolour rose to his face and his heart beat audibly, but he did notlower his eyes, and for not doing so, seemed to himself infinitelybold. A host of confused feelings bore down upon him, well-nighblotting out the light; but, in a twinkling, all were swallowed up inan overpowering sense of gratitude, in a large, vague, happythankfulness, which touched him almost to the point of tears. As itswelled through him and possessed him, he yearned to pour it forth, tomake an offering of this gratefulness--fine tangle of her beauty andhis own glad mood--and, by sustaining her look, he seemed to lay theoffering at her feet. Nor would any tongue have persuaded him that shedid not understand. The few seconds were eternities: when she turnedaway it was as if untold hours had passed over him in a body, like aflight of birds; as if a sudden gulf had gaped between where he now wasand where he had previously stood. 

Dismissed curtly, with a word, he hung about the corridor in the hopeof seeing her again; but the piano went on and on, unceasingly. Here, after some time, he was found by Dove, who carried him off with loudexpressions of surprise. 

The concert was more than half over. The main part of the hall wasbrightly lit and full of people: from behind, one looked across a seaof heads. On the platform at the other end, a girl in red was playing asonata; a master sat by her side, and leant forward, at regularintervals, to turn the leaves of the music. Dove and Maurice remainedstanding at the back, under the gallery, among a portion of theaudience which shifted continuously: those about them wandered in andout of the hall at pleasure, now inside, head in hand, criticallyintent, now out in the vestibule, stretching their legs, lounging ineasy chat. In the pause that followed the sonata, Dove went towards thefront, to join some ladies who beckoned him, and, while some one sang anoisy aria, Maurice gave himself up to his own thoughts. They all ledto the same point: how he should contrive to see her again, how heshould learn her name, and, beside them, everything else seemed remote, unreal; he saw the people next him as if from a distance. But in a waitthat was longer than usual, he was awakened to his surroundings: a stirran over the audience, like a gust of wind over still water; the headsin the seats before him inclined one to another, wagged and nodded;there was a gentle buzz of voices. Behind him, the doors opened andshut, letting in all who were outside: they pressed forwardexpectantly. On his left, a row of girls tried to start a round ofapplause and tittered nervously at their failure. Schilsky had comedown the platform and commenced tuning. He bent his long, thin body ashe pressed his violin to his knee, and his reddish hair fell over hisface. The accompanist, his hands on the keys, waited for the signal tobegin. 

Maurice drew a deep breath of anticipation. But the first shrill, sweetnotes had hardly cut the silence, when, the door opening once more, some one entered and pushed through the standing crowd. He lookedround, uneasy at the disturbance, and found that it was she: what ismore, she came up to his very side. He turned away so hastily that hetouched her arm, causing it to yield a little, and some moments went bybefore he ventured to look again. When he did, in some tremor, he sawthat, without fear of discovery, he might look as long or as often ashe chose. She was listening to the player with the raptness of apainted saint: her whole face listened, the tightened lips, the opennostrils, the wide, vigilant eyes. Maurice, lost in her presence, grewdizzy with the scent of her hair--that indefinable odour, which hassomething of the raciness in it of new-turned earth--and foolish wishesarose and jostled one another in his mind: he would have liked toplunge both hands into the dark, luxuriant mass; still better, cautiously to draw his palm down this whitest skin, which, seen sonear, had a faint, satin-like sheen. The mere imagining of it set himthrobbing, and the excitement in his blood was heightened by thesensuous melancholy of the violin, which, just beyond the pale of hisconsciousness, throbbed and languished with him under the masterful bow. 

Shortly before the end of the concerto, she turned and made her wayout. Maurice let a few seconds elapse, then followed. But the longwhite corridors stretched empty before him; there was no trace of herto be seen. As he was peering about, in places that were strange tohim, a tumult of applause shook the hall, the doors flew open and theaudience poured out. 

Dove had joined other friends, and a number of them left the buildingtogether; everyone spoke loudly and at once. But soon Maurice and Doveoutstepped their companions, for these came to words over the meansused by Schilsky to mount, with bravour, a certain gaudy scale ofoctaves, and, at every second pace, they stopped, and wheeled roundwith eloquent gesture. In their presence Dove had said little; now hegave rein to his feelings: his honest face glowed with enthusiasm, thenames of renowned players ran off his lips like beads off a string, and, in predicting Schilsky a career still more brilliant, his voicegrew husky with emotion. 

Maurice listened unmoved to his friend's outpouring, and the first timeDove stopped for breath, went straight for the matter which, in hiseyes, had dwarfed all others. So eager was he to learn something ofher, that he even made shift to describe her; his attempt fell outlamely, and a second later he could have bitten off his tongue. 

Dove had only half an ear for him. 

"Eh? What? What do you say?" he asked as Maurice paused; but histhoughts were plainly elsewhere. This fact is, just at this moment, hewas intent on watching some ladies: were they going to notice him ornot? The bow made and returned, he brought his mind back to Mauricewith a great show of interest. 

Here, however, they all turned in to Seyffert's Cafe and, seatingthemselves at a long, narrow table, waited for Schilsky, whom theyintended to fete. But minutes passed, a quarter, then half of an hour, and still he did not come. To while the time, his playing of theconcerto was roundly commented and discussed. There was none of the tenor twelve young men but had the complete jargon of the craft at hisfinger-tips; not one, too, but was rancorous and admiring in a breath, now detecting flaws as many as motes in a beam, now heaping praise. Thespirited talk, flying thus helter-skelter through the gamut of opinion, went forward chiefly in German, which the foreigners of the party spokewith various accents, but glibly enough; only now and then did one ofthem spring over to his mother-tongue, to fetch a racy idiom or point ajoke. 

Not having heard a note of Schilsky's playing, Maurice did not trusthimself to say much, and so was free to observe his right-handneighbour, a young man who had entered late, and taken a vacant chairbeside him. To the others present, the new-comer paid no heed, toMaurice he murmured an absent greeting, and then, having called forbeer and emptied his glass at a draught, he appeared mentally to returnwhence he had come, or to engage without delay in some urgent train ofthought. His movements were noiseless, but startlingly abrupt. Thus, after sitting quiet for a time, his head in his hands, he flung back inhis seat with a sort of wildness, and began to stare fixedly at theceiling. His face was one of those, which, as by a mystery, preservethe innocent beauty of their childhood, long after childhood is a thingof the past: delicate as the rosy lining of a great sea-shell was thecolour that spread from below the forked blue veins of the temples, andit paled and came again as readily as a girl's. Girlish, too, were thelimpid eyes, which, but for a trick of dropping unexpectedly, seemedalways to be gazing, in thoughtful surprise, at something that wasvisible to them alone. As to the small, frail body, it existed only forsake of the hands: narrow hands, with long, fleshless fingers, nervoushands, that were never still. 

All at once, in a momentary lull, he leant towards Maurice, and, without even looking up, asked the latter if he could recall theopening bars of the prelude to TRISTAN UND ISOLDE. If so, there was acertain point he would like to lay before him. 

"You see, it's this way, old fellow, " he said confidentially. "I'vecome to the conclusion that if, at the end of the third bar, Wagnerhad----"

"Throw him out, throw him out!" cried an American who was sittingopposite them. "You might as well try to stop a nigger in heat asKrafft on Wagner. "

"That's so, " said another American named Ford, who, on arriving, hadnot been quite sober, and now, after a few glasses of beer, wasexceedingly tipsy. "That's so. As I've always said, it's a disgrace tothe township, a disgrace, sir. Ought to be put down. Why don't he writethem himself?"

From the depths of his brown study, Krafft looked vaguely at thespeakers, and checked, but not discomposed, drew out a notebook andjotted down an idea. 

Meanwhile, at the far end of the table, Boehmer and a Russian violiniststill harped upon the original string. And, having worked out Schilsky, they passed on to Zeppelin, his master, and the Russian, who was notZeppelin's pupil, set to showing with vehemence that his "method" was aworthless one. He was barely started when a wiry American, in a high, grating voice, called Schilsky a wretched fool: why had he not gone toBerlin at Easter, as he had planned, instead of dawdling on here wherehe had no more to gain? At this, several of the young men laughed andlooked significant. Furst--he had proved to be a jolly little man, who, with unbuttoned vest, absorbed large quantities of beer and perspiredfreely--Furst alone was of the opinion, which he expressed forcibly, inhis hearty Saxon dialect, that had Schilsky left Leipzig at thisparticular time, he would have been a fool indeed. 

"Look here, boys, " he cried, pounding the table to get attention. "That's all very well, but he must have an eye to the practical side ofthings, too----"

"DER BIEDERE SACHSE HOCH!" threw in Boehmer, who was Prussian, and of amore ideal cast of mind. 

"--and a chance such as this, he will certainly never have again. Ahundred thousand marks, if a pfennig, and a face to turn after in thestreet! No, he is a confounded deal wiser to stay here and make sure ofher, for that sort is as slippery as an eel. "

"Krafft can tell us; he let her go; is she?--is it true?" shouted halfa dozen. 

Krafft looked up and winked. His reply was so gross and so witty thatthere was a very howl of mirth. 

"KRAFFT HOCH, HOCH KRAFFT!" they cried, and roared again, until theproprietor, a mild, round-faced man, who was loath to meddle with hisbest customers, advanced to the middle of the floor, where he stoodsmiling uneasily and rubbing his hands. 

But it was growing late. 

"Why the devil doesn't he come?" yawned Boehmer. 

"Perhaps, " said Dove, mouthing deliberately as if he had a good thingon his tongue; perhaps, by now, he is safe in the arms of----"

"Jesus or Morpheus?" asked a cockney 'cellist. 

"Safe in the arms of Jesus!" sang the tipsy pianist; but he was outsungby Krafft, who, rising from his seat, gave with dramatic gesture:

 O sink' hernieder, Nacht der Liebe, gieb Vergessen, dass ich lebe . .. 

After this, with much laughter and ado, they broke up to seek anothercafe in the heart of the town, where the absinthe was good and thebilliard-table better, two of his friends supporting Ford, who wastestily debating with himself why a composer should compose his ownworks. At the first corner, Maurice whispered a word to Dove, and, unnoticed by the rest, slipped away. For some time, he heard the soundof their voices down the quiet street. A member of the group, indefiance of the night, began to sing; and then, just as one bird isprovoked by another, rose a clear, sweet voice he recognised asKrafft's, in a song the refrain of which was sung by all:

 Give me the Rose of Sharon, And a bottle of Cyprus wine!

What followed was confused, indistinct, but over and over again heheard:

 . .. The Rose of Sharon, . .. A bottle of Cyprus wine!

until that, too, was lost in the distance. 

When he reached his room, he did not light the lamp, but crossed to thewindow and stood looking out into the darkness. The day's impressions, motley as the changes of a kaleidoscope, seethed in his brain, clamoured to be recalled and set in order; but he kept them back; hecould not face the task. He felt averse to any mental effort, in needof a repose as absolute as the very essence of silence itself. The skywas overcast; a wayward breeze blew coolly in upon him and refreshedhim; a few single raindrops fell. In the air a gentle melancholy wasabroad, and, as he stood there, wax for any passing mood, it descendedon him and enveloped him. He gave himself up to it, unresistingly, allowed himself to toy with it, to sink beneath it. Just, however, ashe was sinking, sinking, he was roused, suddenly, as from sleep, by thevivid presentiment that something was about to happen to him: it seemedas if an important event were looming in the near distance, ready toburst in upon his life, and not only instantly, but with a monstrouscrash of sound. His pulses beat more quickly, his nerves stretched, like bows. But it was very still; everything around him slept, and thestreets were deserted. 

A keen sense of desolation came over him; never, in his life, had hefelt so utterly alone. In all this great city that spread, ocean-like, around him, not a heart was the lighter for his being there. Oh, tohave some one beside him!--some one who would talk soothingly to him, of shadowy, far-off things, or, still better, be merely a sympatheticpresence. He passed rapidly in review people he had known, saw theirfaces and heard their voices, but not one of them would do. No, hewanted a friend, the friend he had often dreamed of, whose thoughtswould be his thoughts, with whom there would be no need of speech. Thenhis longing swelled, grew fiercer and more undefined, and a suddenburst of energy convulsed him and struggled to find vent. His breathcame hard, and he stretched his arms out into the night, uncertainly, as if to grasp something he did not see; but they fell to his sideagain. He would have liked to sweep through the air, to feel the windrushing dizzily through him; or to be set down before some feat thatdemanded the strength of a Titan--anything, no matter what, to be ridof the fever in his veins. But it beset him, again and again, only byslow degrees weakening and dying away. 

A bitter moisture sprang to his eyes. Leaning his head on his arms, heendeavoured to call up her face. But it was of no use, though hestrained every nerve; for some time he could see only the rose that hadlain beside her on the piano, and in the troubled image that at lastcrowned his patience, her eyes looked out, like jewels, from a settingof golden petals. 

Lying wakeful in the darkness, he saw them more clearly. Now, though, they had a bluish light, were like moons, moons that burnt. If he litthe lamp and tried to read, they got between him and the book, anddanced up and down the pages, with jerky, clockwork movements, likestage fireflies. He put the light out, and lay staring vacantly at thepale square of the window. And then, just when he was least expectingit, he saw the whole face, so close to him and so distinctly, that hestarted up on his elbow; and in the second or two it remained--aMedusa-face, opaquely white, with deep, unfathomable eyes--herecognised, with a shock, that his peace of mind was gone; that thesudden experience of a few hours back had given his life new meaning;that something had happened to him which could not be undone; in otherwords--with an incredulous gasp at his own folly--that he was head overears in love. 

Through the uneasy sleep into which he ultimately fell, she, and theyellow rose, and the Rose of Sharon--a giant flower, with monstrouscrimson petals--passed and repassed, in one of those glorious tangles, which no dreamer has ever unravelled. 

When he wakened, it was broad daylight, and things wore a differentaspect. Not that his impression of the night had faded, but it wasforced to retire behind the hard, clear affairs of the morning. He gotup, full of vigour, impatient to be at work, and having breakfasted, sat down at the piano, where he remained until his hands dropped fromthe keys with fatigue. Throughout these hours, his mind ran chiefly onthe words Schwarz had said to him, the previous evening. They rosebefore him in their full significance, and he leisurely chewed thehoneyed cud of praise. "I will undertake to make something of you, undertake to make something of you"--his brain tore the phrase totatters. "Something" was properly vague, as praise should be, andallowed the imagination free scope. Under the stimulus, everything cameeasy; he mastered a passage of bound sixths that had baffled him fordays. And in this elated frame of mind, there was something almostpleasurable in the pang with which he would become conscious of ashadow in the background, a spot on his sun to make him unhappy. 

Unhappy?--no: it gave a zest to his goings--out and comings-in. Throughlong hours of work he was borne up by an ardent hope: afterwards, hemight see her. It made the streets exciting places of possiblesurprises. Might she not, at any moment, turn the corner and be beforehim? Might she not, this very instant, be going in the same directionas he, in the next street? But a very little of this pleasant dallyingwith chance was enough. One morning, when the houses opposite wereablaze with sunshine, and he had settled down to practice with a keenrelish for the obstacles to be overcome; on this morning, within halfan hour, his mood swung round to the other extreme, and, from now on, his desire to see her again was a burning unrest, which roused him fromsleep, and drove him out, at odd hours, no matter what he was doing. Moodily he scoured the streets round the Conservatorium, disconcertedby his own folly, and pricked incessantly by the consciousness of timewasted. A companion at his side might have dispelled the cobwebs; butDove, his only friend, he avoided, for the reason that Dove's unfailinggood spirits needed to be met with a similar mood. And as for speakingof the matter, the mere thought of the detailed explanation that wouldnow be necessary, did he open his lips, filled him with dismay. Whenfour or five days had gone by in this manner, without result, he tookto hanging about, with other idlers, on the steps of theConservatorium, always hoping that she would suddenly emerge from thedoors behind him, or come towards him, a roll of music in her hand. 

But she never came. 

One afternoon, however, as he loitered there, he encountered hisacquaintance of the very first day. He recognised her while she wasstill some distance off, by her peculiar springy gait; at each step, she rose slightly on the front part of her foot, as if her heels wereon springs. As before, she was indifferently dressed; a small, closehat came down over her face and hid her forehead; her skirt seemedshrunken, and hung limp about her ankles, accentuating the straightnessof her figure. But below the brim of the hat her eyes were as bright asever, and took note of all that happened. On seeing Maurice, sheprofessed to remember him "perfectly, " beginning to speak before shehad quite come up to him. 

The following day they met once more at the same place. This time, sheraised her eyebrows. 

"You here again?" she said. 

She disappeared inside the building; but a few minutes later returned, and said she was going for a walk: would he come, too?

He assented, with grateful surprise, and they set off together in thedirection of the woods, as briskly as though they were on an errand. But when they had crossed the suspension-bridge and reached the quieterpaths that ran through the NONNE, they simultaneously slackened theirpace. The luxuriant undergrowth of shrub, which filled in, likelacework, the spaces between the tree-trunks, was sprinkled with itsfirst dots and pricks of green, and the afternoon was pleasant forwalking--sunless and still, and just a little fragrantly damp from allthe rife budding and sprouting. It was a day to further a friendshipmore effectually than half a dozen brighter ones; a day on which tospeak out thoughts which a June sky, the indiscreet playing of fullsunlight, even the rustling of the breeze in the leaves might scare, like fish, from the surface. 

When they had laughingly introduced themselves to each other MauriceGuest's companion talked about herself, with a frankness that leftnothing to be desired, and impressed the young man at her side veryagreeably. Before they had gone far, he knew all about her. Her namewas Madeleine Wade; she came from a small town in Leicestershire, and, except for a step-brother, stood alone in the world. For several years, she had been a teacher in a large school near London, and the positionwas open for her to return to, when she had completed this, the finalyear of her course. Then, however, she would devote herself exclusivelyto the teaching of music, and, with this in view, she had here taken upas many branches of study as she had time for. Besides piano, which washer chief subject, she learned singing, organ, counterpoint, and theelements of the violin. 

"So much is demanded nowadays, " she said in her dear soprano. "And ifyou want to get on, it doesn't do to be behindhand. Of course, it meanshard work, but that is nothing to me--I am used to work and love it. Since I was seventeen--I am twenty-six now--I can fairly say I havenever got up in the morning, without having my whole day mapped andplanned before me. --So you see idlers can have no place on my list ofsaints. "

She spoke lightly, yet with a certain under-meaning. As, however, Maurice Guest, on whom her words made a sympathetic impression, as ofsomething strong and self-reliant--as he did not respond to it, shefell back on directness, and asked him what he had been doing when shemet him, both on this day and the one before. 

"I tell you candidly, I was astonished to find you there again, " shesaid. "As a rule, new-comers are desperately earnest brooms. "

His laugh was a trifle uneasy; and he answered evasively, not meaningto say much. But he had reckoned without the week of silence that laybehind him; it had been more of a strain than he knew, and his pent-upspeech once set agoing could not be brought to a stop. An almostphysical need of communication made itself felt in him; he spoke with avolubility that was foreign to him, began his sentences with aconfidential "You see, " and said things at which he himself was amazed. He related impressions, not facts, and impressions which, until now, hehad not been conscious of receiving; he told unguardedly of his plansand ambitions, and even went back and touched on his home-life, dwelling with considerable bitterness on the scant sympathy he hadreceived. 

His companion looked at him curiously. She had expected a casual answerto her casual words, a surface frankness, such as she herself hadshown, and, at first, she felt sceptical towards this unbiddenconfidence: she did not care for people who gave themselves away at aword; either they were naive to foolishness or inordinately vain. Buthaving listened for some time to his outpourings, she began to feelreassured; and soon she understood that he was talking thus at random, merely because he was lonely and bottled-up. Before he had finished, she was even a little gratified by his openness, and on his confidingto her what Schwarz had said to him, she smiled indulgently. 

"Perhaps I took it to mean more than it actually did, " said Mauriceapologetically. "But anyhow it was cheering to hear it. You see, I mustprove to the people at home that I was right and they were wrong. Failure was preached at me on every side. I was the only soul tobelieve in myself. "

"And you really disliked teaching so?"

"Hated it with all my heart. "

She frankly examined him. He had a pale, longish face, with thin lips, which might indicate either narrow prejudice or a fanatic tenacity. When he grew animated, he had a habit of opening his eyes very wide, and of staring straight before him. At such moments, too, he tossedback his head, with the impatient movements of a young horse. His handsand feet were good, his clothes of a provincial cut. Her fingers itchedto retie the bow of his cravat for him, to pull him here and there intoshape. Altogether, he made the impression upon her of being a veryyoung man: when he coloured, or otherwise grew embarrassed, under hersteady gaze, she mentally put him down for less than twenty. But he hadgood manners; he allowed her to pass before him, where the way grewnarrow; walked on the outside of the path; made haste to draw back anobstreperous branch; and not one of these trifling conventionalitieswas lost on Madeleine Wade. 

They had turned their steps homewards, and were drawing near the edgeof the wood, when, through the tree-trunks, which here were bare andfar apart, they saw two people walking arm in arm; and on turning acorner found the couple coming straight towards them, on the same pathas themselves. In the full flush of his talk, Maurice Guest did not atfirst grasp what was about to happen. He had ended the sentence he wasat, and begun another, before the truth broke on him. Then hestuttered, lost the thread of his thought, was abruptly silent; andwhat he had been going to say, and what, a moment before, had seemed ofthe utmost importance, was never said. His companion did not seem tonotice his preoccupation; she gave an exclamation of what sounded likesurprise, and herself looked steadily at the approaching pair. Thusthey went forward to a meeting which the young man had imagined tohimself in many ways, but not in this. The moment he had waited for hadcome; and now he wished himself miles away. Meanwhile, they walked on, in a brutal, matter-of-fact fashion, and at a fairish pace, though eachstep he took was an event, and his feet were as heavy and awkward as ifthey did not belong to him. 

The other two sauntered towards them, without haste. The man she waswith had his arm through hers, her hand in his left hand, while in hisright he twirled a cane. They were not speaking; she looked before her, rather listlessly, with dark, indifferent eyes. To see this, to seealso that she was taller and broader than he had believed, and in fulldaylight somewhat sallow, Maurice had first to conquer an aversion tolook at all, on account of the open familiarity of their attitude. Itwas not like this that he had dreamt of finding her. And so it happenedthat when, without a word to him, his companion crossed the path andconfronted the other two, he only lingered for an instant, in an agonyof indecision, and then, by an impulse over which he had no control, walked on and stood out of earshot. 

He drew a deep breath, like one who has escaped a danger; but almostsimultaneously he bit his lip with mortification: could any power onearth make it clear to him why he had acted in this way? All histhoughts had been directed towards this moment for so long, only totake this miserable end. A string of contemptuous epithets for himselfrose to his lips. But when he looked back at the group, the reason ofhis folly was apparent to him; at the sight of this other beside her, asharp twinge of jealousy had run through him and disturbed his balance. He gazed ardently at her in the hope that she would look round, but itwas only the man--he was caressing his slight moustache and hitting atloose stones while the girls talked--who turned, as if drawn byMaurice's stare, and looked full at him, with studied insolence. Inhim, Maurice recognised the violinist of the concert, but he, too, wastaller than he had believed, and much younger. A mere boy, said Mauriceto himself; a mere boy, with a disagreeable dissipated face. 

Madeleine Wade came hurrying to rejoin him, apologising for the delay;the meeting had, however, been fortunate, as she had had a message fromSchwarz to deliver. Maurice let a few seconds elapse, then askedwithout preamble: "Who is that?"

His companion looked quickly at him, struck both by his tone and by hisunconscious use of the singular. The air of indifference with which hewas looking out across the meadowland, told its own tale. 

"Schilsky? Don't you know Schilsky? Our Joachim IN SPE?" she asked, totease him. 

Maurice Guest coloured. "Yes, I heard him play the other night, " heanswered in good faith. "But I didn't mean him. I meant the--the ladyhe was with. "

The girl at his side laughed, not very heartily. 

"ET TU, BRUTE!" she said. "I might have known it. It really isremarkable that though so many people don't think Louise goodlooking--Ihave often heard her called plain--yet I never knew a man go past herwithout turning his head. --You want to know who and what she is? Well, that depends on whom you ask. Schwarz would tell you she was one of hismost gifted pupils--but no: he always says that of his pretty girls, and some do find her pretty, you know. "

"She is, indeed, very, " said Maurice with warmth. "Though I thinkpretty is not just the word. "

"No, I don't suppose it is, " said Madeleine, and this time there was anote of mockery in her laugh. But Maurice did not let himself bedeterred. As it seemed likely that she was going to let the subjectrest here, he persisted: "But suppose I asked you--what would you say?"

She gave him a shrewd side-glance. "I think I won't tell you, " shesaid, more gravely. "If a man has once thought a girl pretty, and allthe rest of it, he's never grateful for the truth. If I said Louise wasa baggage, or a minx, or some other horrid thing, you would always bearme a grudge for it, so please note, I don't say it--for we are going tobe friends, I hope?"

"I hope so, too, " said the young man. 

They walked some distance along the unfinished end of theMOZARTSTRASSE, where only a few villas stood, in newly made gardens. 

"At least, I should like to know her name her whole name. You saidLouise, I think?"

She laughed outright at this. "Her name is Dufrayer, Louise Dufrayer, and she has been here studying with Schwarz for about a year and a halfnow. She has some talent, but is indolent to the last degree, and onlyworks when she can't help it. Also she always has an admirer of somekind in tow. This, to-day, is her last particular friend. --Is thatbiographical matter enough?"

He was afraid he had made himself ridiculous in her eyes, and did notanswer. They walked the rest of the way in silence. At her house-door, they paused to take leave of each other. 

"Good-bye. Come and see me sometimes when you have time. We were oncecolleagues, you know, and are now fellow-pupils. I should be glad tohelp you if you ever need help. "

He thanked her and promised to remember; then walked home without, knowing how he did it. He had room in brain for one thought only; heknew her name, he knew her name. He said it again and again to himself, walked in time with it, and found it as heady as wine; the mere soundof the spoken syllables seemed to bring her nearer to him, to establisha mysterious connection between them. Moreover, in itself it pleasedhim extraordinarily; and he was vaguely grateful to something outsidehimself, that it was a name he could honestly admire. 

In a kind of defiant challenge to unseen powers, he doubled his arm andfelt the muscles in it. Then he sat down at his piano, and, to thedismay of his landlady--for it was now late evening--practised for acouple of hours without stopping. And the scales he sent flying up anddown in the darkness had a ring of exultation in them, were like criesof triumph. 

He had discovered the "Open Sesame" to his treasure. And there was timeand to spare. He left everything to the future, in blind trust that itwould bring him good fortune. It was enough that they were heretogether, inhabitants of the same town. Besides, he had formed afriendship with some one who knew her; a way would surely open up, inwhich he might make her aware of his presence. In the meantime, it wassomething to live for. Each day that dawned might be THE day. 

But little by little, like a fountain run dry, his elation subsided, and, as he lay sleepless, he had a sudden fit of jealous despair. Heremembered, with a horrid distinctness, how he had seen her. Again shecame towards them, at the other's side, hand in hand with him, inattentive to all but him. Now he could almost have wept at therecollection. Those clasped hands!--he could have forgiven everythingelse, but the thought of these remained with him and stung him. Here helay, thinking wild and foolish things, building castles that had noearthly foundation, and all the time it was another who had the rightto be with her, to walk at her side, and share her thoughts. Again hewas the outsider; behind these two was a life full of detail andcircumstance, of which he knew nothing. His excited brain called uppictures, imagined fiercely at words and looks, until the darkness andstillness of the room became unendurable; and he sprang up, threw onhis clothing, and went out. Retracing his steps, he found the very spotwhere they had met. Guiltily, with a stealthy look round him, thoughwood and night were black as ink, he knelt down and kissed the gravelwhere he thought she had stood. 

IV. 

It was through Dove's agency--Dove was always on the spot to guide andassist his friends; to advise where the best, or cheapest, or rarest, of anything was to be had, from secondhand Wagner scores to hairpomade; he knew those shops where the "half-quarters" of ham orroast-beef weighed heavier than elsewhere, restaurants where the beerhad least froth and the cutlets were largest for the money; knew theins and outs of Leipzig as no other foreigner did, knew all that wenton, and the affairs of everybody, as though he went through lifegarnering in just those little facts that others were apt to overlook. Through Dove, Maurice became a paying guest at a dinner-table kept bytwo maiden ladies, who eked out their income by providing a plain meal, at a low price, for respectable young people. 

The company was made up to a large extent of English-speakingforeigners. There were several university students--grave-faced, oldermen, with beards and spectacles--who looked down on the youngmusicians, and talked, of set purpose, on abstruse subjects. Morenoteworthy were two American pianists: Ford, who could not carry asingle glass of beer, and played better when he had had more than one;and James, a wiry, red-haired man, with an unfaltering opinion ofhimself, and an iron wrist--by means of a week's practice, he couldruin any piano. Two ladies were also present. Philadelphia Jensen; ofGerman-American parentage, was a student of voice-production, under aSwedish singing master who had lately set musical circles in a ferment, with his new and extraordinary method: its devotees swore that, intime, it would display marvellous results; but, in the meantime, themost advanced pupils were only emitting single notes, and the greaternumber stood, every morning, before their respective mirrors, watchingtheir mouths open and shut, fish-fashion, without producing a sound. Miss Jensen--she preferred the English pronunciation of the J--was alarge, fleshy woman, with a curled fringe and prominent eyes. Herfuture stage-presence was the object of general admiration; it waswhispered that she aimed at Isolde. Loud in voice and manner, she wasfond of proclaiming her views on all kinds of subjects, fromdiaphragmatic respiration, through GHOSTS, which was being read by abold, advanced few, down to the continental methods of regulatingvice--to the intense embarrassment of those who sat next her at table. Still another American lady, Miss Martin, was studying with Bendel, therival of Schwarz; and as she lived in the same quarter of the town asDove and Maurice, the three of them often walked home together. For themost part, Miss Martin was in a state of tragic despair. With thefrankness of her race, she admitted that she had arrived in Leipzig, expecting to astonish. In this she had been disappointed; Bendel hadtreated her like any other of his pupils; she was still playing Haydnand Czerny, and saw endless vistas of similar composers "back ofthese. " Dove laid the whole blame on Bendel's method--which hedenounced with eloquence--and strongly advocated her becoming a pupilof Schwarz. He himself undertook to arrange matters, and, in whatseemed an incredibly short time, the change was effected. For a little, things went better; Schwarz was reported to have said that she hadtalent, great talent, and that he would make something of her; butsoon, she was complaining anew: if there were any difference betweenCzerny and Bertini, Haydn and Dussek, some one might "slick up" andtell her what it was. Off the subject of her own gifts, she was alively, affable girl, with china-blue eyes, pale flaxen hair, andcoal-black eyebrows; and both young men got on well with her, in theusual superficial way. For Maurice Guest, she had the additionalattraction, that he had once seen her in the street with the object ofhis romantic fancy. 

Since the afternoon when he had heard from Madeleine Wade who this was, he had not advanced a step nearer making her acquaintance; though acouple of weeks had passed, though he now knew two people who knew her, and though his satisfaction at learning her name had immediatelyyielded to a hunger for more. And now, hardly a day went by, on whichhe did not see her. His infatuation had made him keen of scent; byfollowing her, with due precaution, he had found out for himself in theBRUDERSTRASSE, the roomy old house she lived in; had found out how shecame and went. He knew her associates, knew the streets she preferred, the hour of day at which she was to be met at the Conservatorium. Faraway, at the other end of one of the quiet streets that lay wide andsunny about the Gewandhaus, when, to other eyes she was a mere speck inthe distance, he learned to recognise her--if only by the speed atwhich his heart beat--and he even gave chase to imaginary resemblances. Once he remained sitting in a tramway far beyond his destination, because he traced, in one of the passengers, a curious likeness to her, in long, wavy eyebrows that were highest in the middle of the forehead. 

Thus the pale face with the heavy eyes haunted him by day and by night. 

He was very happy and very unhappy, by turns--never at rest. If heimagined she had looked observantly at him as she passed, he was elatedfor hours after. If she did not seem to notice him, it was brought hometo him anew that he was nothing to her; and once, when he had gazed tooboldly, instead of turning away his eyes, as she went close by him toSchwarz's room, and she had resented the look with cold surprise, hefelt as culpable as if he had insulted her. He atoned for hisbehaviour, the next time they met, by assuming his very humblest air;once, too, he deliberately threw himself in her way, for the merepleasure of standing aside with the emphatic deference of a slave. Throughout this period, and particularly after an occasion such as thelast, his self-consciousness was so peculiarly intensified that hissurroundings ceased to exist for him--they two were the giganticfigures on a shadow background--and what he sometimes could not believewas, that such feelings as these should be seething in him, and sheremain ignorant of them. He lost touch with reality, and dreamed dreamsof imperceptible threads, finer than any gossamer, which could be spunfrom soul to soul, without the need of speech. 

He heaped on her all the spiritual perfections that answered to herappearance. And he did not, for a time, observe anything to make himwaver in his faith that she was whiter, stiller, and moreunapproachable--of a different clay, in short, from other women. Then, however, this illusion was shattered. Late one afternoon, she came downthe stairs of the house she lived in, and, pausing at the door, lookedup and down the hot, empty street, shading her eyes with her hand. Noone was in sight, and she was about to turn away, when, from where hewas watching in a neighbouring doorway, Maurice saw the red-hairedviolinist come swiftly round the corner. She saw him, too, took a few, quick steps towards him, and, believing herself unseen, looked up in isface as they met; and the passionate tenderness of the look, the suddenlighting of lip and eye, racked the poor, unwilling spy for days. Tosuit this abrupt descent from the pedestal, he was obliged to carve anew attribute to his idol, and laboriously adapt it. 

Schilsky, this insolent boy, was the thorn in his side. It was Schilskyshe was oftenest to be met with; he was her companion at the mostunexpected hours; and, with reluctance, Maurice had to admit to himselfthat she had apparently no thought to spare for anyone else. But it didnot make any difference. The curious way in which he felt towards her, the strange, overwhelming effect her face had on him, took no accountof outside things. Though he might never hope for a word from her;though he should learn in the coming moment that she was the other'spromised wife; he could not for that reason banish her from his mind. His feelings were not to be put on and off, like clothes; he had nopower over them. It was simply a case of accepting things as they were, and this he sought to do. 

But his imagination made it hard for him, by throwing up pictures inwhich Schilsky was all-prominent. He saw him the confidant of her joysand troubles; HE knew their origin, knew what key her day was set in. If her head ached, if she were tired or spiritless, his hand was on herbrow. The smallest events in her life were an open book to him; and itwas these worthless details that Maurice Guest envied him most. He kepta tight hold on his fancy, but if, as sometimes happened, it slippedcontrol, and painted further looks of the kind he had seen exchangedbetween them, a kiss or an embrace, he was as wretched as if he had inreality been present. 

At other times, this jealous unrest was not the bitterest drop in hiscup; it was bitterer to know that she was squandering her love on onewho was unworthy of it. At first, from a feeling of exaggerateddelicacy, he had gone out of his way to escape hearing Schilsky's name;but this mood passed, and gave place to an undignified hankering tolearn everything he could, concerning the young man. What he heardamounted to this: a talented rascal, the best violinist theConservatorium had turned out for years, one to whom all gates wouldopen; but--this "but" always followed, with a meaning smile and a winkof the eye: and then came the anecdotes. They had nothingheaven-scaling in them--these soiled love-stories; this perpetualimpecuniosity; this inability to refuse money, no matter whose the handthat offered it; this fine art in the disregarding of establishedcanons--and, to Maurice Guest, bred to sterner standards, they seemedunspeakably low and mean. Hours came when he strove in vain tounderstand her. Ignorant of these things she could not be; was itwithin the limits of the possible that she could overlook them?--and heshivered lest he should be forced to think less highly of her. Ultimately, sending his mind back over what he had read and heard, drawing on his own slight experience, he came to a compromise withhimself. He said that most often the best and fairest women loved menwho were unworthy of them. Was it not a weakness and a strength of hersex to see good where no good was?--a kind of divine frailty, a wilfulblindness, a sweet inability to discern. 

At times, again, he felt almost content that Schilsky was what he was. If the day should ever come when, all barriers down, he, Maurice Guest, might be intimately associated with her life; if he should ever havethe chance of proving to her what real love was, what a holy mysticthing, how far removed from a blind passing fancy; if he might serveher, be her slave, lay his hands under her feet, lead her up and on, all suffused in a sunset of tenderness: then, she would see that whatshe had believed to be love had been nothing but a FATA MORGANA, amirage of the skies. And he heard himself whispering words ofincredible fondness to her, saw her listening with wonder in her eyes. 

At still other moments, he was ready to renounce every hope, if, bydoing so, he could add jot or tittle to her happiness. 

The further he spun himself into his dreams, however, and the better helearnt to know her in imagination, the harder it grew to take the firststep towards realising his wishes. In those few, brief days, when hehugged her name to him as a talisman, he waited cheerfully forsomething to happen, something unusual, that would bring him to hernotice--a dropped handkerchief, a seat vacated for her at a concert, even a timely accident. But as day after day went by, in eventlessmonotony, he began to cast about him for human aid. From Dove, hisdaily companion, Dove of the outstretched paws of continual help, henow shrank away. Miss Martin was not to be spoken to except in Dove'scompany. There was only one person who could assist him, if she would, and that was Madeleine Wade. He called to mind the hearty invitationshe had given him, and reproached himself for not having takenadvantage of it. 

One afternoon, towards six o'clock, he rang the bell of her lodgings inthe MOZARTSTRASSE. This was a new street, the first blocks of whichgave directly on the Gewandhaus square; but, at the further end, whereshe lived, a phalanx of redbrick and stucco fronts looked primly acrossat a similar line. In the third storey of one of these houses, Madeleine Wade had a single, large room, the furniture of which was soskilfully contrived, that, by day, all traces of the room's doublecalling were obliterated. 

As he entered, on this first occasion, she was practising at a grandpiano which stood before one of the windows. She rose at once, and, having greeted him warmly, made him sit down among the comfortablecushions that lined the sofa. Then she took cups and saucers from acupboard in the wall, and prepared tea over a spirit-lamp. He soon feltquite at home with her, and enjoyed himself so well that many suchinformal visits followed. 

But the fact was not to be denied: it was her surroundings thatattracted him, rather than she herself. True, he found her franknessdelightfully "refreshing, " and when he spoke of her, it was as of an"awfully good sort, " "a first-class girl"; for Madeleine was invariablylively, kind and helpful. At the same time, she was without doubt atrifle too composed, too sure of herself; she had too keen an eye forhuman foibles; she came towards you with a perfectly natural openness, and she came all the way--there was nothing left for you to explore. And when not actually with her, it was easy to forget her; there wasnever a look or a smile, never a barbed word, never a suddenspontaneous gesture--the vivid translation of a thought--to stampitself on your memory. 

But it was only at the outset that he thought things like these. Madeleine Wade had been through experiences of the same kind before;and hardly a fortnight later they were calling each other by theirChristian names. 

When he came to her, towards evening, tired and inclined to be lonely, she seated him in a corner of the sofa, and did not ask him to say muchuntil she made the tea. Then, when the cups were steaming in front ofthem, she discussed sympathetically with him the progress of his work. She questioned him, too, about his home and family, and he read herparts of his mother's letters, which arrived without fail every Tuesdaymorning. She also drew from him a more detailed account of his previouslife; and, in this connection, they had several animated discussionsabout teaching, a calling to which Madeleine looked composedly forwardto returning, while Maurice, in strong superlative, declared he hadrather force a flock of sheep to walk in line. She told him, too, someof the gossip the musical quarter of the town was rife with, aboutthose in high places; and, in particular, of the bitter rivalry thathad grown up with the years between Schwarz and Bendel, the chiefmasters of the piano. If these two met in the street, they passed eachother with a stony stare; if, at an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, a pupil of onewas to play, the other rose ostentatiously and left the hall. She alsohinted that in order to obtain all you wanted at the Conservatorium, tobe favoured above your fellows, it was only necessary flagrantly tobribe one of the clerks, Kleefeld by name, who was open to receiveanything, being wretchedly impecunious and the father of a large family. 

Finding, too, that Maurice was bent on learning German, she, who spokethe language fluently, proposed that they should read it together; andsoon it became their custom to work through a few pages of QUINTUSFIXLEIN, a scene or two of Schiller, some lyrics of Heine. They alsobegan to play duets, symphonies old and new, and Madeleine took careconstantly to have something fresh and interesting at hand. To all thisthe young man brought an unbounded zeal, and, if he had had his way, they would have gone on playing or reading far into the evening. 

She smiled at his eagerness. "You absorb like a sponge. "

When it grew too dark to see, he confided to her that his dearest wishwas to be a conductor. He was not yet clear how it could be managed, but he was sure that this was the branch of his art for which he hadmost aptitude. 

Here she interrupted him. "Do you never write verses?"

Her question seemed to him so meaningless that he only laughed, andwent on with what he was saying. For the event of his plan provingimpracticable--at home they had no idea of it--he was training as aconcert-player; but he intended to miss no chance that offered, oflearning how to handle an orchestra. 

Throughout these hours of stimulating companionship, however, he didnot lose sight of his original purpose in going to see Madeleine. Itwas only that just the right moment never seemed to come; and the namehe was so anxious to hear, had not once been mentioned between them. Often, in the dusk, his lips twitched to speak it; but he feared hisown awkwardness, and her quick tongue; then, too, the subject wasusually far aside from what they were talking of, and it would havemade a ludicrous impression to drag it in by the hair. 

But one day his patience was rewarded. He had carelessly taken up apaper-bound volume of Chopin, and was on the point of commenting uponit, for he had lately begun to understand the difference between aLitolff and a Mikuli. But it slipped from his hand, and he was obligedto crawl under the piano to pick it up; on a corner of the cover, in abig, black, scrawly writing, was the name of Marie Louise Dufrayer. Hecleared his throat, laid the volume down, took it up again; then, realising that the moment had come, he put a bold face on the matter. 

"I see this belongs to Miss Dufrayer, " he said bluntly, and, as hiscompanion's answer was only a careless: "Yes, Louise forgot it the lasttime she was here, " he went on without delay: "I should like to knowMiss Dufrayer, Madeleine. Do you think you could introduce me to her?"

Madeleine, who was in the act of taking down a book from her hangingshelves, turned and looked at him. He was still red in the face, fromthe exertion of stooping. 

"Introduce you to Louise?" she queried. "Why?--why do you want to beintroduced to her?"

"Oh, I don't know. For no particular reason. "

She sat down at the table, opened the book, and turned the leaves. 

"Oh well, I daresay I can, if you wish it, and an opportunityoccurs--if you're with me some day when I meet her. --Now shall we go onwith the JUNGFRAU? We were beginning the third act, I think. Here it is:

 Wir waren Herzensbruder, Waffenfreunde, Fur eine Sache hoben wir den Arm!"

But Maurice did not take the book she handed him across the table. 

"Won't you give me a more definite promise than that?"

Madeleine sat back in her chair, and, folding her arms, lookedthoughtfully at him. 

Only a momentary silence followed his words, but, in this fraction oftime, a series of impressions swept through her brain with thecontinuity of a bird's flight. It was clear to her at once, that whatprompted his insistence was not an ordinary curiosity, or a passingwhim; in a flash, she understood that here, below the surface, something was at work in him, the existence of which she had not evensuspected. She was more than annoyed with herself at her own foolishobtuseness; she had had these experiences before, and then, as now, theobject of her interest had invariably been turned aside by the firstpretty, silly face that came his way. The main difference was that shehad been more than ordinarily drawn to Maurice Guest; and, believing itimpossible, in this case, for anyone else to be sharing the field withher, she had over-indulged the hope that he sought her out for herselfalone. 

She endeavoured to learn more. But this time Maurice was on his guard, and the questions she put, straight though they were, only elicited theresponse that he had seen Miss Dufrayer shortly after arriving, and hadbeen much struck by her. 

Madeleine's brain travelled rapidly backwards. "But if I rememberrightly, Maurice, we met Louise one day in the SCHEIBENHOLZ, the firsttime we went for a walk together. Why didn't you stop then, and beintroduced to her, if you were so anxious?"

"Why do we ever do foolish things?"

Her amazement was so patent that he made uncomfortable apology forhimself. "It is ridiculous, I know, " he said and coloured. "And it mustseem doubly so to you. But that I should want to know her--there'snothing strange in that, is there? You, too, Madeleine, have surelyadmired people sometimes--some one, say, who has done a fine thing--andhave felt that you must know them personally, at all costs?"

"Perhaps I have. But romantic feelings of that kind are sure to end insmoke. As a rule they've no foundation but our own wishes. --If you takemy advice, Maurice, you will be content to admire Louise at a distance. Think her as pretty as you like, and imagine her to be all that's sweetand charming: but never mind about knowing her. "

"But why on earth not?"

"Why, nothing will come of it. "

"That depends on what you mean by nothing. "

"You don't understand. I must be plainer. --Do sit down, and don'tfidget so. --How long have you been here now? Nearly two months. Well, that's long enough to know something of what's going on. You must haveboth seen and heard that Louise has no eyes for anyone but a certainperson, to put it bluntly, that she is wrapped up in Schilsky. This hasbeen going on for over a year now, and she seems to grow moreinfatuated every day. When she first came to Leipzig, we were friends;she lived in this neighbourhood, and I was able to be of service toher. Now, weeks go by and I don't see her; she has broken with everyone--for Louise is not a girl to do things by halves. --Introduce you?Of course I can. But suppose it done, with all pomp and ceremony, whatwill you get from it? I know Louise. A word or two, if her ladyship isin the mood; if not, you will be so much thin air for her. And afterthat, a nod if she meets you in the street--and that's all. "

"It's enough. "

"You're easily satisfied. --But tell me, honestly now, Maurice, whatpossible good can that do you?"

He moved aimlessly about the room. "Good? Must one always look for goodin everything?--I can see quite well that from your point of view thewhole thing must seem absurd. I expect nothing whatever from it, butI'm going to know her, and that's all about it. "

Still in the same position, with folded arms, Madeleine observed himwith unblinking eyes. 

"And you won't bear me a grudge, if things go badly?--I mean if you aredisappointed, or dissatisfied?"

He made a gesture of impatience. 

"Yes, but I know Louise, and you don't. "

He had picked up from the writing-table the photograph of a curate, andhe stared at it as if he had no thought but to let the mild featuresstamp themselves on his mind. Madeleine's eyes continued to bore himthrough. At last, out of a silence, she said slowly: "Of course I canintroduce you--it's done with a wave of the hand. But, as your friend, I think it only right to warn you what you must expect. For I can seeyou don't understand in the least, and are laying up a bigdisappointment for yourself. However, you shall have your way--if onlyto show you that I am right. "

"Thanks, Madeleine--thanks awfully. "

They settled down to read Schiller. But Maurice made one slip afteranother, and she let them pass uncorrected. She was annoyed withherself afresh, for having made too much of the matter, for havingblown it up to a fictitious importance, when the wiser way would havebeen to treat it as of no consequence at all. 

The next afternoon he arrived, with expectation in his face; but not onthis day, nor the next, nor the next again, did she bring the subjectup between them. On the fourth, however, as he was leaving, she saidabruptly: "You must have patience for a little, Maurice. Louise hasgone to Dresden. "

"That's why the blinds are down, " he exclaimed without thinking, thencoloured furiously at his own words, and, to smooth them over, asked:"Why has she gone? For how long?"

But Madeleine caught him up. "SIEH DA, some one has been playingsentinel!" she said in raillery; and it seemed to him that every foldin his brain was laid bare to her, before she answered: "She has gonefor a week or ten days--to visit some friends who are staying there. "

He nodded, and was about to open the door, when she added: "But setyour mind at rest--HE is here. "

Maurice looked sharply up; but a minute or two passed before the truemeaning of her words broke on him. He coloured again--a mortifyinghabit he had not outgrown, and one which seemed to affect him more inthe presence of Madeleine than of anyone else. 

"It's hardly a thing to joke about. "

"Joke!--who is joking?" she asked, and raised her eyebrows so high thather forehead was filled with wrinkles. "Nothing was further from mythoughts. "

Maurice hesitated, and stood undecided, holding the doorhandle. Then, following an impulse, he turned and sat down again. "Madeleine, tellme--I wouldn't ask anyone but you--what sort of a fellow IS thisSchilsky?"

"What sort of a fellow?" She laughed sarcastically. "To be quitetruthful, Maurice, the best fiddler the Con. Has turned out for years. "

"Now you're joking again. As if I didn't know that. Everyone says thesame. "

"You want his moral character? Well, I'll be equally candid. Or, atleast, I'll give you my opinion of him. It's another superlative. Justas I consider him the best violinist, I also hold him to be thegreatest scamp in the place--and I've no objection to use a strongerword if you like. I wouldn't take his hand, no, not if he offered it tome. The last time he was in this room, about six months ago, he--well, let us say he borrowed, without a word to me, five or six marks thatwere lying loose on the writing-table. Yes, it's a fact, " she repeated, complacently eyeing Maurice's dismay. "Otherwise?--oh, otherwise, hewas born, I think, with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has one pieceof luck after another. Zeppelin discovered him ten years ago, on aconcert-tour--his father is a smith in Warsaw--and brought him toLeipzig. He was a prodigy, then, and a rich Jewish banker took him up, and paid for his education; and when he washed his hands of him indisgust, Schaefele's wife--Schaefele is head of the HANDELVEREIN, youknow--adopted him as a son--some people say as more than a son, for, though she was nearly forty, she was perfectly crazy over him, andbehaved as foolishly as any of the dozens of silly girls who have losttheir hearts to him. "

"I suppose they are engaged, " said Maurice after a pause, speaking outof his own thoughts. 

"Do you?" she asked with mild humour. "I really never asked them. --Butthis is just another example of his good fortune. When he has worn outevery one else's patience, through his dishonest extravagance, he picksup a rich wife, who is not averse to supporting him before marriage. "

Maurice looked at her reproachfully. "I wonder you care to repeat suchgossip. "

"It's not gossip, Maurice. Every one knows it. Louise makes no mysteryof her doings--doesn't care that much what people say. While as forhim--well, it's enough to know it's Schilsky. The thing is an opensecret. Listen, now, and I'll tell you how it began--just to let youjudge for yourself what kind of a girl you have to deal with in Louise, and how Schilsky behaves when he wants a thing, and whether such a pairthink a formal engagement necessary to their happiness. When Louisecame here, a year and a half ago, Schilsky was away somewhere withZeppelin, and didn't get back till a couple of months afterwards. As Isaid, I knew Louise pretty well at that time; she had got herself intotrouble with--but that's neither here nor there. Well, my lordreturns--he himself tells how it happened. It was a Thursday evening, and a Radius Commemoration was going on at the Con. He went in late, and stood at the back of the hall. Louise was there, too, just beforehim, and, from the first minute he saw her, he couldn't take his eyesoff her--others who were by say, too, he seemed perfectly fascinated. No one can stare as rudely as Schilsky, and he ended by making her souncomfortable that she couldn't bear it any longer, and went out of thehall. He after her, and it didn't take him an hour to find out allabout her. The next evening, at an ABEND, they were both there again itwas just like Louise to go!--and the same thing was repeated. She leftagain before it was over, he followed, and this time found her in oneof the side corridors; and there--mind you, without a single wordhaving passed between them!--he took her in his arms and kissed her, kissed her soundly, half a dozen times--though they had never oncespoken to each other: he boasts of it to this day. That sameevening----"

"Don't, Madeleine--please, don't say any more! I don't care to hearit, " broke in Maurice. He had flushed to the roots of his hair, at somepoints of resemblance to his own case, then grown pale again, and nowhe waved his arm meaninglessly in the air. "He is a scoundrel, a--a----" But he recognised that he could not condemn one without theother, and stopped short. 

"My dear boy, if I don't tell you, other people will. And at least youknow I mean well by you. Besides, " she went on, not without a touch ofmalice as she eyed him sitting there, spoiling the leaves of a book. "Besides, I may as well show you, how you have to treat Louise, if youwant to make an impression on her. You call him a scoundrel, but whatof her? Believe me, Maurice, " she said more seriously, "Louise is not awhit too good for him; they were made for each other. And of course hewill marry her eventually, for the sake of her, money "--here shepaused and looked deliberately at him--"if not for her own. "

This time there was no mistaking the meaning of her words. 

"Madeleine!"

He rose from his seat with such force that the table tilted. 

But Madeleine did not falter. "I told you already, you know, thatLouise doesn't care what is said about her. As soon as this unfortunateaffair began, she threw up the rooms she was in at the time, and movednearer the TALSTRASSE--where he lives. Rumour has it also that sheprovided herself with an accommodating landlady, who can be blind anddeaf when necessary. "

"How CAN you repeat such atrocious scandal?"

He stared at her, in incredulous dismay. Her words were so many arrows, the points of which remained sticking in him. 

She shrugged her shoulders. "Your not believing it doesn't affect thetruth of the story, Maurice. It was the talk of the place when ithappened. And you may despise rumour as you will, my experience is, areport never springs up that hasn't some basis of fact to goon--however small. "

He choked back, with an effort, the eloquent words that came to hislips; of what use was it to make himself still more ridiculous in hereyes? His hat had fallen to the floor; he picked it up, and brushed iton his sleeve, without knowing what he did. "Oh, well, of course, ifyou think that, " he said as coolly as he was able, "nothing I could saywould make any difference. Every one is free to his opinions, Isuppose. But, all the same, I must say, Madeleine"--he grew hot inspite of himself. "You have been her friend, you say; you have knownher intimately; and yet just because she . .. She cares for this fellowin such a way that she sets caring for him above being cautious--why, not one woman in a thousand would have the courage for that sort ofthing! It needs courage, not to mind what people--no, what your friendsimagine, and how falsely they interpret what you do. Besides, one hasonly to look at her to see how absurd it is. That face and--I don'tknow her, Madeleine; I've never spoken to her, and never may, yet I amabsolutely certain that what is said about her isn't true. So certainthat--But after all, if this is what you think about . .. About it, thenall I have to say is, we had better not discuss the subject again. Itdoes no good, and we should never be of the same opinion. "

Not without embarrassment, now that he had said his say, he turned tothe door. But Madeleine was not in the least angry. She gave him herhand, and said, with a smile, yet gravely, too: "Agreed, Maurice! Wewill not speak of Louise again. "

V. 

He shunned Madeleine for days after this. He was morose and unhappy, and brooded darkly over the baseness of wagging tongues. For the firsttime in his life he had come into touch with slander, that invisibleHydra, and straightway it seized upon the one person to whom he was notindifferent. In this mood it was a relief to him that certain threewindows in the BRUDERSTRASSE remained closed and shuttered; with theload of malicious gossip fresh on his mind, he chose rather not to seeher; he must first accustom himself to it, as to the scar left by awound. 

He did not, of course, believe what Madeleine, with her infernalfrankness, had told him; but the knowledge that such a report wasabroad, depressed him unspeakably: it took colour from the sky andlight from the sun. Sometimes in these days, as he sat at his piano, hehad a sudden fit of discouragement, which made it seem not worth whileto continue playing. It was unthinkable that she could be aware howbusy scandal was with her name, and how her careless acts were spied onand misrepresented; and he turned over in his mind ways and means bywhich she might be induced to take more thought for herself in future. 

He did not believe it; but hours of distracting uncertainty came, nonethe less, when small things which his memory had stored up made him goso far as to ask himself, what if it should be true?--what then? But hehad not courage enough to face an answer; he put the possibility awayfrom him, in the extreme background of his mind, refused to let hisbrain piece its observations together. The mere suspicion was ablasphemy, a blasphemy against her dignified reserve, against her sweetpale face, her supreme disregard of those about her. Not thus wouldguilt have shown itself. 

Schilsky, who was the origin of all the evil, he made wide circuits toavoid. He thought of him, at this time, with what he believed to be afeeling of purely personal antipathy. In his most downcast moments, hehad swift and foolish visions publicly executing vengeance on him; butif, a moment later, he saw the violinist's red hair or big hat beforehim in the street, he turned aside as though the other had beenplague-struck. Once, however, when he was going up the steps of theConservatorium, and Schilsky, in leaping down, pushed carelesslyagainst him, he returned the knock so rudely and swore with suchdownrightness that, in spite of his hurry, Schilsky stopped and fixedhim, and with equal vehemence damned him for a fool of an Englishman. 

His despondency spread like a weed. A furious impatience overcame him, too, at the thought of the innumerable hours he would be forced tospend at the piano, day in, day out, for months to come, before theresult could be compared with the achievements even of many afellow-student. As the private lessons Schwarz gave were too expensivefor him, he decided, as a compromise, to take a course of extra lessonswith Furst, who prepared pupils for the master, and was quite willingto come to terms, in other words, who taught for what he could get. 

Once a week, then, for the rest of the summer, Maurice climbed thesteep, winding stair of the house in the BRANDVORWERKSTRASSE whereFurst lived with his mother. It was so dark on this stair that, in dullweather, ill-trimmed lamps burnt all day long on the differentlandings. To its convolutions, in its unaired corners, clung whatseemed to be the stale, accumulated smells of years; and these werecontinually reinforced; since every day at dinnertime, the variouskitchen-windows, all of which gave on the stair, were opened to let thepiercing odours of cooking escape. The house, like the majority of itskind in this relatively new street, was divided into countless smalllodgings; three families, with three rooms apiece, lived on eachstorey, and on the fifth floor, at the top of the house, the samenumber of rooms was let out singly. Part of the third storey wasoccupied by a bird-fancier; and between him and the Fursts above wagedperpetual war, one of those petty, unending wars that can only ariseand be kept up when, as here, such heterogeneous elements are forced tolive side by side, under one roof. The fancier, although his businesswas nominally in the town, had enough of his wares beside him to makehis house a lively, humming kind of place, and the strife dated back toa day when, the door standing temptingly ajar, Peter, the Fursts' leancat, had sneaked stealthily in upon this, to him, enchanted ground, and, according to the fancier, had caused the death, from fright, of adelicate canary, although the culprit had done nothing more than sitbefore the cage, licking his lips. This had happened several years ago, but each party was still fertile in planning annoyances for the other, and the females did not bow when they met. On the fourth floor, nextthe Fursts, lived a pale, harassed teacher, with a family which hadlong since outgrown its accommodation; for the wife was perpetually inchildbed, and cots and cradles were the chief furniture of the house. As the critical moments of her career drew nigh, the "Frau Lehrer"complained, with an aggravated bitterness, of the unceasing music thatwent on behind the thin partition; and this grievance, together withthe racy items of gossip left behind the midwife's annual visit, like atrail of smoke, provided her and Furst's mother with infinite food fortalk. They were thick friends again a few minutes after a scene solively that blows seemed imminent, and they met every morning on thelanding, where, with broom or child in hand, they stood gossiping bythe hour. 

When Maurice rang, Frau Furst opened the door to him herself, havingfirst cautiously examined him through the kitchen window. Drying herhands on her apron, she ushered him through the tiny entry--a place ofdangers, pitch-dark as it was, and lumbered with chests andpresses--into Franz's room, the "best room" of the house. Here werecollected a red plush suite, which was the pride of Frau Furst's heart, and all the round, yellowing family photographs; here, too, stood thewell-used Bechstein, pile upon pile of music, a couple of music-stands, a bust of Schubert, a faded, framed diploma. For years, assuredly, thewindows had never been thrown wide open; the odours of stale coffee andforgotten dinners, of stove and warmed wood, of piano, music andbeeswax: all these lay as it were in streaks in the atmosphere, andmade it heavy and thought-benumbing. 

A willing listener was worth more than gold to Frau Furst and here, thefirst time he came, while waiting for Franz, Maurice heard in detailthe history of the family. The father had been an oboist in theGewandhaus orchestra, and had died a few years previously, of a chillincurred after a performance of DIE MEISTERSINGER. At his death, it hadfallen on Franz to support the family; and, thanks to Schwarz's aid andinfluence, Franz was able to get as many pupils as he had time toteach. It was easy to see that this, her eldest son, was the apple ofFrau Furst's eye; her other children seemed to be there only to meethis needs; his lightest wish was law. Each additional pupil that soughthim out, was a fresh tribute to his genius, each one that left him, nomatter after how long, was unthankful and a traitor. For the nights onwhich his quartet met at the house, she prepared as another woman wouldfor a personal fete; and she watched the candles grow shorter without atinge of regret. When Franz played at an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, the familyturned out in a body. Schwarz was a god, all-powerful, on whom theirwelfare depended; and it was necessary to propitiate him by a quarterlyvisit on a Sunday morning, when, over wine and biscuits, she wept realand feigned tears of gratitude. 

In this hard-working, careworn woman, who was seldom to be seen but inpetticoat, bed-jacket, and heelless, felt shoes; who, her whole lifelong, had been little better than a domestic servant; in her thereexisted a devotion to art which had never wavered. It would have seemedto her contrary to nature that Franz should be anything but a musician, and it was also quite in the order of things for them to be poor. Twoyounger boys, who were still at school, gave up all their leisure timeto music--they had never in their lives tumbled round a football orswung a bat--and Franz believed that the elder would prove a skilfulviolinist. Of the little girls, one had a pure voice and a good ear, and was to be a singer--for before this Juggernaut, prejudice wentdown. Had anyone suggested to Frau Furst that her daughter should be aclerk, even a teacher, she would have flung up hands of horror; butmusic!--that was a different matter. It was, moreover, the single oneof the arts, in which this staunch advocate of womanliness granted hersex a share. 

"Ask Franz, " she said to Maurice. "Franz knows. He will explain. Allwomen can do is to reproduce what some one else has thought or felt. "

As an immortal example of the limits set by sex, she invariably fellback on Clara Schumann, with whom she had more than once come intopersonal contact. In her youth, Frau Furst had had a clear sopranovoice, and, to Maurice's interest, she told him how she had sometimesbeen sent for to the Schumann's house in the INSELSTRASSE, to singRobert's songs for him. 

"Clara accompanied me, " she said, relating this, the great reminiscenceof her life; "and he was there, too, although I never saw him face toface. He was too shy for that. But he was behind a screen, andsometimes he would call: 'I must alter that; it is too high;' or'Quicker, quicker!' Sometimes even 'Bravo!'"

Her motherly ambitions for Franz knew no bounds. One of the fewdiversions she allowed herself was a visit to the theatre--when Franzhad tickets given to him; when one of her favourite operas wasperformed; or on the anniversary of her husband's death--and, on suchoccasions, she pointed out to the younger children, the links thatbound and would yet bind them to the great house. 

"That was your father's seat, " she reminded them every time. "Thesecond row from the end. He came in at the door to the left. And that, "pointing to the conductor's raised chair, "is where Franz will sit someday. " For she dreamed of Franz in all the glory of KAPELLMEISTER; sawhim swinging the little stick that dominated the theatre-audience, singers and players alike. 

And the children, hanging over the high gallery, shuffling theirrestless feet, thus had their path as dearly traced for them, theirdestiny as surely sealed, as any fate-shackled heroes of antiquity. 

* * * * *

Late one afternoon about this time, Franz might have been foundtogether with his friends Krafft and Schilsky, at the latter's lodgingin the TALSTRASSE. He was astride a chair, over the back of which hehad folded his arms; and his chubby, rubicund face glistened withmoisture. 

In the middle of the room, at the corner of a bare deal table that waspiled with loose music and manuscript, Schilsky sat improving andcorrecting the tails and bodies of hastily made, notes. He was still inhis nightshirt, over which he had thrown coat and trousers; and, wideopen at the neck, it exposed to the waist a skin of the dead whitenesspeculiar to red-haired people. His face, on the other hand, was sallowand unfresh; and the reddish rims of the eyes, and the coarselyself-indulgent mouth, contrasted strikingly with the generalyouthfulness of his appearance. He had the true musician's head: roundas a cannon-ball, with a vast, bumpy forehead, on which the soft fluffyhair began far back, and stood out like a nimbus. His eyes were eitherdesperately dreamy or desperately sharp, never normally attentive or atrest; his blunted nose and chin were so short as to make the face looktop-heavy. A carefully tended young moustache stood straight out alonghis cheeks. He had large, slender hands, and quick movements. 

The air of the room was like a thin grey veiling, for all three puffedhard at cigarettes. Without removing his from between his teeth, Schilsky related an adventure of the night before. He spoke in jerks, with a strong lisp, intent on what he was doing than on what he wassaying. 

"Do you think he'd budge?" he asked in a thick, spluttery way. "Not he. Till nearly two. And then I couldn't get him along. He thought itwasn't eleven, and wanted to relieve himself at every corner. Toirritate an imaginary bobby. He disputed with them, too. Heavens, whatsport it was! At last I dragged him up here and got him on the sofa. Off he rolls again. So I let him lie. He didn't disturb me. "

Heinrich Krafft, the hero of the episode lay on the short, uncomfortable sofa, with the table-cover for a blanket. In answer toSchilsky, he said faintly, without opening his eyes: "Nothing would. You are an ox. When I wake this morning, with a mouth like gum arabic, he sits there as if he had not stirred all night. Then to bed, andsnores till midday, through all the hellish light and noise. "

Here Furst could not resist making a little joke. He announced himselfby a chuckle-like the click of a clock about to strike. 

"He's got to make the most of his liberty. He doesn't often get offduty. We know, we know. " He laughed tonelessly, and winked at Krafft. 

Krafft quoted:

 In der Woche zwier--

"Now, you fellows, shut up!" said Schilsky. It was plain that banter ofthis kind was not disagreeable to him; at the same time he was just atthe moment too engrossed, to have more than half an car for what wassaid. With his short-sighted eyes close to the paper, he was listeningwith all his might to some harmonies that his fingers played on thetable. When, a few minutes later he rose and stretched the stiffnessfrom his limbs, his face, having lost its expression of raptconcentration, seemed suddenly to have grown younger. He set aboutdressing himself by drawing off his nightshirt over his head. At a wordfrom him, Furst sprang to collect utensils for making coffee. HeinrichKrafft opened his eyes and followed their movements; and the look hehad for Schilsky was as warily watchful as a cat's. 

Schilsky, an undeveloped Hercules--he was narrow in proportion to hisheight--and still naked to the waist, took some bottles from a longline of washes and perfumes that stood on the washstand, and, crossingto an elegant Venetian-glass mirror, hung beside the window, latheredhis chin. It was a peculiarity of his only to be able to attendthoroughly to one thing at a time, and a string of witticisms utteredby Furst passed unheeded. But Krafft's first words made him start. 

Having watched him for some time, the latter said slowly. "I say, oldfellow, are you sure it's all square about Lulu and this Dresdenbusiness?"

Razor in hand, Schilsky turned and looked at him. As he did so, hecoloured, and answered with an over-anxious haste: "Of course I am. Imade her go. She didn't want to. "

"That's a well-known trick. "

The young man scowled and thrust out his under-lip. "Do you think I'mnot up to their tricks? Do you want to teach me how to manage a woman?I tell you I sent her away. "

He tried to continue shaving, but was visibly uneasy. "Well, if youwon't believe me, " he said, with sudden anger, though neither of theothers had spoken. "Now where the deuce is that letter?"

He rummaged among the music and papers on the table; in chaoticdrawers; beneath dirty, fat-scaled dinner-dishes on the washstand;between door and stove, through a kind of rubbishheap that had formedwith time, of articles of dress, spoiled sheets of music-paper, soiledlinen, empty bottles, and boots, countless boots, single and in pairs. When he had found what he looked for, he ran his eyes down the page, asif he were going to read it aloud. Then, however, he changed his mind;a boyish gratification overspread his face, and, tossing the letter toKrafft, he bade them read it for themselves. Furst leaned over the endof the sofa. It was written in English, in a bold, scrawly hand, andran, without date or heading:

MY OWN DEAREST

NOW ONLY FOUR DAYS MORE--I COUNT THEM MORNING AND NIGHT. I AM GOOD FORNOTHING--MY THOUGHTS ARE ALWAYS WITH YOU. YESTERDAY AT THE GALLERY ISAT ALONE IN THE ROOM WHERE THE MADONNA IS, PRETENDINGENTHUSIASM--WHILE THE REST WENT TO HOLBEIN--AND READ YOUR LETTER OVERAND OVER AGAIN. BUT IT MADE ME A LITTLE UNHAPPY TOO, FOR I SOON FOUNDOUT THAT YOU HAD WRITTEN IT AT THREE DIFFERENT TIMES. IS IT REALLY SOHARD TO WRITE TO LULU?

HAVE YOU WORKED BETTER FOR WANT OF INTERRUPTION?--MY DAMNEDINTERRUPTIONS, AS YOU CALLED THEM LAST WEEK WHEN YOU WERE SO ANGRY WITHME. SHALL YOU HAVE A GREAT DEAL TO SHOW ME WHEN I COME HOME? NO--DON'TSAY YOU WILL--OR I SHALL HATE ZARATHUSTRA MORE THAN I DO ALREADY. 

AND NOW ONLY TILL FRIDAY. THIS TIME YOU WILL MEET ME YES?--AND NOT COMETO THE STATION AN HOUR LATE, AS YOU SAID YOU DID LAST TIME. IF YOU ARENOT THERE--I WARN YOU--I SHALL THROW MYSELF UNDER THE TRAIN. I AMWRITING, TO GRUNHUT. GET FLOWERS--THERE IS MONEY IN ONE OF THE VASES ONTHE WRITING-TABLE. OH, IF YOU ONLY WILL, WE SHALL HAVE SUCH A HAPPYEVENING--IF ONLY YOU WILL. AND I SHALL NEVER LEAVE YOU AGAIN, NEVERAGAIN. 

YOUR OWN LOVING, L. 

Furst could not make out much of this; he was still spelling throughthe first paragraph when Krafft had finished. Schilsky, who had gone ondressing, kept a sharp eye on his friends--particularly on Krafft. 

"Well?" he asked eagerly as the letter was laid down. 

Krafft was silent, but Furst kissed his finger-tips to a large hangingphotograph of the girl in question, and was facetious on the subject ofdark, sallow women. 

"And you, Heinz? What do you say?" demanded Schilsky with growingimpatience. 

Still Krafft did not reply, and Schilsky was mastered by a violentirritation. 

"Why the devil can't you open your mouth? What's the matter with you?Have YOU anything like that to show--you Joseph, you?"

Krafft let a waxen hand drop over the side of the sofa and trail on thefloor. "The letters were burned, dear boy--when you appeared. " Heclosed his eyes and smiled, seeming to remember something. But a momentlater, he fixed Schilsky sharply, and asked: "You want my opinion, doyou?"

"Of course I do, " said Schilsky, and flung things about the room. 

"Lulu, " said Krafft with deliberation, "Lulu is getting you under herthumb. "

The other sprang up, swore, and aimed a boot, which he had been vainlytrying to put on the wrong foot, at a bottle that protruded from therubbish-heap. 

"Me? Me under her thumb?" he spluttered--his lips became more markedunder excitement. "I should like to see her try it. You don't know me. You don't know Lulu. I am her master, I tell you. She can't call hersoul her own. "

"And yet, " said Krafft, unmoved, "it's a fact all the same. "

Schilsky applied a pair of curling tongs to his hair, at such a degreeof heat that a lock frizzled, and came off in his hand. His angerredoubled. "Is it my fault that she acts like a wet-nurse? Is that whatyou call being under her thumb?" he cried. 

Furst tried to conciliate him and to make peace. "You're a lucky dog, old fellow, and you know you are. We all know it--in spite ofoccasional tantaras. But you would be still luckier if you took afriend's sound advice and got you to the registrar. Ten minutes beforethe registrar, and everything would be different. Then she might playup as she liked; you would be master in earnest. "

"Registrar?" echoed Krafft with deep scorn. "Listen to the ape! Not ifwe can hinder it. When he's fool enough for that--I know him--it willbe with something fresher and less faded, something with the bloomstill on it. "

Schilsky winced as though he had been struck. Her age--she was eightyears older than he--was one of his sorest points. 

"Oh, come on, now, " said Furst as he poured out the coffee. "That'shardly fair. She's not so young as she might be, it's true, but no onecan hold a candle to her still. Lulu is Lulu. "

"Ten minutes before the registrar, " continued Krafft, meditativelyshaking his head. "And for the rest of life, chains. And convention. And security, which stales. And custom, which satiates. Oh no, I am notfor matrimony!"

Schilsky's ill-humour evaporated in a peal of boisterous laughter. "Yes, and tell us why, chaste Joseph, tell us why, " he cried, throwinga brush at his friend. "Or go to the devil--where you're at home. "

Krafft warded off the brush. "Look here, " he said, "confess. Have youkissed another girl for months? Have you had a single billet-doux?"

But Schilsky only winked provokingly. Having finished laughing, he saidwith emphasis: "But after Lulu, they are all tame. Lulu is Lulu, andthat's the beginning and end of the matter. "

"Exactly my opinion, " said Furst. "And yet, boys, if I wanted to makeyour mouths water, I could. " He closed one eye and smacked his lips. "Iknow of something--something young and blond . .. And dimpled . .. Andround, round as a feather-pillow"--he made descriptive movements of thehand--"with a neck, boys, a neck, I say----" Here in sheer ecstasy, hestuck fast, and could get no further. 

Schilsky roared anew. "He knows of something . .. So he does, " hecried--Furst's pronounced tastes were a standing joke among them. "Showher to us, old man, show her to us! Where are you hiding her? If she'sunder eighteen, she'll do--under eighteen, mind you, not a day over. Come along, I'm on for a spree. Up with you, Joseph!"

He was ready, come forth from the utter confusion around him, like agod from a cloud. He wore light grey clothes, a loosely knotted, brightblue tie, with floating ends and conspicuous white spots, and buttonedboots of brown kid. Hair and handkerchief were strongly scented. 

Krafft, having been prevailed on to rise, made no further toilet thanthat of dipping his head in a basin of water, which stood on the tailof the grand piano. His hair emerged a mass of dripping ringlets, covetously eyed by his companions. 

They walked along the streets, Schilsky between the others, whom heovertopped by head and shoulders: three young rebels out against thePhilistines: three bursting charges of animal spirits. 

There was to be a concert that evening at the Conservatorium, and, through vestibule and entrance-halls, which, for this reason, wereunusually crowded, the young men made a kind of triumphal progress. Especially Schilsky. Not a girl, young or old, but peddled for a wordor a look from him; and he was only too prodigal of insolentlyexpressive glances, whispered greetings, and warm pressures of thehand. The open flattery and bold adoration of which he was the objectmounted to his head; he felt secure in his freedom, and brimful ofselfconfidence; and, as the three of them walked back to the town, hisexhilaration, a sheer excess of well-being, was no longer to be keptwithin decent bounds. 

"Wait!" he cried suddenly as they were passing the Gewandhaus. "Wait aminute! See me make that woman there take a fit. "

He ran across the road to the opposite pavement, where the only personin sight, a stout, middle-aged woman, was dragging slowly along, herarms full of parcels; and, planting himself directly in front of her, so that she was forced to stop, he seized both her hands and workedthem up and down. 

"Now upon my soul, who would have thought of seeing you here, youbaggage, you?" he cried vociferously. 

The woman was speechless from amazement; her packages fell to theground, and she gazed open-mouthed at the wild-haired lad before her, making, at the same time, vain attempts to free her hands. 

"No, this really is luck, " he went on, holding her fast. "Come, a kiss, my duck, just one! EIN KUSSCHEN IN EHREN, you know----" and, in veryfact, he leaned forward and pecked at her cheek. 

The blood dyed her face and she panted with rage. 

"You young scoundrel!" she gasped. "You impertinent young dog! I'llgive you in charge. I'll--I'll report you to the police. Let me go thisinstant--this very instant, do you hear?--or I'll scream for help. "

The other two had come over to enjoy the fun. Schilsky turned to themwith a comical air of dismay, and waved his arm. "Well I declare, if Ihaven't been and made a mistake!" he exclaimed, and slapped hisforehead. "I'm out by I don't know how much--by twenty years, at least. No thank you, Madam, keep your kisses! You're much too old and ugly forme. "

He flourished his big hat in her face, pirouetted on his heel, and thethree of them went down the street, hallooing with laughter. 

They had supper together at the BAVARIA, Schilsky standing treat; forthey had gone by way of the BRUDERSTRASSE, where he called in toinvestigate the vase mentioned in the letter. Afterwards, theycommenced an informal wandering from one haunt to another, now bythemselves, now with stray acquaintances. Krafft, who was stillenfeebled by the previous night, and who, under the best ofcircumstances, could not carry as much as his friends, was the first togive in. For a time, they got him about between them. Then Furst grewobstreperous, and wanted to pour his beer on the floor as soon as itwas set before him, so that they were put out of two places, in thesecond of which they left Krafft. But the better half of the night wasover before Schilsky was comfortably drunk, and in a state to unbosomhimself to a sympathetic waitress, about the hardship it was to bebound to some one older than yourself. He shed tears of pity at hislot, and was extremely communicative. "'N KORPER, SCHA-AGE IHNEN, 'NKORPER!" but old, old, a "HALB'SCH JAHR' UND'RT" older than he was, anddesperately jealous. 

"It's too bad; such a nice young man as you are, " said the MAMSELL, who, herself not very sober, was sitting at ease on his knee, swingingher legs. "But you nice ones are always chicken-hearted. Treat her asshe deserves, my chuck, and make no bones about it. Just let herrip--and you stick to me!"

VI. 

One cold, windy afternoon, when dust was stirring and rain seemedimminent, Maurice Guest walked with bent head and his hat pulled overhis eyes. He was returning from the ZEITZERSTRASSE, where, in aphotographer's show-case, he had a few days earlier discovered a largephotograph of Louise. This was a source of great pleasure to him. Here, no laws of breeding or delicacy hindered him from gazing at her asoften as he chose. 

On this particular day, whether he had looked too long, or whether theunrest of the weather, the sense of something impending, the dustydryness that craved rain, had got into his blood and disquieted him:whatever it was, he felt restless and sick for news of her, and, atthis very moment, was on his way to Madeleine, in the foolish hope ofhearing her name. 

But a little adventure befell him which made him forget his intention. 

He was about to turn the corner of a street, when a sudden blast ofwind swept round, bearing with it some half dozen single sheets ofmusic. For a moment they whirled high, then sank fluttering to theground, only to rise again and race one another along the road. Mauriceinstinctively gave chase, but it was not easy to catch them; no soonerhad he secured one than the next was out of his reach. 

Meanwhile their owner, a young and very pretty girl, looked on andlaughed, without making any effort to help him; and the more he exertedhimself, the more she laughed. In one hand she was carrying aviolin-case, in the other a velvet muff, which now and again she raisedto her lips, as if to conceal her mirth. It was a graceful movement, but an unnecessary one, for her laughter was of that charming kind, which never gives offence; and, besides that, although it wascontinuous, it was neither hearty enough nor frank enough to beunbecoming the face was well under control. She stood there, with herhead slightly on one side, and the parted lips showed both rows ofsmall, even teeth; but the smile was unvarying, and, in spite of hermerriment, her eyes did not for an instant quit the young man's face, as he darted to and fro. 

Maurice could not help laughing himself, red and out of breath thoughhe was. 

"Now for the last one, " he said in German. 

At these words she seemed more amused than ever. "I don't speakGerman, " she answered in English, with a strong American accent. 

Having captured all the sheets, Maurice tried to arrange them for her. 

"It's my Kayser, " she explained with a quick, upward glance, adding thenext minute with a fresh ripple of laughter. "He's all to pieces. "

"You have too much to carry, " said Maurice. "On such a windy day, too. "

"That's what Joan said--Joan is my sister, " she continued. "But I guessit's so cold this afternoon I had to bring a muff along. If my fingersare stiff I can't play, and then Herr Becker is angry. " But she laughedagain as she spoke, and it was plain that the master's wrath did notexactly incite fear. "Joan always comes along, but to-day she's sick. "

"Will you let me help you?" asked Maurice, and a moment later he waswalking at her side. 

She handed over music and violin to him without a trace of hesitation;and, as they went along the PROMENADE, she talked to him with as littleembarrassment as though they were old acquaintances. It was so kind ofhim to help her, she thought; she couldn't imagine how she would everhave got home without him, alone against the wind; and she wasperfectly sure he must be American--no one but an American would be sonice. When Maurice denied this, she laughed very much indeed, and wasnot sure, this being the case, whether she could like him or not; as arule, she didn't like English people; they were stiff and horrid, andwere always wanting either to be introduced or to shake hands. Here shecarried her muff up to her lips again, and her eyes shone mischievouslyat him over the dark velvet. Maurice had never known anyone so easilymoved to laughter; whenever she spoke she laughed, and she laughed ateverything he said. 

Off the PROMENADE, where the trees were of a marvellous Pale green, they turned into a street of high spacious houses, the dark lines ofwhich were here and there broken by an arched gateway, or the delicatetints of a spring garden. To a window in one of the largest housesMaurice's little friend looked up, and smiled and nodded. 

"There's my sister. "

The young man looked, too, and saw a dark, thin-faced girl, who, whenshe found four eyes fixed on her, abruptly drew in her head, and asabruptly put it out again, leaning her two hands on the sill. 

"She's wondering who it is, " said Maurice's companion gleefully. Then, turning her face up, she made a speaking-trumpet of her hands, andcried: "It's all right, Joan. --Now I must run right up and tell herabout it, " she said to Maurice. "Perhaps she'll scold; Joan is veryparticular. Good-bye. Thank you ever so much for being so good tome--oh, won't you tell me your name?"

The very next morning brought him a small pink note, faintly scented. The pointed handwriting was still childish, but there was a coquettishflourish beneath the pretty signature: Ephie Cayhill. Besides agraceful word of thanks, she wrote: WE ARE AT HOME EVERY SUNDAY. MAMMAWOULD BE VERY PLEASED. 

Maurice did not scruple to call the following week, and on doing so, found himself in the midst of one of those English-speaking coteries, which spring up in all large, continental towns. Foreigners were notexcluded--Maurice discovered two or three of his German friends, awkwardly balancing their cups on their knees. In order, however, togain access to the circle, it was necessary for them to have asmattering of English; they had also to be flint against any open orcovert fun that might be made of them or their country; and above all, to be skilled in the art of looking amiable, while these visitors fromother lands heatedly readjusted, to their own satisfaction, all thatdid not please them in the life and laws of this country that wastemporarily their home. 

Mrs. Cayhill was a handsome woman, who led a comfortable, vegetableexistence, and found it a task to rise from the plump sofa-cushion. Herpleasant features were slack, and in those moments of life which calledfor a sudden decision, they wore the helpless bewilderment of a womanwho has never been required to think for herself. Her grasp onpractical matters was rendered the more lax, too, by her being animmoderate reader, who fed on novels from morning till night, and sleptwith a page turned down beside her bed. She was for ever lost in thejoys or sorrows of some fictitious person, and, in consequence, remained for the most part completely ignorant of what was going onaround her. When she did happen to become conscious of hersurroundings, she was callous, or merely indifferent, to them; for, compared with romance, life was dull and diffuse; it lacked the wilfulsimplicity, the exaggerative omissions, and forcible perspectives, which make up art: in other words, life demanded that unceasing work ofselection and rejection, which it is the story-teller's duty to Performfor his readers. All novels were fish to Mrs. Cayhill's net; she livedin a world of intrigue and excitement, and, seated in her easy-chair bythe sitting-room window, was generally as remote from her family asthough she were in Timbuctoo. 

There was a difference of ten years in age between her daughters, andit was the younger of the two whose education was being completed. Johanna, the elder, had been a disappointment to her mother. Left toher own devices at an impressionable age, the girl had developedbookish tastes at the cost of her appearance: influenced by afree-thinking tutor of her brothers', she had read Huxley and Haeckel, Goethe and Schopenhauer. Her wish had been for a university career, butshe was not of a self-assertive nature, and when Mrs. Cayhill, who felther world toppling about her ears at the mention of such a thing, said:"Not while I live!" she yielded, without a further word; and the factthat such an emphatic expression of opinion had been drawn from themild-tempered mother, made it a matter of course that no other memberof the family took Johanna's part. So she buried her ambitions, andkept her mother's house in an admirable, methodical way. 

It was not the sacrifice it seemed, however, because Johanna adored herlittle sister, and would cheerfully have given up more than this forher sake. Ephie, who was at that time just emerging from childhood, wasvery pretty and precocious, and her mother had great hopes of her. Shealso tired early of her lesson-books, and, soon after she turnedsixteen, declared her intention of leaving school. As at least a coupleof years had still to elapse before she was old enough to be introducedin society, Mrs. Cayhill, taking the one decisive step of her life, determined that travel in Europe should put the final touches toEphie's education: a little German and French; some finishing lessonson the violin; a run through Italy and Switzerland, and then to Paris, whence they would carry back with them a complete and costly outfit. So, valiantly, Mrs. Cayhill had her trunks packed, and, together withJohanna, who would as soon have thought of denying her age as ofletting these two helpless beings go out into the world alone, theycrossed the Atlantic. 

For some three months now, they had been established in Leipzig. Acirculating library, rich in English novels, had been discovered; Mrs. Cayhill was content; and it began to be plain to Johanna that thegreater part of their two years' absence would be spent in this place. Ephie, too, had already had time to learn that, as far as music wasconcerned, her business was not so much with finishing as withbeginning, and that the road to art, which she with all the rest mustfollow, was a steep one. She might have found it still more arduous, had Herr Becker, her master, not been a young man and veryimpressionable. And Ephie never looked more charming than when, withher rounded, dimpled arm raised in an exquisite curve, she leaned hercheek against the glossy brown wood of her violin. 

She was pretty with that untouched, infantine prettiness, before whichold and young go helplessly down. She was small and plump, with a full, white throat and neck, and soft, rounded hands and wrists, that weredimpled like a baby's. Her brown hair was drawn back from the lowforehead, but, both here and at the back of her neck, it broke intoinnumerable little curls, which were much lighter in colour than therest. Her skin, faintly tinged, was as smooth as the skin of a cherry;it had that exquisite freshness which is only to be found in a veryyoung girl, and is lovelier than the bloom on ripe fruit. Her dark blueeyes were well opened, but the black lashes were so long and sopeculiarly straight that the eyes themselves were usually hidden, andthis made it all the more effective did she suddenly look up. Mouldedlike wax, the small, upturned nose seemed to draw the top lip after it;anyhow, the upper lip was too short to meet the lower, andconsequently, they were always slightly apart, in a kind of questioningamaze. This mouth was the real beauty of the face: bright red, full, yet delicate, arched like a bow, with corners that went in and upwards, it belonged, by right of its absolute innocence, to the face of alittle child; and the thought was monstrous that nature and the yearswould eventually combine to destroy so perfect a thing. 

She also had a charming laugh, with a liquid note in it, that made onethink of water bubbling on a dry summer day. 

It was this laugh that held the room on Sunday afternoon, and drew thehandful of young men together, time after time. 

Mrs. Cayhill, who, on these occasions, was wont to lay aside her book, was virtually a deeper echo of her little daughter, and Johanna onlycounted in so far as she made and distributed cups of tea at the end ofthe room. She did not look with favour on the young men who gatheredthere, and her manner to them was curt and unpleasing. Each of them inturn, as he went up to her for his cup, cudgelled his brain forsomething to say; but it was no easy matter to converse with Johanna. The ordinary small change and polite commonplace of conversation, shemet with a silent contempt. In musical chit-chat, she took no interestwhatever, and pretended to none, openly indeed "detested music, " andwas unable to distinguish Mendelssohn from Wagner, "except by thenoise;" while if a bolder man than the rest rashly ventured on theliterary ground that was her special demesne, she either smiled at whathe said, in a disagreeably sarcastic way, or flatly contradicted him. She was the thorn in the flesh of these young men; and after havingdutifully spent a few awkward moments at her side, they stole back, oneby one, to the opposite end of the room. Here Ephie, bewitchinglydressed in blue, swung to and fro in a big Americanrocking-chair--going backwards, it carried her feet right off theground--and talked charming nonsense, to the accompaniment of her ownlight laugh, and her mother's deeper notes, which went on like anorgan-point, Mrs. Cayhill finding everything Ephic said, matchlesslyamusing. 

As Dove and Maurice walked there together for the first time--it nowleaked out that Dove spent every Sunday afternoon in theLESSINGSTRASSE--he spoke to Maurice of Johanna. Not in a disparagingway; Dove had never been heard to mention a woman's name otherwise thanwith respect. And, in this case, he deliberately showed up Johanna'sgood qualities, in the hope that Maurice might feel attracted by her, and remain at her side; for Dove had fallen deeply in love with Ephie, and had, as it was, more rivals than he cared for, in the field. 

"You should get on with her, I think, Guest, " he said slily. "You readthese German writers she is so interested in. But don't be discouragedby her manner. For though she's one of the most unselfish women I evermet, her way of Speaking is sometimes abrupt. She reminds me, if itdoesn't sound unkind, of a faithful watch-dog, or something of thesort, which cannot express its devotion as it would like to. "

When, after a lively greeting from Ephie, and a few pleasant words fromMrs. Cayhill, Maurice found himself standing beside Johanna, the truthof Dove's simile was obvious to him. This dark, unattractive girl hadapparently no thought for anything but her tea-making; she moved thecups this way and that, filled the pot with water, blew out and lightedagain the flame of the spirit-lamp, without paying the least heed toMaurice, making, indeed, such an ostentatious show of being occupied, that it would have needed a brave man to break in upon her duties withidle words. He remained standing, however, in a constrained silence, which lasted until she could not invent anything else to do, and wasobliged to drink her own tea. Then he said abruptly, in a tone which hemeant to be easy, but which was only jaunty: "And how do you like beingin Germany, Miss Cayhill? Does it not seem very strange after America?"

Johanna lifted her shortsighted eyes to his face, and looked coolly anddisconcertingly at him through her glasses, as if she had just becomeaware of his presence. 

"Strange? Why should it?" she asked in an unfriendly tone. 

"Why, what I mean is, everything must be so different here from whatyou are accustomed to--at least it is from what we are used to inEngland, " he corrected himself. "The ways and manners, and thelanguage, and all that sort of thing, you know. "

"Excuse me, I do not know, " she answered in the same tone as before. "If a person takes the trouble to prepare himself for residence in aforeign country, nothing need seem either strange or surprising. ButEnglish people, as is well known, expect to find a replica of Englandin every country they go to. "

There was a pause, in which James, the pianist, who was a regularvisitor, approached to have his cup refilled. All the circle knew, ofcourse, that Johanna was "doing for a new man"; and it seemed toMaurice that James half closed one eye at him, and gave him a small, sympathetic nudge with his elbow. 

So he held to his guns. When James had retired, he began anew, withoutpreamble. 

"My friend Dove tells me you are interested in German literature?" hesaid with a slight upward inflection in his voice. 

Johanna did not reply, but she shot a quick glance at him, andcolouring perceptibly, began to fidget with the tea-things. 

"I've done a little in that line myself, " continued Maurice, as shemade no move to answer him. "In a modest way, of course. Just lately Ifinished reading the JUNGFRAU VON ORLEANS. "

"Is that so?" said Johanna with an emphasis which made him colour also. 

"It is very fine, is it not?" he asked less surely, and as she againacted as though he had not spoken, he lost his presence of mind. "Isuppose you know it? You're sure to. "

This time Johanna turned scarlet, as if he had touched her on a sorespot, and answered at once, sharply and rudely. "And I suppose, " shesaid, and her hands shook a little as they fussed about the tray, "thatyou have also read MARIA STUART, and TELL, and a page or two of JeanPaul. You have perhaps heard of Lessing and Goethe, and you considerHeine the one and only German poet. "

Maurice did not understand what she meant, but she had spoken so loudlyand forbiddingly that several eyes were turned on them, making itincumbent on him not to take offence. He emptied his cup, and put itdown, and tried to give the matter an airy turn. 

"And why not?" he asked pleasantly. "Is there anything wrong inthinking so? Schiller and Goethe WERE great poets, weren't they? Andyou will grant that Heine is the only German writer who has hadanything approaching a style?"

Johanna's face grew stony. "I have no intention of granting anything, "she said. "Like all English people--it flatters your national vanity, Ipresume--you think German literature began and ended with Heine. --Amiserable Jew!"

"Yes, but I say, one can hardly make him responsible for being a Jew, can you? What has that got to do with it?" exclaimed Maurice, thisbeing a point of view that had never presented itself to him. And asJohanna only murmured something that was inaudible, he added lamely:"Then you don't think much of Heine?"

But she declined to be drawn into a discussion, even into an expressionof opinion, and the young man continued, with apology in his tone: "Itmay be bad taste on my part, of course. But one hears it said on everyside. If you could tell me what I ought to read . .. Or, perhaps, adviseme a little?" he ended tentatively. 

"I don't lend my books, " said Johanna more rudely than she had yetspoken. And that was all Maurice could get from her. A minute or twolater, she rose and went out of the room. 

It became much less restrained as soon as the door had closed behindher. Ephie laughed more roguishly, and Mrs. Cayhill allowed herself tofind what her little daughter said, droller than before. With anappearance of unconcern, Maurice strolled back to the group by thewindow. Dove was also talking of literature. 

"That reminds me, how did you like the book I lent you on Wednesday, Mrs. Cayhill?" he asked, at the same instant springing forward to pickup Ephie's handkerchief, which had fallen to the ground. 

"Oh, very much indeed, very interesting, very good of you, " answeredMrs. Cayhill. "Ephie, darling, the sun is shining right on your face. "

"What was it?" asked James, while Dove jumped up anew to lower theblind, and Ephie raised a bare, dimpled arm to shade her eyes. 

Mrs. Cayhill could not recollect the title just at once she had a"wretched memory for names"--and went over what she had been reading. 

"Let me see, it was . .. No, that was yesterday: SHADOWED BY THREE, amost delightful Book. On Friday, RICHARD ELSMERE, and--oh, yes, I know, it was about a farm, an Australian farm. "

"THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM, " put in Dove mildly, returning to hisseat. 

"Australian or African, it doesn't matter which, " said Mrs. Cayhill. "Yes, a nice book, but a little coarse in parts, and very foolish atthe end--the disguising, and the dying out of doors, and thelooking-glass, and all that. "

"I must say I think it a very powerful book, " said Dove solemnly. "Thatpart, you know, where the boy listens to the clock ticking in thenight, and thinks to himself that with every tick, a soul goes home toGod. A very striking idea!"

"Why, I think it must be a horrid book, " cried Ephie. "All about dying. Fancy some one dying every minute. It couldn't possibly be true. Forthen the world would soon be empty. "

"Always there are coming more into it, " said Furst, in his blunt, broken English. 

A pause ensued. Dove flicked dust off his trouser-leg; and the Americanmen present were suddenly fascinated by the bottoms of their cups. Ephie was the first to regain her composure. 

"Now let us talk of something pleasant, something quite different--fromdying. " She turned and, over her shoulder, laughed mischievously atMaurice, who was siting behind her. Then, leaning forward in her chair, with every eye upon her, she told how Maurice had saved her music fromthe wind, and, with an arch face, made him appear very ridiculous. Byher prettily exaggerated description of a heated, perspiring young man, darting to and fro, and muttering to himself in German, her hearers, Maurice included, were highly diverted--and no one more than Mrs. Cayhill. 

"You puss, you puss!" she cried, wiping her eyes and shaking a fingerat the naughty girl. 

The general amusement had hardly subsided when Furst rose to his feet, and, drawing his heels together, made a flowery little speech, the gistof which was, that he would have esteemed himself a most fortunate man, had he been in Maurice's place. Ephie and her mother exchanged looks, and shook with ill-concealed mirth, so that Furst, who had spokenseriously and in good faith, sat down red and uncomfortable; andBoehmer, who was dressed in what he believed to be American fashion, smiled in a superior manner, to show he was aware that Furst was makinghimself ridiculous. 

"Look here, Miss Ephie, " said James; "the next time you have to go outalone, just send for me, and I'll take care of you. "

"Or me" said Dove. "You have only to let me know. "

"No, no, Mr. Dove!" cried Mrs. Cayhill. "You do far too much for her asit is. You'll spoil her altogether. "

But at this, several of the young men exclaimed loudly: that would beimpossible. And Ephie coloured becomingly, raised her lashes, anddistributed winning smiles. Then quiet had been restored, she assuredthem that they all very kind, but she would never let anyone go withher but Joan--dear old Joan. They could not imagine how fond she was ofJoan. 

"She is worth more than all of you put together. " And at the cries of:"Oh, oh!" she was thrown into a new fit of merriment, and went stillfurther. "I would not give Joan's little finger for anyone in theworld. "

And meanwhile, as all her hearers--all, that is to say, except Dove, who sat moody, fingering his slight moustache, and gazing at Ephie withfondly reproachful eyes--as all of them, with Mrs. Cayhill at theirhead, made vehement protest against this sweeping assertion, Johannasat alone in her bedroom, at the back of the house. It was a dull room, looking on a courtyard, but she was always glad to escape to it fromthe flippant chatter in the sitting-room. Drawing a little table to thewindow, she sat down and began to read. But, on this day, her thoughtswandered; and, ultimately, propping her chin on her hand, she fell intoreverie, which began with something like "the fool and his Schiller!"and ended with her rising, and going to the well-stocked book-shelvesthat stood at the foot of the bed. 

She took out a couple of volumes and looked through them, then returnedthem to their places on the shelf. No, she said to herself, why shouldshe? What she had told the young man was true: she never lent herbooks; he would soil them, or, worse still, not appreciate them as heought--she could not give anyone who visited there on Sunday, creditfor a nice taste. 

Unknown to herself, however, something worked in her, for, the verynext time Maurice was there, she met him in the passage, as he wasleaving, and impulsively thrust a paper parcel into his hand. 

"There is a book, if you care to take it. "

He did not express the surprise he felt, nor did he look at the title. But Ephie, who was accompanying him to the door, made a face oflaughing stupefaction behind her sister's back, and went out on thelanding with him, to whisper: "What HAVE you been doing to Joan?"--atwhich remark, and at Maurice's blank face, she laughed so immoderatelythat she was forced to go down the stairs with him, for fear Joanshould hear her; and, in the house-door, she stood, a white-clad littlefigure, and waved her hand to him until he turned the corner. 

Having read the first volume of HAMMER UND AMBOSS deep into two nights, Maurice returned it and carried away the second. But it was only afterhe had finished PROBLEMATISCHE NATUREN, and had expressed himself withdue enthusiasm, that Johanna began to thaw a little. She did notdiscuss what he read with him; but, going on the assumption that aperson who could relish her favourite author had some good in him, shegave the young man the following proof of her favour. 

Between Ephie and him there had sprung up spontaneously a mutualliking, which it is hard to tell the cause of. For Ephie knew nothingof Maurice's tastes, interests and ambitions, and he did not dream ofasking her to share them. Yet, with the safe instincts of a young girl, she chose him for a brother from among all her other acquaintances;called him "Morry"; scarcely ever coquetted with him; and let himfreely into her secrets. It is easier to see why Maurice was attractedto her; for not only was Ephie pretty and charming; she was alsoadorably equable--she did not know what it was to be out of humour. Andshe was always glad to see him, always in the best possible spirits. When he was dull or tired, it acted like a tonic on him, to sit and lether merry chatter run over him. And soon, he found plenty of makeshiftsto see her; amongst other things, he arranged to help her twice a weekwith harmony, which was, to her, an unexplorable abyss; and heransacked the rooms and shelves of his acquaintances to find oldTauchnitz volumes to lend to Mrs. Cayhill. 

The latter paid even less attention to the sudden friendship of herdaughter with this young man than the ordinary American mother wouldhave done; but Johanna's toleration of it was, for the most part, to beexplained by the literary interests before mentioned. For Johanna wasalways in a tremble lest Ephie should become spoiled; and thoughtlessEphie could, at times, cause her a most subtle torture, by beingprettily insincere, by assuming false coquettish airs, or by seeming tohave private thoughts which she did not confide to her sister. This, and the knowledge that Ephie was now of an age when every day might beexpected to widen the distance between them, sometimes made Johannavery gruff and short, even with Ephie herself. As her sister, she aloneknew how much was good and true under the child's light exterior; sheadmired in Ephie all that she herself had not--her fair prettiness, herblithe manner, her easy, graceful words--and, had it been necessary, she would have gone down on her knees to remove the stones from Ephie'spath. 

Thus although on the casual observer, Johanna only made the impressionof a dark, morose figure, which hovered round two childlike beings, intercepting the sunshine of their lives, yet Maurice had soon comeoften enough into contact with her to appreciate her unselfishness;and, for the care she took of Ephie, he could almost have liked her, had Johanna shown the least readiness to be liked. Naturally, he didnot understand how highly he was favoured by her; he knew neither thedepth of her affection for Ephie, nor the exact degree of contempt inwhich she held the young men who dangled there on a Sunday--poor foolswho were growing fat on emotion and silly ideas, when they should havebeen taking plain, hard fare at college. To Dove, Johanna had aparticular aversion; chiefly, and in a contradictory spirit, because itwas evident to all that his intentions were serious. But she could nothinder wayward Ephie from making a shameless use of him, and thenlaughing at him behind his back--a laugh in which Mrs. Cayhill was notalways able to refrain from joining, though it must be said that shewas usually loud in her praises of Dove, at the expense of all visitorswho were not American. 

"From these Dutch you can't expect much, one way or the other, " shedeclared. "And young Guest sometimes sits there with a face as long asmy arm. But Dove is really a most sensible young fellow--why, he thinksjust as I do about Arnerica. "

And as a special mark of favour, when Dove left the house on Sundayafternoon, his pockets bulged with NEW YORK HERALDS. 

VII. 

Meanwhile, before the blinds in the BRUDERSTRASSE were drawn up again, Maurice had found his way back to Madeleine. When they met, she smiledat him in a somewhat sarcastic manner, but no reference was made to thelittle falling-out they had had, and they began afresh to read and playtogether. On the first afternoon, Maurice was full of his new friends, and described them at length to her. But Madeleine damped his ardour. 

"I know them, yes, of course, " she said. "The usual Americans--even theblue-stocking, from whom heaven defend us. The little one is prettyenough as long as she keeps her mouth shut. But the moment she speaks, every illusion is shattered. --Why I don't go there on a Sunday? Goodgracious, do you think they want me?--me, or any other petticoat? Arehonours made to be divided?--No, Maurice, I don't like Americans. I wasonce offered a position in America, as 'professor of piano andvoice-production' in a place called Schenectady; but I didn't hesitate. I said to myself, better one hundred a year in good old England, thanfive in a country where the population is so inflated with itsimportance that I should always be in danger of running amuck. Andbesides that, I should lose my accent, and forget how to say 'leg';while the workings of the stomach would be discussed before me with anunpleasant freedom. "

"You're too hard on them, Madeleine, " said Maurice, smiling in spite ofhimself. But he was beginning to stand in awe of her sharp tongue anddecided opinions; and, in the week that followed, he took himselfresolutely together, and did not let a certain name cross his lips. 

Consequently, he was more than surprised on returning to his room oneday, to find a note from Madeleine, saying that she expected Louisethat very afternoon at three. 

It was not news to Maurice that Louise had come home. The eveningbefore, as he turned out of the BRUDERSTRASSE, a closed droschke turnedinto it. After the vehicle had lumbered past him and disappeared, thethought crossed his mind that she might be inside it. He had not thenhad time to go back but early this very morning, he had passed thehouse and found the windows open. So Madeleine had engaged herimmediately! As usual, Furst had kept him waiting for his lesson; itwas nearly three o'clock already, and he was so hurried that he couldonly change his collar; but, on the way there, in a sudden spurt ofgratitude, he ran to a flower-shop, and bought a large bunch ofcarnations. 

He arrived at Madeleine's room in an elation he did not try to hide;and over the carnations they had a mock reconciliation. Madeleinewished to distribute the flowers in different vases about the room, buthe asked her put them all together on the centre table. She laughed andcomplied. 

For several weeks now, musical circles had been in a stir over theadvent of a new piano-teacher named Schrievers--a person who calledhimself a pupil of Liszt, held progressive views, arid, being a freelance, openly ridiculed the antiquated methods of the Conservatorium. Madeleine was extremely interested in the case, and, as they satwaiting, talked about it to Maurice with great warmth, enlargingespecially upon the number of people who had the audacity to callthemselves pupils of Liszt. To Maurice, in his present frame of mind, the matter seemed of no possible consequence--for all he cared, thewhole population of the town might lay claim to having been atWeimar--and he could not understand Madeleine finding it important. Forhe was in one of those moods when the entire consciousness is sointently directed towards some end that, outside this end, nothing hascolour or vitality: all that has previously impressed and interestedone, has no more solidity than papier mache. Meanwhile she spoke on, and did not appear to notice how time was flying. He was forced atlength to take out his watch, and exclaim, in feigned surprise, at thehour. 

"A quarter to four already!"

"Is it so late?" But on seeing his disturbance, she added: "It will beall right. Louise was never punctual in her life. "

He did his best to look unconcerned, and they spoke of that evening'sABENDUNTERHALTUNG, at which Furst was to play. But by the time theclock struck four, Maurice had relapsed, in spite of himself, intosilence. Madeleine rallied him. 

"You must make shift with my company, Maurice. Not but what I am sureLouise will come. But you see from this what she is--the mostunreliable creature in the world. "

To pass the time, she suggested that he should help her to make tea, and they were both busy, when the electric bell in the passage whizzedharshly, and the next moment there came a knock at the door. But it wasnot Louise. Instead, two persons entered, one of whom was HeinrichKrafft, the other a short, thickset girl, in a man's felt hat and aclosely buttoned ulster. 

On recognising her visitors, Madeleine made a movement of annoyance, and drew her brows together. "You, Heinz!" she said. 

Undaunted by this greeting, Krafft advanced to her and, taking herhands, kissed them, one after the other. He was also about to kiss heron the lips, but she defended herself. "Stop! We are not alone. "

"Just for that reason, " said the girl in the ulster drily. 

"What ill wind blows you here to-day?" Madeleine asked him. 

As he was still wearing his hat, she took it off, and dropped it on thefloor beside him; then she recollected Maurice, and made him known tothe other two. Coming forward, Maurice recalled to Krafft's memorywhere they had already met, and what had passed between them. Before hehad finished speaking, Krafft burst into an unmannerly peal oflaughter. Madeleine laughed, too, and shook her finger at him. "Youhave been up to your tricks again!" Avery Hill, the girl in the ulster, did not laugh aloud, but a smile played round her mouth, which Mauricefound even more disagreeable than the mirth of which he had been theinnocent cause. He coloured, and withdrew to the window. 

Krafft was so convulsed that he was obliged to sit down on the sofa, where Madeleine fanned him with a sheet of music. He had been seized bya kind of paroxysm, and laughed on and on, in a mirthless way, tillAvery Hill said suddenly and angrily: "Stop laughing at once, Heinz!You will have hysterics. "

In an instant he was sobered, and now he seemed to fall, withouttransition, into a mood of dejection. Taking out his penknife, he setto paring his nails, in a precise and preoccupied manner. Madeleineturned to Maurice. 

"You'll wonder what all this is about, " she said apologetically. "ButHeinz is never happier than when he has succeeded in imposing on someone--as he evidently did on you. "

"Indeed!" said Maurice. Their laughter had been offensive to him, andhe found Krafft, and Madeleine with him, exceedingly foolish. 

There was a brief silence. Krafft was absorbed in what he was doing, and Avery Hill, on sitting down, had lighted a cigarette, which shesmoked steadily, in long-drawn whiffs. She was a pretty girl, in spiteof her severe garb, in spite, too, of her expression, which was toocomposed and too self-sure to be altogether pleasing. Her face wasfresh of skin, below smooth fair hair, and her lips were the red, ripelips of Botticelli's angels and Madonnas. But the under one, beingfuller than the other, gave the mouth a look of over-decision, and itwould be difficult to imagine anything less girlish than were the coldgrey eyes. 

"We came for the book you promised to lend Heinz, " she said, blowingoff the spike of ash that had accumulated at the tip of the cigarette. "He could not rest till he had it. "

Madeleine placed a saucer on the table with the request to use it as anash-tray, and taking down a volume of De Quincey from the hangingshelf, held it out to Krafft. 

"There you are. It will interest me to hear what you make of it. "

Krafft ceased his paring to glance at the title-page. "I shall probablynot open it, " he said. 

Madeleine laughed, and gave him a light blow on the hand with the book. "How like you that is! As soon as you know that you can get a thing, you don't want it any longer. "

"Yes, that's Heinz all over, " said Avery Hill. "Only what he hasn'tgot, seems worth having. "

Krafft shut his knife with a click, and put it back in his pocket. "Andthat's what you women can't understand, isn't it?--that the best ofthings is the wishing for them. Once there, and they are nothing--onlyanother delusion. The happiest man is the man whose wishes are neverfulfilled. He always has a moon to cry for. "

"Come, come now, " said Madeleine. "We know your love for paradox. Butnot to-day. There's no time for philosophising today. Besides, you arein a pessimistic mood, and that's a bad sign. "

"I and pessimism? Listen, heart of my heart, I have a new story foryou. " He moved closer to her, and put his arm round her neck. "Therewas once a man and his wife----"

But, at the first word, Madeleine put her hands to her ears. 

"Mercy, have mercy, Heinz! No stories, I entreat you. And behaveyourself, too. Take your arm away. " She tried to remove it. "I havetold you already, I can't have you here to-day. I'm expecting avisitor. "

He laid his head on her shoulder. "Let him come. Let the whole worldcome. I don't budge. I am happy here. "

"You must go and be happy elsewhere, " said Madeleine more decisivelythan she had yet spoken. "And before she comes, too. "

"She? What she?"

"Never mind. "

"For that very reason, Mada. "

She whispered a word in his ear. He looked at her, incredulously atfirst, then whimsically, with a sham dismay; and then, as if Mauricehad only just taken shape for him, he turned and looked at him also, and from him to Madeleine, and back to him, finally bursting afreshinto a roar of laughter. Madeleine laid her hand over his mouth. "Takehim away, do, " she said to Avery Hill--"as a favour to me. "

"Yes, when I have finished my cigarette, " said the girl withoutstirring. 

Unsettled all the same, it would seem, by what he had heard, Krafftrose and shuffled about the room, with his hands in his pockets. Approaching Maurice, he even stood for a moment and contemplated him, with a kind of mock gravity. Maurice acted as if he did not see Krafft;long since, he had taken up a magazine, and, half hidden in a chairbetween window and writing-table, pretended to bury himself in itscontents. But he heard very plainly all that passed, and, at the effectproduced on Krafft by the name of the expected visitor, his handstrembled with anger. If the fellow had stood looking at him for anothersecond, he would have got up and knocked him down. But Krafft turnednonchalantly to the piano, where his attention was caught by a songthat was standing on the rack. He chuckled, and set about makingmerciless fun of the music--the composer was an elderlysinging-teacher, of local fame. Madeleine grew angry, and tried to takeit from him. 

"Hold your tongue, Heinz! If your own songs were more like this, theywould have a better chance of success. Now be quiet! I won't hearanother word. Herr Wendling is a very good friend of mine. "

"A friend! Heavens! She says friend as if it were an excuse forhim. --Mada, let your friend cease making music if he hopes forsalvation. Let him buy a broom and sweep the streets--let him----"

"You are disgusting!"

She had got the music from him, but he was already at the piano, parodying, from memory, the conventional accompaniment and sentimentalwords of the song. "And this, " he said, "from the learned ass who isnot yet convinced that the FEUERZAUBER is music, and who groans like adredge when the last act of SIEGFRIED is mentioned. Wendling andWagner! Listen to this!--for once, I am a full-blooded Wagnerite. "

He felt after the chords that prelude Brunnhilde's awakening bySiegfried. Until now, Avery Hill had sat indifferent, as though whatwent on had nothing to do with her; but no sooner had Krafft commencedto play than she grew uneasy; her eyes lost their cold assurance, and, suddenly getting up and going round to the front of the piano, shepushed the young man's hands from the keys. Krafft yielded his place toher, and, taking up the chords where he had left them, she went on. Sheplayed very well--even Maurice in his disturbance could, not but noticeit--with a firm, masculine touch, and that inborn ease, that enviableappearance of perfect fitness, of being one with the instrument, whicheven the greatest players do not always attain. She had, besides, gripand rhythm, and long, close-knit hands insinuated themselves artfullyamong the complicated harmonies. 

When she began to play, Madeleine made "Tch, tch, tch!" and shook herhead, in despair of now ever being rid of them. Krafft remainedstanding behind the piano at the window leaning his forehead on theglass. Maurice, who watched them both surreptitiously, saw his facechange, and grow thoughtful as he stood there; but when Avery Hillceased abruptly on a discord, he wheeled round at once and patted heron the back. While looking over to Maurice, he said: "No doubt youfound that very pretty and affecting?"

"I think that's none of your business, " said Maurice. 

But Krafft did not take umbrage. "You don't say so?" he murmured with ashow of surprise. 

"Now, go, go, go!" cried Madeleine. "What have I done to be subjectedto such a visitation? No, Heinz, you don't sit down again. Here's yourhat. Away with you!--or I'll have you put out by force. "

And at last they really did go, to a cool bow from Maurice, who stillsat holding his magazine. But Madeleine had hardly closed the doorbehind them, when, like a whirlwind, Krafft burst into the room again. 

"Mada, I forgot to ask you something, " he said in a stage-whisper, drawing her aside. "Tell me--you KUPPLERIN, you!--does he know her?" Hepointed over his shoulder with his thumb at Maurice. 

Madeleine shook her head, in real vexation and distress, and laid afinger on her lip. But it was of no use. Stepping over to Maurice, Krafft bowed low, and held his hat against his breast. 

"It is impossible for you to understand how deeply it has interested meto meet you, " he said. "Allow me, from the bottom of my heart, to wishyou success. " Whereupon, before Maurice could say "damn!" he was goneagain, leaving his elfin laugh behind him in the air, like smoke. 

Madeleine shut the door energetically and gave a sigh of relief. 

"Thank goodness! I thought they would never go. And now, the chancesare, they'll run into Louise on the stairs. You'll wonder why I was sobent on getting rid of them. It's a long story. I'll tell it to yousome other time. But if Louise had found them here when she came, shewould not have stayed. She won't have anything to do with Heinz. "

"I don't wonder at it, " said Maurice. He stood up and threw themagazine on the table. 

Madeleine displayed more astonishment than she felt. "Why what's thematter? You're surely not going to take what Heinz said, seriously? Hewas in a bad mood to-day, I know, and I noticed you were very shortwith him. But you mustn't be foolish enough to be offended by him. Noone ever is. He is allowed to say and do just what he likes. He's ourspoilt child. "

Maurice laughed. "The fellow is either a cad, or an unutterable fool. You, Madeleine, may find his impertinence amusing. I tell you candidly, I don't!" and he went on to make it clear to her that the fault wouldnot be his, were Krafft and he ever in the same room together again. "The kind of man one wants to kick downstairs. What the deuce did hemean by guffawing like that when you told him who was coming?"

"You mean about Louise?" Madeleine gave a slight shrug. "Yes, Maurice--unfortunately that was not to be avoided. But sit down again, and let me explain things to you. When you hear----"

But he did not want explanations; he did not even want an answer to thequestion he had put; his chief concern now was to get away. To staythere, in that room, for another quarter of an hour, would beimpossible, on such tenterhooks was he. To stay--for what? Only tolisten to more slanderous hints, of the kind he had heard before. As itwas, he did not believe he could face her frankly, should she stillcome. He felt as if, in some occult way, he had assisted at a tamperingwith her good name. 

"You will surely not be so childish?" said Madeleine, on seeing himtake up his hat. 

"Childish?--you call it childish?" he exclaimed, growing angry withher, too. "Do you know what time it is? Three o'clock, you write me, and it's now a quarter past five. I have sat here doing nothing forover two mortal hours. It seems to me that's enough, without being madethe butt of your friends' wit into the bargain. I'm sick of the wholething. Good-bye. "

"We seem bound to quarrel, " said Madeleine calmly. "And always aboutLouise. But there's no use in being angry. I am not responsible forwhat Heinz says and does. And on the mere chance of his coming into-day, to sit down and unroll another savoury story to you, about youridol--would you have thanked me for it? Remember the time I did try toopen you eyes!--It's not fair either to blame me because Louise hasn'tcome. I did my best for you. I can't help it if she's as stable aswater. "

"I think you dislike her too much to want to help it, " said Mauricegrimly. He stood staring at the carnations, and his resentment gave wayto depression, as he recalled the mood which he had bought them. 

"Come back as soon as you feel better. I'm not offended, remember!"Madeleine called after him as he went down the stairs. When she wasalone, she said "Silly boy!" and, still smiling, made excuses for him:he had come with such pleasurable anticipations, and everything hadgone wrong. Heinz had behaved disagracefully, as only he could. Whileas for Louise, one was no more able to rely on her than on a wispstraw; and she, Madeleine, was little better than a fool not to haveknown it. 

She moved about the room, putting chairs and papers in their places, for she could not endure disorder of any kind. Then she sat down towrite a letter; and when, some half hour later, the girl for whom theyhad waited, actually came, she met her with exclamations of genuinesurprise. 

"Is it really you? I had given you up long ago. Pray, do you know whattime it is?"

She took out her watch and dangled it before the other's eyes. ButLouise Dufrayer hardly glanced at it. As, however, Madeleine persisted, she said: "I'm late, I know. But it was not my fault. I couldn't getaway. "

She unpinned her hat, and shook back her hair; and Madeleine helped herto take off her jacket, talking all the time. "I have been much annoyedwith you. Does it never occur to you that you may put other people inawkward positions, by not keeping your word? But you are just the sameas of old--incorrigible. "

"Then why try to improve me?" said the other with a show of lightness. But almost simultaneously she turned away from Madeleine'smatter-of-fact tone, passed her handkerchief over her lips, and aftermaking a vain attempt to control herself, burst into tears. 

Madeleine eyed her shrewdly. "What's the matter with you?"

But the girl who had sunk into a corner of the sofa merely shook herhead, and sobbed; and Madeleine, to whom such emotional outbreaks weredistasteful, went to the writing-table and busied herself there, withher back to the room. She did not ask for an explanation, nor did hercompanion offer any. 

Louise abandoned herself to her tears with as little restraint asthough she were alone, holding her handkerchief to her eyes with bothhands and giving deep, spasmodic sobs, which had apparently been heldfor some time in cheek. 

Afterwards, she sat with her elbow on the end of the sofa, her face onher hand, and, still shaken at intervals by a convulsive breath, watched Madeleine make fresh tea. But when she took the cup that washanded to her, she was so far herself again as to inquire whom she wasto have met, although her voice still did not obey her properly. 

"Some one who is anxious to know you, " replied Madeleine an air ofmystery. "But he couldn't, or rather would not, wait so long. "

Louise showed no further curiosity. But when Madeleine said withmeaning emphasis that Krafft had also been there in the course of theafternoon, she shrank perceptibly and flushed. 

"What! Does he still exist?" she asked with an effort at playfulness. 

"As you very well know, " answered Madeleine drily. "Tell me, Louise, how do you manage to keep out of his way?"

Louise made no rejoinder; she raised her cup to her lips, and the darkblood that had stained her face, in a manner distressing to see, slowlyretreated. She continued to look down, and, the light of her big, darkeyes gone out, her face seemed wan and dead. Madeleine, studying her, asked herself, not for the first time, but, as always, with an unclearirritation, what the secret of the other's charm was. Beautiful she hadnever thought Louise; she was not even pretty, in an honest way--atbest, a strange, foreign-looking creature, dark-skinned, black of eyesand hair, with flashing teeth, and a wonderfully mobile mouth--and somepeople, hopeless devotees of a pink and white fairness, had been knownto call her plain. At this moment, she was looking her worst; theheavy, blue-black lines beneath her eyes were deepened by crying; herrough hair had been hastily coiled, unbrushed; and she was wearing ashabby red blouse that was pinned across in front, where a button wasmissing. There was nothing young or fresh about her; she looked hertwenty-eight years, every day of them--and more. 

And yet, Madeleine knew that those who admired Louise would find her asdesirable at this moment as at any other. Hers was a nameless charm; itwas present in each gesture of the slim hands, in each turn of thehead, in every movement of, the broad, slender body. Strangers felt itinstantly; her very walk seemed provocative of notice; there wassomething in the way her skirts clung, and moved with her, that wasdifferent from the motion of other women's. And those whose type sheembodied went crazy about her. Madeleine remembered as though it wereyesterday, the afternoon on which Heinz had burst in to rave to her ofhis discovery; and how he would have dragged her out hatless to seethis miracle. She remembered, too, after--days, when she had had himthere, pacing the floor, and pouring out his feelings to her, infatuated, mad. An he was not the only one; they bowled over likeninepins; an it would be the same for years to come--was there anyreason to wonder at Maurice Guest?

Meanwhile, as Madeleine sat thinking these and similar things, Mauricewas tramping through the ROSENTAL. The May afternoon, of lucentsunshine and heaped, fleecy clouds, had tempted a host of people intothe great park, but he soon left them all behind him, for he walked asthough he were pursued. These people, placid, and content of face, andthe brightness of the day, jarred on him; he was out of patience withhimself, with Madeleine, with the World at large. Especially withMadeleine, he bore her a grudge for her hints and innuendoes, for beingbehind the scenes, as it were, and also for being so ready to enlightenhim; but, most of all, for a certain malicious gratification, which wasto be felt in ever word she said about Louise. 

He went steadily on, against the level bars of the afternoon sun and, by the time he had tired himself bodily, he had worked off his inwardvexation as well. As he walked back towards the town, he was almostready to smile at his previous heat. What did all these others matterto him? They could not hinder him from carrying through what he had sethis mind on. To-morrow was a day, and the next was another, and thenext again; and life, considered thus in days and opportunities, wasinfinitely long. 

He now felt not only an aversion to dwelling on his thoughts of an hourback, but also the need of forgetting them altogether. And, in nearingthe LESSINGSTRASSE, he followed an impulse to go to Ephie and to lether merry laugh wipe out the last traces of his ill-humour. 

Mrs. Cayhill and Johanna were both reading in the sitting room, andthough Johanna agreeably laid aside her book, conversation languished. Ephie was sent for, but did not come, and Maurice was beginning to wishhe had thought twice before calling, when her voice was heard in thepassage, and, a moment later, she burst into the room, with her armsfull of lilac, branches of lilac, which she explained had been boughtearly that morning at the flower-market, by one of theirfellow-boarders. She hardly greeted Maurice, but going over to him heldup her scented burden, and was not content till he had buried his facein it. 

"Isn't it just sweet?" she cried holding it high for all to see. "Andthe very first that is to be had. Again, Maurice again, put your faceright down into the middle of it--like that. "

Mrs. Cayhill laughed, as Maurice obediently bowed his head, but Johannareproved her sister. 

"Don't be silly, Ephie. You behave as if you had never seen lilacbefore. "

"Well, neither I have--not such lilac as this, and Maurice hasn'teither, " answered Ephie. "You shall smell it too, old Joan!"--and inspite of Johanna's protests, she forced her sister also to sink herface in the fragrant white and purple blossoms. But then she left themlying on the table, and it was Johanna who put them in water. 

Mrs. Cayhill withdrew to her bedroom to be undisturbed, and Johannawent out on an errand. Maurice and Ephie sat side by side on the sofa, and he helped her to distinguish chords of the seventh, and watched hermake, in her music-book, the big, tailless notes, at which she herselfwas always hugely tickled, they`reminded her so of eggs. But on thisparticular evening, she was not in a studious mood, and bock, penciland india-rubber slid to the floor. Both windows were wide open; theair that entered was full of pleasant scents, while that of the roomwas heavy with lilac. Ephie had taken a spray from one of the vases, and was playing with it; and when Maurice chid her for thoughtlesslydestroying it, she stuck the pieces in her hair. Not content with this, she also put bits behind Maurice's ears, and tried to twist one in thepiece of hair that fell on his forehead. Having thus bedizened them, she leaned back, and, with her hands clasped behind her head, began totease the young man. A little bird, it seemed, had whispered her anynumber of interesting things about Madeleine and Maurice, and she hadstored them all up. Now, she repeated them, with a charmingimpertinence, and was so provoking that, in laughing exasperation, Maurice took her fluffy, flower-bedecked head between his hands, andstopped her lips with two sound kisses. 

He acted impulsively, without reflecting, but, as soon as it was done, he felt a curious sense of satisfaction, which had nothing to do withEphie, and was like a kind of unconscious revenge taken on some oneelse. He was not, however, prepared for the effect of his hasty deed. Ephie turned scarlet, and jumping up from the sofa, so that all theblossoms fell from her hair at once, stamped her foot. 

"Maurice Guest! How dare you!" she cried angrily, and, to his surprise, the young man saw that she had tears in her eyes. 

He had never known Ephie to be even annoyed, and was consequentlydumfounded; he could not believe, after the direct provocation she hadgiven him, that his crime had been so great. 

"But Ephie dear!" he protested. "I had no idea, upon my word I hadn't, that you would take it like this. What's the matter? It was nothing. Don't cry. I'm a brute. "

"Yes, you are, a horrid brute! I shall never forgive you--never!" saidEphie, and then she began to cry in earnest. 

He put his arm round her, and coaxing her to sit down, wiped away hertears with his own handkerchief. In vain did he beg her to tell him whyshe was so vexed. To all he said, she only shook her head, andanswered: "You had no right to do it. "

He vowed solemnly that it should never happen again, but at least aquarter of an hour elapsed before he succeeded in comforting her, andeven then, she remained more subdued than usual. But when Maurice hadgone, and she had dropped the scattered sprays of lilac out of thewindow on his head, she clasped her hands at the back of her neck, anddropped a curtsy to herself in the locking-glass. 

"Him, too!" she said aloud. 

She nodded at her reflected self, but her face was grave; for betweenthese two, small, blue-robed figures was a deep and unsuspected secret. 

And Maurice, as he walked away, wondered to himself for still a littlewhy she should have been so disproportionately angry; but not for long;for, when he was not actually with Ephie, he was not given to thinkingmuch about her. Besides, from there, he went straight to the latterhalf of an ABENDANTERKALTUNG, to hear Furst play Brahms' VARIATIONS ONA THEME BY HANDEL

VIII. 

That night he had a vivid dream. He dreamt that he was in a garden, where nothing but lilac grew--grew with a luxuriance he could not havebelieved possible, and on fantastic bushes: there were bushes likesteeples and bushes smaller than himself, big and little, broad andslender, but all were of lilac, and in flower--an extravagant profusionof white and purple blossoms. He gazed round him in delight, and tookan eager step forward; but, before he could reach the nearest bush, hesaw that it had been an illusion: the bush was stripped and bare, andthe rest were bare as well. "You're too late. It has all beengathered, " he heard a voice say, and at this moment, he saw Ephie atthe end of a long alley of bushes, coming towards him, her arms full oflilac. She smiled and nodded to him over it, and he heard her laugh, but when she was half-way down the path, he discovered his mistake: itwas not Ephie but Louise. She came slowly forward, her laden armsoutstretched, and he would have given his life to be able to advanceand to take what she offered him; but he could not stir, could not lifthand or foot, and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. Her stepsgrew more hesitating, she seemed hardly to move; and then, just as shereached the spot where he stood, he found that it was not she afterall, but Madeleine, who laughed at his disappointment and said: "I'mnot offended, remember!"--The revulsion of feeling was too great; heturned away, without taking the flowers she held out to him--and awoke. 

This dream was present to him all the morning, like a melody thathaunts and recalls. But he worked more laboriously than usual; for hewas aggrieved with himself for having idled away the previousafternoon, and then, too, Furst's playing had made a profoundimpression on him. In vigorous imitation, he sat down to the pianoagain, after a hasty dinner snatched in the neighbourhood; but as hewas only playing scales, he propped open before him a little volume ofGoethe's poems, which Johanna had lent him, and suiting his scales tothe metre of the lines, read through one after another of the poems heliked best. At a particular favourite, he stopped playing and held thebook in both hands. 

He had hardly begun anew when the door of his room was unceremoniouslyopened, and Dove entered, in the jocose way he adopted when in a rosymood. Maurice made a movement to conceal his book, merely in order toavoid the explanation he new must follow; but was too late; Dove hadespied it. He did not belie himself on this occasion; he was extremelyastonished to find Maurice "still at it, " but much more so to see abook open before him; and he vented his surprise loudly and wordily. 

"Liszt used to read the newspaper, " said Maurice, for the sake ofsaying something. He had swung round in the piano-chair, and he yawnedas he spoke, without attempting to disguise it. 

"Why, yes, of course, why not?" agreed Dove cordially, afraid lest hehad seemed discouraging. "Why not, indeed? For those who can do it. Iwish I could. But will you believe me, Guest"--here he seated himself, and settled into an attitude for talking, one hand inserted between hiscrossed knees--"will you believe me, when I say I find it a difficultbusiness to read at all?--at any time. I find it too stimulating, tooANREGEND, don't you know? I assure you, for weeks now, I have beentrying to read PAST AND PRESENT, and have not yet got beyond the firstpage. It gives one so much to think about, opens up so many new ideas, that I stop myself and say: 'Old fellow, that must be digested. ' This, I see, is poetry"--he ran quickly and disparagingly through Maurice'slittle volume, and laid it down again. "I don't care much for poetrymyself, or for novels either. There's so much in life worth knowingthat is true, or of some use to one; and besides, as we all know, factis stranger than fiction. "

They spoke also of Furst's performance the evening before, and Dovegave it its due, although he could not conceal his opinion that Furst'sstar would ultimately pale before that of a new-comer to the town, alate addition to the list of Schwarz's pupils, whom he, Dove, had been"putting up to things a bit. " This was a "Manchester man" and formerpupil of Halle's, and it would certainly not be long before he set theplace in a stir. Dove had just come from his lodgings, where he hadbeen permitted to sit and hear him practise finger-exercises. 

"A touch like velvet, " declared Dove. "And a stretch!--I have neverseen anything like it. He spans a tenth, nay, an eleventh, more easilythan we do an octave. "

The object of Dove's visit was, it transpired, to propose that Mauriceshould accompany him that evening to the theatre, where DIE WALKURE wasto be performed; and as, on this day, Dove had reasons for seeing theworld through rose-coloured glasses, he suggested, out of the fulnessof his heart, that they should also invite Madeleine to join them. Maurice was nothing loath to have the meeting with her over, and so, though it was not quite three o'clock, they went together to theMOZARTSTRASSE. 

They found Madeleine before her writing-table, which was strewn withclosely written sheets. This was mail-day for America, she explained, and begged the young men to excuse her finishing an important letter toan American journalist, with whom she had once "chummed up" on a tripto Italy. 

"One never knows when these people may be of use to one, " she wasaccustomed to say. 

Having addressed and stamped the envelope, and tossed it to the others, she rose and gave a hand to each. At Maurice, she smiled in asignificant way. 

"You should have stayed, my son. Some one came, after all. "

Maurice laid an imploring finger on his lips, but Dove had seized theopportunity of glancing at his cravat in the mirror, and did not seemto hear. 

She agreed willingly to their plan of going to the theatre; she hadthought of it herself; then, a girl she knew had asked her to come tohear her play in ENSEMBLESPIEL. 

"However, I will let that slip. Schelper and Moran-Olden are to sing;it will be a fine performance. I suppose some one is to be there, " shesaid laughingly to Dove, "or you would not be of the party. "

But Dove only smiled and looked sly. 

Without delay, Madeleine began to detail to Maurice, the leadingmotives on which the WALKURE was built up; and Dove, having hummed, strummed and whistled all those he knew by heart, settled down to adiscourse on the legitimacy and development of the motive, andespecially in how far it was to be considered a purely intellectualimplement. He spoke with the utmost good-nature, and was so unconsciousof being a bore that it was impossible to take him amiss. Madeleine, however, could not resist, from time to time, throwing in a "Really!""How extraordinary!" "You don't say so!" among his abstruse remarks. But her sarcasm was lost on Dove; and even if he had noticed it, hewould only have smiled, unhit, being too sensible and good-humouredeasily to take offence. 

It was always a mystery to his friends where Dove got his information;he was never seen to read, and there was little theorising about art, little but the practical knowledge of it, in the circles to which hebelonged. But just as he went about picking up small items of gossip, so he also gathered in stray scraps of thought and information, andbeing by nature endowed with an excellent memory, he let nothing thathe had once heard escape him. He had, besides, the talker's gift ofneatly stringing together these tags he had pulled off other people, ofconnecting them, and giving them a varnish of originality. 

"By no means a fool, " Madeleine was in the habit of saying of him. "Hewould be easier to deal with if he were. "

Here, on the leading motive as handled by Wagner and Wagner'sforerunners, he had an unwritten treatise ripe in his brain. But he hadonly just compared the individual motives to the lettered ribbons thatissue from the mouths of the figures in medieval pictures, and began tohint at the IDEE FIXE of Berlioz, when he was interrupted by a knock atthe door. 

"HEREIN!" cried Madeleine in her clear voice; and at the sight of theperson who opened the door, Maurice involuntarily started up from hischair, and taking his stand behind it, held the back of it firmly withboth hands, in self-defence. 

It was Louise. 

On seeing the two young men, she hesitated, and, with the door-handlestill in her hand, smiled a faint questioning smile at Madeleine, raising her eyebrows and showing a thin line of white between her lips. 

"May I come in?" she asked, with her head a little on one side. 

"Why, of course you know you may, " said Madeleine with some asperity. 

And so Louise entered, and came forward to the table at which they hadbeen sitting; but before anything further could be said, she raised herarms to catch up a piece of hair which had fallen loose on her neck. The young men were standing, waiting to greet her, Maurice still behindhis chair; but she did not hurry on their account, or "just on theiraccount did not hurry, " as Madeleine mentally remarked. 

Both watched Louise, and followed her movements. To their eyes, sheappeared to be very simply dressed; it was only Madeleine whoappreciated the cost and care of this seeming simplicity. She wore aplain, close-fitting black dress, of a smooth, shiny stuff, whichobeyed and emphasised the lines and outlines of her body; and, as shestood, with her arms upraised, composedly aware of being observed, theycould see the line of her side rising and falling with the rise andfall of each breath. Otherwise, she wore a large black hat, withfeathers and an overhanging brim, which threw shadows on her face, andmade her eyes seem darker than ever. 

Letting her arms drop with a sigh of relief, she shook hands with Dove, and Dove--to Madeleine's diversion and Maurice's intensedisgust--introduced Maurice to her as his friend. She looked full atthe latter, and held out her hand; but before he could take it, shewithdrew it again, and put both it and her left hand behind her back. 

"No, no, " she said. "I mustn't shake hands with you to-day. Today isFriday. And to give one's hand for the first time on a Friday wouldbring bad luck--to you, if not to me. "

She was serious, but both the others laughed, and Maurice, having lethis outstretched hand fall, coloured, and smiled rather foolishly. Shedid not seem to notice his discomfiture; turning to Madeleine, shebegan to speak of a piece of music she wished to borrow; and thenMaurice had a chance of observing her at his ease, and of listening toher voice, in which he heard all manner of impossible things. But whileMadeleine, with Dove's assistance, was looking through a pile of music, Louise came suddenly up to him and said: "You are not offended with me, are you?" She had a low voice, with a childish cadence in it, whichtouched him like a caress. 

"Offended? I with you?" He meant to laugh, but his voice shook. 

She stared at him, openly astonished, not only at his words, but alsoat the tone in which they were said; and the strange, fervent gaze benton her by this man whom she saw for the first time in her life, confused her and made her uneasy. Slowly and coldly she turned away, but Madeleine, who was charitably occupying Dove as long as she could, did not take any notice of her. And as the young man continued to stareat her, she looked out of the window at the lowering grey sky, andsaid, with a shudder: "What a day for June!"

All eyes followed hers, Maurice's with the rest; but almost instantlyhe brought them back again to her face. 

"Louise is a true Southerner, " said Madeleine; "and is wretched ifthere's a cloud in the sky. "

Louise smiled, and he saw her strong white teeth. "It's not quite asbad as that, " she said; and then, although herself not clear why sheshould have answered these searching eyes, she added, looking atMaurice: "I come from Australia. "

If she had said she was a visitant from another world, Maurice wouldnot, at the moment, have felt much surprise; but on hearing the name ofthis distant land, on which he would probably never set foot, a senseof desolation overcame him. He realised anew, with a pang, what anutter stranger he was to her; of her past life, her home, her country, he knew and could know nothing. 

"That is very far away, " he said, speaking out of this feeling, andthen was vexed with himself for having done so. His words soundedfoolish as they lingered on in the stillness that followed them, andwould, he believed, lay him open to Madeleine's ridicule. But he hadnot much time in which to repent of them; the music had been found, andshe was going again. He heard her refuse an invitation to stay: she hadan engagement at half-past four. And now Dove, who, throughout, hadkept in the background, looked at his watch and took up his hat: he hadpreviously offered, unopposed, to do the long wait outside the theatre, which was necessary when one had no tickets, and now it was time to go. But when Louise heard the word theatre, she laid a slim, ungloved handon Dove's arm. 

"The very thing for such a night!"

They all said "AUF WIEDERSEHEN!" to one another; she did not offer toshake hands again, and Maurice nursed a faint hope that it was on hisaccount. He opened the window, leant out, and watched them, until theywent round the corner of the street. 

Madeleine smiled shrewdly behind his back, but when he turned, she wasgrave. She did not make any reference to what had passed, nor did she, as he feared she would, put questions to him: instead, she showed him asong of Krafft's, and asked him to play the accompaniment for her. Hegratefully consented, without knowing what he was undertaking. For thesong, a setting of a poem by Lenau, was nominally in C sharp minor; butit was black with accidentals, and passed through many keys before itcame to a close in D flat major. Besides this, the right hand had muchhard passage-work in quaint scales and broken octaves, to a syncopatedbass of chords that were adapted to the stretch of no ordinary hand. 

"LIEBLOS UND OHNE GOTT AUF EINER HAIDE, " sang Madeleine on the high Fsharp; but Maurice, having collected neither his wits nor his fingers, began blunderingly, could not right himself, and after scramblingthrough a few bars, came to a dead stop, and let his hands fall fromthe keys. 

"Not to-day, Madeleine. "

She laughed good-naturedly. "Very well--not to-day. One shouldn't askyou to believe to-day that DIE GANZE WELT IST ZUM VERZWEIFELN TRAURIG. "

While she made tea, he returned to the window, where he stood with hishands in his pockets, lost in thought. He told himself once more whathe found it impossible to believe: that he was going to see Louiseagain in a few hours; and not only to see her, but to speak to her, tobe at her side. And when his jubilation at this had subsided, he wentover in memory all that had just taken place. His first impression, hecould afford now to admit it, had been almost one of disappointment:that came from having dreamed so long of a shadowy being, whom he hadcalled by her name, that the real she was a stranger to him. Everythingabout her had been different from what he had expected--her voice, hersmile, her gestures--and in the first moments of their meeting, he hadbeen chill with fear, lest--lest . .. Even yet he did not venture tothink out the thought. But this first sensation of strangeness over, hehad found her more charming, more desirable, than even he had hoped;and what almost wrung a cry of pleasure from him as he remembered it, was that not the smallest trifle--no touch of coquetry, no insincerelyspoken word--had marred the perfect impression of the whole. To knowher, to stand before her, he recognised it now, gave the lie to falseslander and report. Hardest of all, however, was it to grasp that themeeting had actually come to pass and was over: it had been soordinary, so everyday, the most natural thing in the world; there hadbeen no blast of trumpets, nor had any occult sympathy warned her thatshe was in the presence of one who had trembled for weeks at the ideaof this moment and again he leaned forward and gazed at the spot in thestreet, where she had disappeared from sight. He was filled with envyof Dove--this was the latter's reward for his unfailing readiness tooblige others--and in fancy he saw Dove walking street after street ather side. 

In reality, the two parted from each other shortly after turning thefirst corner. 

On any other day, Dove would have been still more prompt to take leaveof his companion; but, on this particular one, he was in the mood to bea little reckless. In the morning, he had received, with a delightfulshock, his first letter from Ephie, a very frank, warmly written note, in which she relied on his great kindness to secure her, WITHOUTFAIL--these words were deeply underscored--two places in the PARQUET ofthe theatre, for that evening's performance. Not the letter alone, butalso its confiding tone, and the reliance it placed in him, had touchedDove to a deep pleasure; he had been one of the first to arrive at thebox-office that morning, and, although he had not ventured, unasked, totake himself a seat beside the sisters, he was now living in theanticipation of promenading the FOYER with them in the intervalsbetween the acts, and of afterwards escorting them home. 

On leaving Louise he made for the theatre with a swinging stride--hadhe been in the country, stick in hand, he would have slashed off theheads of innumerable green and flowering things. As it was, hewhistled--an unusual thing for him to do in the street--then assumedthe air of a man hard pressed for time. Gradually the passers-by beganto look at him with the right amount of attention; he jostled, as if byaccident, one or two of those who were unobservant, then apologised forhis hurry. It was not pleasurable anticipation alone that wasresponsible for Dove's state of mind, and for the heightening andradiation of his self-consciousness. In offering to go early to thetheatre, and to stand at the doors for at least three-quarters of anhour, in order that the others, coming considerably later might stillhave a chance of gaining their favourite seats: in doing this, Dove wasnot actuated by a wholly unselfish motive, but by the more complicatedone, which, consciously or unconsciously, was present beneath all thefriendly cares and attentions he bestowed on people. He was never morecontent with himself, and with the world at large, than when he feltthat he was essential to the comfort and well-being of some of hisfellow-mortals; than when he, so to speak, had a finger in the pie oftheir existence. It engendered a sense of importance, gave life fulnessand variety; and this far outweighed the trifling inconveniences suchwelldoing implied. Indeed, he throve on them. For, in his mild way, Dove had a touch of Caesarean mania--of a lust for power. 

Left to herself, Louise Dufrayer walked slowly home to her room in theBRUDERSTRASSE, but only to throw a hasty look round. It was just as shehad expected: although it was long past the appointed time, he was notthere. At a flower-shop in a big adjoining street, she bought a bunchof many-coloured roses, and with these in her hands, went straight towhere Schilsky lived. 

Mounting to the third floor of the house in the TALSTRASSE, she opened, without ceremony, the door of his room, which gave direct on thelanding; but so stealthily that the young man, who was sitting with hisback to the door, did not hear her enter. Before he could turn, she hadsprung forward, her arms were round his neck, and the roses under hisnose. He drew his face away from their damp fragrance, but did not lookup, and, without removing his cigarette, asked in a tone of extreme badtemper: "What are you doing here, Lulu? What nonsense is this? ForGod's sake, shut the door!"

She ruffled his hair with her lips. "You didn't come. And the day hasseemed so long. "

He tried to free himself, putting the roses aside with one hand, while, with his cigarette, he pointed to the sheets of music-paper that laybefore him. "For a very good reason. I've had no time. "

She went back and closed the door; and then, sitting down on his knee, unpinned her big hat, and threw it and the roses on the bed. He put hisarm round her to steady her, and as soon as he held her to him, hisill-temper was vanquished. He talked volubly of the instrumentation hewas busy with. But she, who could point out almost every fresh note heput on paper, saw plainly that he had not been at work for more than aquarter of an hour; and, in a miserable swell of doubt and jealousy, such as she could never subdue, she asked:

"Were you practising as well?"

He took no notice of these words, and she did not trust herself to saymore, until, with his free hand, he began jotting again, making notesthat were no bigger than pin-heads. Then she laid her hand on his. "Ihaven't seen you all day. "

But he was too engrossed to listen. "Look here, " he said pointing to athick-sown bar. "That gave me the deuce of a bother. While here "--andnow he explained to her, in detail, the properties of the tenor-tuba inB, and the bass-tuba in F, and the use to which he intended to putthese instruments. She heard him with lowered eyes, lightly caressingthe back of his hand with her finger-tips. But when he ceased speaking, she rubbed her cheek against his. 

"It is enough for to-day. Lulu has been lonely. "

Not one of his thoughts was with her, she saw that, as he answered: "Imust get this finished. "

"To-night?"

"If I can. You know well enough, Lulu, when I'm in the swing----"

"Yes, yes, I know. If only it wouldn't always come, just when I wantyou most. "

Her face lost its brightness; she rose from his knee and roamed aboutthe room, watched from the wall by her pictured self. 

"But is there ever a moment in the day when you don't want me? You arenever satisfied. " He spoke abstractedly, without interest in the answershe might make, and, relieved of her weight, leant forward again, whilehis fingers played some notes on the table. But when she began to lether hands stray over the loose papers and other articles thatencumbered chairs, piano and washstand, he raised his head and watchedher with a sharp eye. 

"For goodness' sake, let those things alone, can't you?" he said afterhe had borne her fidgeting for some time. 

"You have no secrets from me, I suppose?" She said it with hertenderest smile, but he scowled so darkly in reply that she went overto him again, to touch him with her hand. Standing behind him, with herfingers in his hair, she said: "Just to-day I wanted you so much. Thismorning I was so depressed that I could have killed myself. "

He turned his head, to give her a significant glance. 

"Good reason for the blues, Lulu. I warned you. You want too much ofeverything. And can't expect to escape a KATER. "

"Too much?" she echoed, quick to resent his words. "Does it seem so toyou? Would days and days of happiness be too much after we have beenseparated for a week?--after Wednesday night?--after what you said tome yesterday?"

"Yesterday I was in the devil of a temper. Why rake up old scores? Nowgo home. Or at least keep quiet, and let me get something done. "

He shook his head free of her caressing hand, and, worse still, scratched the place where it had lain. She stood irresolute, notventuring to touch him again, looking hungrily at him. Her eyes fell onthe piece of neck, smooth, lightly browned, that showed between hishair and the low collar; and, in an uncontrollable rush of feeling, shestooped and kissed it. As he accepted the caress, without demur, shesaid: "I thought of going to the theatre to-night, dear. "

He was pleased and showed it. "That's right--it's just what you need tocheer you up. "

"But I want you to come, too. "

He struck the table with his fist. "Good God, can't you get it intoyour head that I want to work?"

She laughed, with ready bitterness. "I should think I could. That'snothing new. You are always busy when I ask you to do anything. Youhave time for everything and every one but me. If this were somethingyou yourself wanted to do to-night, neither your work nor anything elsewould stand in the way of it; but my wishes can always be ignored. Haveyou forgotten already that I only came home the day before yesterday?"

He looked sullen. "Now don't make a scene, Lulu. It doesn't do a whitof good. "

"A scene!" she cried, seizing on his words. "Whenever I open my lipsnow, you call it a scene. Tell me what I have done, Eugen! Why do youtreat me like this? Are you beginning to care less for me? The firstevening, the very first, I get home, you won't stay with me--youhaven't even kept that evening free for me--and when I ask you aboutit, and try to get at the truth--oh, do you remember all the cruelthings you said to me yesterday? I shall never forget them as long as Ilive. And now, when I ask you to come out with me--it is such a littlething-oh, I can't sit at home this evening, Eugen, I can't do it! Ifyou really loved me, you would understand. "

She flung herself across the bed and sobbed despairingly. Schilsky, whohad again made believe during this outburst to be absorbed in his work, cast a look of mingled anger and discomfort at the prostrate figure, and for some few moments, succeeded in continuing his occupation with ashow of indifference; but as, in place of abating, her sobs grew moreheart-rending, his own face began to twitch, and finally he droppedpencil and cigarette, and with a loud expression of annoyance went overto the bed. 

"Lulu, " he said persuasively. "Come, Lulu, " and bending over her, helaid his hands on her shoulders and tried to force her to rise. Sheresisted him with all her might, but he was the stronger, and presentlyhe had her on her feet, where, with her head on his shoulder, she weptout the rest of her tears. He held her to him, and although his faceabove her was still dark, did what he could to soothe her. He couldnever bear, to see or to hear a woman cry, and this loud passionateweeping, so careless of anything but itself, racked his nerves, andfilled him with an uneasy wrath against invisible powers. 

"Don't cry, darling, don't cry!" he said again and again. Gradually shegrew calmer, and he, too, was still; but when her sobs were hushed, andshe was clinging to him in silence, he put his hands on her shouldersand held her back from him, that he might look at her. His face wore astubborn expression, which she knew, and which made him appear yearsolder than he was. 

"Now listen to me, Lulu, " he said. "When you behave in this way again, you won't see me afterwards for a week--I promise you that, and youknow I keep my word. Instead of being glad that I am in the right moodand can get something done, you come here--which you know I haverepeatedly forbidden you to do--and make a fool of yourself like this. I have explained everything to you. I could not possibly stay onWednesday night--why didn't you time your arrival better? But it's justlike you. You would throw the whole of one's future into the balancefor the sake of a whim. Yesterday I was in a beast of a temper--I'veadmitted it. But that was made all right last night; and no one but youwould drag it up again. "

He spoke with a kind of dogged restraint, which only sometimes gaveway, when the injustice she was guilty of forced itself upon him. "Now, like a good girl, go home--go to the theatre and enjoy yourself. Idon't mind you being happy without me. At least, go!--under anycircumstances you ought not to be here. How often have I told youthat!" His moderation swept over into the feverish irritation she knewso well how to kindle in him, and his lisp became so marked that he wasalmost unintelligible. "You won't have a rag of reputation left. "

"If I don't care, why should you?" She felt for his hand. But he turnedhis back. "I won't have it, I tell you. You know what the studentunderneath said the last time he met you on the stair. "

She pressed her handkerchief to her lips to keep from bursting anewinto sobs, and there was a brief silence--he stood at the window, gazing savagely at the opposite house-wall--before she said: "Don'tspeak to me like that. I'm going--now--this moment. I will never do itagain--never again. "

As he only mumbled disbelief at this, she put her arms round his neck, and raised her tear-stained face to his: her eyes were blurred andsunken with crying, and her lips were white. He knew every line of herface by heart; he had known it in so many moods, and under so manyconditions, that he was not as sensitive to its influence as he hadonce been; and he stood unwilling, with his hands in his pockets, whileshe clung to him and let him feel her weight. But he was very fond ofher, and, as she continued mutely to implore forgiveness--she, Lulu, his Lulu, whom every one envied him--his hasty anger once moresubsided; he put his arms round her and kissed her. She nestled inagainst him, over-happy at his softening, and for some moments theystood like this, in the absolute physical agreement that alwaysovercame their differences. In his arms, with her head on his shoulder, she smoothed back his hair; and while she gazed, with adoring eyes, atthis face that constituted her world, she murmured words of endearment;and all the unsatisfactory day was annulled by these few moments ofperfect harmony. 

It was he who loosened his grasp. "Now, it's all right, isn't it? Nomore tears. But you really must be off, or you'll be late. "

"Yes. And you?"

He had taken up his violin and was tuning it, preparatory to playinghimself back into the mood she had dissipated. He ran his fingers upand down, tried flageolets, and slashed chords across the strings. 

But when she had sponged her face and pinned on her hat, he said, inresponse to her beseeching eyes, which, as so often before, made thegranting of this one request, a touchstone of his love for her: "Lookhere, Lulu, if I possibly can, I'll drop in at the end of the firstact. Look out for me then, in the FOYER. "

And with this, she was forced to be content. 

IX. 

When, shortly after five o'clock, Madeleine and Maurice arrived at theNew Theatre, they took their places at the end of a queue whichextended to the corner of the main building; and before they had stoodvery long, so many fresh people had been added to the line, that it hadlengthened out until it all but reached the arch of the theatre-cafe. Dove was well to the fore, and would be one of the first to gain thebox-office. A quarter of an hour had still to elapse before the doorsopened; and Maurice borrowed his companion's textbook, and readstudiously, to acquaint himself with the plot of the opera. Madeleinetook out Wolzogen's FUHRER, with the intention of brushing up herknowledge of the motives; but, before she had finished a page, she hadgrown so interested in what two people behind her were saying that sheturned and took part in the conversation. 

The broad expanse of the AUGUSTUSPLATZ facing the theatre was bare andsunny. A policeman arrived, and ordered the queue in a straighter line;then he strolled up and down, stroking and smoothing his white gloves. More people came hurrying over the square to the theatre, and rangedthemselves at the end of the tail. As the hands of the big clock on thepost-office neared the quarter past five, a kind of tremor ran throughthe waiting line; it gathered itself more compactly together. One clockafter another boomed the single stroke; sounds came from within thebuilding; the burly policeman placed himself at the head of the line. There was a noise of drawn bolts and grating locks, and after amoment's suspense, light shone out and the big door was flung open. 

"Gent--ly!" shouted the policeman, but the leaders of the queue chargedwith a will, and about a dozen people had dashed forward, before hecould throw down a stemming arm, on which those thus hindered leaned ason a bar of iron. Madeleine and Maurice were to the front of the secondbatch. And the arm down, in they flew also, Madeleine leading throughthe swing-doors at the side of the corridor, up the steep, woodenstairs, one flight after another, higher and higher, round and round, past one, two, three, tiers--a mad race, which ended almost in the armsof the gate-keeper at the topmost gallery. 

Dove was waiting with the tickets, and they easily secured the desiredplaces; not in the middle of the gallery, where, as Madeleine explainedwhile she tucked her hat and jacket under the seat, the monstrouschandelier hid the greater part of the stage, but at the right-handside, next the lattice that separated the seats at seventy-five fromthose at fifty pfennigs. 

"This is first-rate for seeing, " said Maurice. 

Madeleine laughed. "You see too much--that's the trouble. Wait tillyou've watched the men running about the bottom of the Rhine, workingthe cages the Rhine-daughters swim in. "

As yet, with the exception of the gallery, the great building wasempty. Now the iron fire-curtain rose; but the sunken well of theorchestra was in darkness, and the expanse of seats on the ground floorfar below, was still encased in white wrappings--her and there anattendant began to peel them off. Maurice, poring over his book, had tostrain his eyes to read, and this, added to the difficulty of theGerman, and his own sense of pleasurable excitement, made him soon giveup the attempt, and attend wholly to what Madeleine was saying. 

It was hot already, and the air of the crowded gallery was permeatedwith various, pungent odours: some people behind them were eating astrong-smelling sausage, and the man on the other side of the latticereeked of cheap tobacco. When they had been in their seats for about aquarter of an hour, the lights throughout the theatre went up, and, directly afterwards, the lower tiers and the ground floor weresprinkled with figures. One by, one, the members of the orchestradropped in, turned up the lamps attached to their stands, and takingtheir instruments, commenced to tune and flourish; and soon straymotives and scraps of motives came mounting up, like lost birds, fromwind and strings; the man of the drums beat a soft rattatoo, andapplied his ear to the skins of his instruments. Now the players werein their seats, waiting for the conductor; late-comers in the audienceentered with an air of guilty haste. The chief curtain had risen, andthe stage was hidden only by stuff curtains, bordered with a runicscroll. A delightful sense of expectation pervaded the theatre. 

Maurice had more than once looked furtively at his watch; and, at everyfresh noise behind him, he turned his head--turned so often that thepeople in the back seats grew suspicious, and whispered to one another. Madeleine had drawn his attention to everything worth noticing; andnow, with her opera-glass at her eyes, she pointed out to him peoplewhom he ought to know. Dove, having eaten a ham-roll at the buffet onthe stair, had ever since sat with his opera-glass glued to his face, and only at this moment did he remove it with a sigh of relief. 

"There they are, " said Madeleine, and showed Maurice the place in thePARQUET, where Ephie and Johanna Cayhill were sitting. But the youngman only glanced cursorily in the direction she indicated; he waswondering why Louise did not come--the time had all but gone. He couldnot bring himself to ask, partly from fear of being disappointed, partly because, now that he knew her, it was harder than before tobring her name over his lips. But the conductor had entered by theorchestra-door; he stood speaking to the first violinist, and the nextmoment would climb into his seat. The players held their instruments inreadiness--and a question trembled on Maurice's tongue. But at thisvery moment, a peremptory fanfare rang out behind the scene, andMadeleine said: "The sword motive, Maurice, " to add in the same breath:"There's Louise. "

He looked behind him. "Where?"

She nudged him. "Not here, you silly, " she said in a loud whisper. "Surely you haven't been expecting her to come up here? PARQUET, fourthrow from the front, between two women in plaid dresses--oh, now thelights have gone. "

"Ssh!" said at least half a dozen people about them: her voice wasaudible above the growling of the thunder. 

Maurice took her opera-glass, and, notwithstanding the darkness intowhich the theatre had been plunged, travelled his eyes up and down therow she named--naturally without success. When the curtains parted anddisclosed the stage, it was a little lighter, but not light enough forhim; he could not find the plaids; or rather there were only plaids inthe row; and there was also more than one head that resembled hers. Toknow that she was there was enough to distract him; and he wasconscious of the music and action of the opera merely as something thatwas going on outside him, until he received another sharp nudge fromMadeleine on his righthand side. 

"You're not attending. And this is the only act you'll be able to makeanything of. "

He gave a guilty start, and turned to the stage, where Hunding had justentered to a pompous measure. In his endeavours to understand whatfollowed, he was aided by his companions, who prompted him alternately. But Siegmund's narration seemed endless, and his thoughts wandered inspite of himself. 

"Listen to this, " said Dove of a sudden. "It's one of the few songsWagner has written. " He swayed his head from side to side, to theopening bars of the love-song; and Maurice found the rhythm so invitingthat he began keeping time with his foot, to the indignation of amusic-loving policeman behind them, who gave an angry: "Pst!"

"One of the finest love-scenes that was ever written, " whisperedMadeleine in her decisive way. And Maurice believed her. From thispoint on, the music took him up and carried him with it; and when thegreat doors burst open, and let in the spring night, he applaudedvigorously with the rest, keeping it up so long that Dove disappeared, and Madeleine grew impatient. 

"Let us go. The interval is none too long. "

They went downstairs to the first floor of the building, and entered along, broad, brilliantly lighted corridor. Here the majority of theaudience was walking round and round, in a procession of twos andthrees; groups of people also stood at both ends and looked on; otherswent in and out of the doors that opened on the great loggia. Madeleineand Maurice joined the perambulating throng, Madeleine bowing andsmiling to her acquaintances, Maurice eagerly scanning the faces thatcame towards him on the opposite side. 

Suddenly, a stout gentleman, in gold spectacles, kid gloves tight tobursting, and a brown frock coat, over the amplitude of which was slungan opera-glass, started up from a corner, and, seizing both Madeleine'shands, worked them up and down. At the same time, he made a ceremoniouslittle speech about the length of time that had elapsed since theirlast meeting, and paid her a specious compliment on the taste shedisplayed in being present at so serious an opera. Madeleine laughed, and said a few words in her hard, facile German: the best was yet tocome; "DIE MORAN" was divine as Brunnhilde. Having bowed and said:"Lohse" to Maurice, the stranger took no further notice of him, but, drawing Madeleine's hand through his arm, in a manner half gallant, half paternal, invited her to take ices with him, at the adjoiningbuffet. 

Maurice remained standing in a corner, scrutinising those who passedhim. He exchanged a few words with one of his companions of thedinner-table--a small-bodied, big-headed chemical student calledDickensey, who had a reputation for his cynicism. He had just askedMaurice whether Siegmund reminded him more of a pork-butcher or aprizefighter, and had offered to lay a bet that he would never attend aperformance in this theatre when the doors of Hunding's house flewopen, or the sword lit up, at exactly the right moment--when Mauricecaught sight of Dove and the Cayhills. He excused himself, and went tojoin them. 

Not one of the three looked happy. Johanna was unspeakably bored anddid not conceal it; she gazed with contempt on the noisy, excitedcrowd. Dove was not only burning to devote himself to Ephie; he hadalso got himself into a dilemma, and was at this moment doing his bestto explain the first act of the opera to Johanna, without touching onthe relationship of the lovers. His face was red with the effort, andhe hailed Maurice's appearance as a welcome diversion. But Ephie, too, greeted him with pleasure, and touching his arm, drew him back, so thatthey dropped behind the others. She was coquettishly dressed thisevening, and looked so charming that people drew one another'sattention to DIE REIZENDE KLEINE ENGLADNDERIN. But Maurice soondiscovered that she was out of spirits, and disposed to be cross. Forfear lest he was the offender, he asked if she had quite forgiven him, and if they were good friends again. "Oh, I had forgotten all aboutit!" But, a moment after, she was grave and quiet--altogether unlikeherself. 

"Are you not enjoying yourself, Ephie?"

"No, I'm not. I think it's stupid. And they're all so fat. "

This referred to the singers, and was indisputable; Maurice could onlyagree with her, and try to rally her. Meanwhile, he continuedsurreptitiously to scour the hall, with an evergrowing sense ofdisappointment. 

Then, suddenly, among those who were passing in the opposite direction, he saw Louise. In a flash he understood why he had not been able tofind her in the row of seats: he had looked for her in a black dress, and she was all in white, with heavy white lace at her neck. Hercompanion was an Englishman called Eggis, of whom it was rumoured thathe had found it advisable abruptly to leave his native land: here, hemade a precarious living by journalism, and by doing odd jobs for theconsulate. In spite of his shabby clothes, this man, prematurely bald, with dissipated features, had polished manners and an air ofrefinement; and, thoroughly enjoying his position, he was talking tohis companion with vivacity. It was plain that Louise was only halflistening to him; with a faint, absent smile on her lips, she, too, restlessly scanned the crowd. 

They all caught sight of Schilsky at the same moment, and Maurice, onwhom nothing was lost, saw as well the quick look that passed betweenLouise and him, and its immediate effect: Louise flashed into a smile, and was full of gracious attentiveness to the little man at her side. 

Schilsky leant against the wall, with his hands in his pockets, hisconspicuous head well back. On entering the FOYER, he had been pouncedon by Miss Jensen. The latter, showily dressed in a large-stripedstuff, had in tow a fellow-singer about half her own size, whom she wasrarely to be seen without; but, on this occasion, the wan littleAmerican stood disconsolately apart, for Miss Jensen was paying noattention to him. In common with the rest of her sex, she had aweakness for Schilsky; and besides, on this evening, she neededspecially receptive ears, for she had been studying the role ofSieglinde, and was full of criticisms and objections. As Ephie andMaurice passed them, she nodded to the latter and said: "Good evening, neighbour!" while Schilsky, seizing the chance, broke away, withouttroubling to excuse himself. Thus deserted, Miss Jensen detainedMaurice, and so he lost the couple he wanted to keep in sight. But atthe first pause in the conversation, Ephie plucked at his sleeve. 

"Let us go out on the balcony. "

They went outside on the loggia, where groups of people stoodrefreshing themselves in the mild evening air, which was pleasant withthe scent of lilac. Ephie led the way, and Maurice followed her to theedge of the parapet, where they leaned against one of the pillars. Here, he found himself again in the neighbourhood of the other two. Louise, leaning both hands on the stone-work, was looking out over thesquare; but Schilsky, lounging as before, with his legs crossed, hishands in his pockets, had his back to it, and was letting his eyesrange indifferently over the faces before him. As Maurice and Ephiecame up, he yawned long and heartily, and, in so doing, showed all hisdefective teeth. Furtively watching them, Maurice saw him lean towardshis companion and say something to her; at the same time, he touchedwith his fingertips the lace she wore at the front of her dress. Thefamiliarity of the action grated on Maurice, and he turned away hishead. When he looked again, a moment or two later, he was disturbedanew. Louise was leaning forward, still in the same position, butSchilsky was plainly conversing by means of signs with some one else. He frowned, half closed his eyes, shook his head, and, as if by chance, laid a finger on his lips. 

"Who's he doing that to?" Maurice asked himself, and followed thedirection of the other's eyes, which were fixed on the corner where heand Ephie stood. He turned, and looked from side to side; and, as hedid this, he caught a glimpse of Ephie's face, which made him observeher more nearly: it was flushed, and she was gazing hard at Schilsky. With a rush of enlightenment, Maurice looked back at the young man, butthis time Schilsky saw that he was being watched; stooping, he said anonchalant word to his companion, and thereupon they went indoorsagain. All this passed like a flash, but it left, none the less, adisagreeable impression, and before Maurice had recovered from it, Ephie said: "Let us go in. "

They pressed towards the door. 

"I'm poor company to-night, Ephie, " he said, feeling already the needof apologising to her for his ridiculous suspicion. "But you are quiet, too. " He glanced down at her as he spoke, and again was startled; herexpression was set and defiant, but her baby lips trembled. "What's thematter? I believe you are angry with me for being so silent. "

"I guess it doesn't make any difference to me whether you talk or not, "she replied pettishly. "But I think it's just as dull and stupid as itcan be. I wish I hadn't come. "

"Would you like to go home?"

"Of course I wouldn't. I'll stop now I'm here--oh, can't we go quicker?How slow you are! Do make haste. "

He thought he heard tears in her voice, and looked at her inperplexity. While he contemplated getting her into a quiet corner andmaking her tell him truthfully what the matter was, they came uponMadeleine, who had been searching everywhere for Maurice. Madeleine hadmore colour in her cheeks than usual, and, in the pleasingconsciousness that she was having a successful evening, she brought hergood spirits to bear on Ephie, who stood fidgeting beside them. 

"You look nice, child, " she remarked in her patronising way. "Yourdress is very pretty. But why is your face so red? One would think youhad been crying. "

Ephie, growing still redder, tossed her head. "It's no wonder, I'msure. The theatre is as hot as an oven. But at least my nose isn't redas well. "

Madeleine was on the point of retorting, but at this moment, theinterval came to an end, and the electric bells rang shrilly. Thepeople who were nearest the doors went out at once, upstairs and down. Among the first were Louise and Schilsky, the latter's head as usualvisible above every one else's. 

"I will go, too, " said Ephie hurriedly. "No, don't bother to come withme. I'll find my way all right. I guess the others are in front. "

"There's something wrong with that child to-night, " said Madeleine asshe and Maurice climbed to the gallery. "Pert little thing! But Isuppose even such sparrow-brains have their troubles. "

"I suppose they have, " said Maurice. He had just realised that thelonged-for interval was over, and with it more of the hopes he hadnursed. 

Dove was already in his seat, eating another roll. He moved along tomake room for them, but not a word was to be got out of him, and assoon as he had finished eating, he raised the opera-glass to his eyesagain. Behind his back, Madeleine whispered a mischievous remark toMaurice, but the latter smiled wintrily in return. He had searchedswiftly and thoroughly up and down the fourth row of the PARQUET, onlyto find that Louise was not in it. This time there could be no doubtwhatever; not a single white dress was in the row, and towards themiddle a seat was vacant. They had gone home then; he would not see heragain--and once more the provoking darkness enveloped the theatre. 

This second act had no meaning for him, and he found the various scenesintolerably long. Dove volunteered no further aid, and Madeleine'sexplanations were insufficient; he was perplexed and bored, and whenthe curtains fell, joined in the applause merely to save appearances. The others rose, but he said he would not go downstairs; and when theyhad drawn back to let Dove push by and hurry away, Madeleine said she, too, would stay. However they would at least go into the corridor, where the air was better. After they had promenaded several times upand down, they descended to a lower floor and there, through a littlehalf-moon window that gave on the FOYER below, they watched the livingstream which, underneath, was going round as before. Madeleine talkedwithout a pause. 

"Look at Dove!" She pointed him out as he went by with the two sisters. "Did you ever see such a gloomy air? He might sit for Werther to-night. And oh, look, there's Boehmer with his widow--see, the pretty fattishlittle woman. She's over forty and has buried two husbands, but iscrazy about Boehmer. They say she's going to marry him, though he'smore than twenty years younger than she is. "

At this juncture, to his astonishment, Maurice saw Schilsky and Louise. He uttered an involuntary exclamation, and Madeleine understood it. Shestopped her gossip to say: "You thought she had gone, didn't you?Probably she has only changed her seat. They do that sometimes--hehates PARQUET. " And, after a pause: "How cross she looks! She'sevidently in a temper about something. I never saw people hide theirfeelings as badly as they do. It's positively indecent. "

Her strictures were justifiable; as long as the two below were insight, and as often as they came round, they did not exchange word orlook with each other. Schilsky frowned sulkily, and his loose-knittedbody seemed to hang together more loosely than usual, while as forLouise--Maurice staring hard from his point of vantage could not havebelieved it possible for her face to change in this way. She lookedsuddenly older, and very tired; and her mobile mouth was hard. 

When, an hour later, after a tedious colloquy between Brunnhilde andWotan, this long and disappointing evening came to an end, to the morehuman strains of the FEUERZAUBER, and they, the last of thegallery-audience to leave, had tramped down the wooden stairs, Maurice's heart leapt to his throat to discover, as they turned thelast bend, not only the two Cayhills waiting for them, but also, alittle distance further off, Louise. She stood there, in her whitedress, with a thin scarf over her head. 

Madeleine was surprised too. "Louise! Is it you? And alone?"

The girl did not respond. "I want to borrow some money from you, Madeleine--about five or six marks, " she said, without smiling, in oneof those colourless voices that preclude further questioning. 

Madeleine was not sure if she had more than a couple of marks in herpurse, and confirmed this on looking through it under a lamp; but bothyoung men put their hands in their pockets, and the required sum wasmade up. As they walked across the square, Louise explained. Dressed, and ready to start for the theatre, she had not been able to find herpurse. 

"I looked everywhere. And yet I had it only this morning. At the lastmoment, I came down here to Markwald's. He knows me; and he let me havethe seats on trust. I said I would go in afterwards. "

They waited outside the tobacconist's, while she settled her debt. Before she came out again, Madeleine cast her eyes over the group, and, having made a rapid surmise, said good-naturedly to Johanna: "Well, Isuppose we shall walk together as far as we can. Shall you and I leadoff?"

Maurice had a sudden vision of bliss; but no sooner had Louise appearedagain, with the shopman bowing behind her, then Ephie came round to hisside, with a naive, matter-of-course air that admitted of no rebuff, and asked him to carry her opera-glass. Dove and Louise brought up therear. 

But Dove had only one thought: to be in Maurice's place. Ephie hadbehaved so strangely in the theatre; he had certainly done something tooffend her, and, although he had more than once gone over his conductof the past week, without finding any want of correctness on his part, whatever it was, he must make it good without delay. 

"You know my friend Guest, I think, " he said at last, having racked hisbrains to no better result--not for the world would he have had hiscompanion suspect his anxiety to leave her. "He's a clever fellow, avery clever fellow. Schwarz thinks a great deal of him. I wonder whathis impressions of the opera were. This was his first experience ofWagner; it would be interesting to hear what he has to say. "

Louise was moody and preoccupied, but Dove's words made her smile. 

"Let us ask him, " she said. 

They quickened their steps and overtook the others. And when Dove, without further ado, had marched round to Ephie's side, Louise, leftslightly to herself, called Maurice back to her. 

"Mr. Guest, we want your opinion of the WALKURE. "

Confused to find her suddenly beside him, Maurice was still moredisconcerted at the marked way in which she slackened her pace to letthe other two get in front. Believing, too, that he heard a note ofmockery in her voice, he coloured and hesitated. Only a moment ago hehad had several things worth saying on his tongue; now they would notout. He stammered a few words, and broke down in them half-way. Shesaid nothing, and after one of the most embarrassing pauses he had everexperienced, he avowed in a burst of forlorn courage: "To tell thetruth, I did not hear much of the music. "

But Louise, who had merely exchanged one chance companion for another, did not ask the reason, or display any interest in his confession, andthey went on in silence. Maurice looked stealthily at her: her whitescarf had slipped back and her wavy head was bare. She had not heardwhat he said, he told himself; her thoughts had nothing to do with him. But as he stole glances at her thus, unreproved, he wakened to a suddenconsciousness of what was happening to him: here and now, after longweeks of waiting, he was walking at her side; he knew her, was alonewith her, in the summer darkness, and, though a cold hand gripped histhroat at the thought, he took the resolve not to let this moment passhim by, empty-handed. He must say something that would rouse her to thefact of his existence; something that would linger in her mind, andmake her remember him when he was not there. But they were half waydown the GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE; at the end, where the PETERSTRASSE crossedit, Dove and the Cayhills would branch off, and Madeleine return tothem. He had no time to choose his phrases. 

"When I was introduced to you this afternoon, Miss Dufrayer, you didnot know who I was, " he said bluntly. "But I knew you very well--bysight, I mean, of course. I have seen you often--very often. "

He had done what he had hoped to do, had arrested her attention. Sheturned and considered him, struck by the tone in which he spoke. 

"The first time I saw you, " continued Maurice, with the same show ofboldness--"you, of course, will not remember it. It was one evening inSchwarz's room--in April--months ago. And since then, I . .. Well . .. I----"

She was gazing at him now, in surprise. She remembered at this minute, how once before, that day, his manner of saying some simple thing hadaffected her disagreeably. Then, she had eluded the matter with anindifferent word; now, she was not in a mood to do this, or in a moodto show leniency. She was dispirited, at war with herself, and shewelcomed the excuse to vent her own bitterness on another. 

"And since then--well?"

"Since then . .. " He hesitated, and gave a nervous laugh at his owndaring. "Since then . .. Well, I have thought about you more than--thanis good for my peace of mind. "

For a moment amazement kept her silent; then she, too, laughed, and thewalls of the dark houses they were passing seemed to the young man tore-echo the sound. 

"Your peace of mind!"

She repeated the words after him, with such an ironical emphasis thathis unreflected courage curled and shrivelled. He wished the ground hadswallowed him up before he had said them. For, as they fell from herlips, the audacity he had been guilty of, and the absurdity that waslatent in the words themselves, struck him in the face like pellets ofhail. 

"Your peace of mind! What has your peace of mind to do with me?" shecried, growing extravagantly angry. "I never saw you in my life tillto-day; I may never see you again, and it is all the same to me whetherI do or not. --Oh, my own peace of mind, as you call it, is quite hardenough to take care of, without having a stranger's thrown at me! Whatdo you mean by making me responsible for it! I have never done anythingto you. "

All the foolish castles Maurice had built came tumbling about his cars. He grew pale and did not venture to look at her. 

"Make you responsible! Oh, how can you misunderstand me so cruelly!"

His consternation was so palpable that it touched her in spite ofherself. Her face had been as naively miserable as a child's, now itsoftened, and she spoke more kindly. 

"Don't mind what I say. To-night I am tired . .. Have a headache . .. Anything you like. "

A wave of compassion drowned his petty feelings of injury, and hissympathy found vent in a few inadequate words. 

"Help me?--you?" She laughed, in an unhappy way. "To help, one mustunderstand, and you couldn't understand though you tried. All youothers lead such quiet lives; you know nothing of what goes on in alife like mine. Every day I ask myself why I have not thrown myself outof the window, or over one of the bridges into the river, and put anend to it. "

Wrapped up though she was in herself, she could not help smiling at hisfrank gesture of dismay. 

"Don't be afraid, " she said, and the smile lingered on her lips. "Ishall never do it. I'm too fond of life, and too afraid of death. Butat least, " she caught herself up again, "you will see how ridiculous itis for you to talk to me of your peace of mind. Peace of mind! I havenever even been passably content. Something is always wanting. To-night, for instance, I feel so much energy in me, and I can makenothing of it--nothing! If I were a man, I should walk for hours, bareheaded, through the woods. But to be a woman . .. To be cooped upinside four walls . .. When the night itself is not large enough to holdit all!----"

She threw out her hands to emphasise her helplessness, then let themdrop to her sides again. There was a silence, for Maurice could notthink of anything to say; her fluency made him tongue-tied. Hestruggled with his embarrassment until they were all but within earshotof the rest, at the bottom of the street. 

"If I . .. If you would let me . .. There is nothing in the world Iwouldn't do to help you, " he ended fervently. 

She did not reply; they had reached the corner where the others waited. There was a general leave-taking. Through a kind of mist, Maurice sawthat Ephie's face still wore a hostile look; and she hardly moved herlips when she bade him good-night. 

Madeleine drew her own conclusions as she walked the rest of the wayhome between two pale and silent people. She had seen, on coming out ofthe theatre, that Louise was in one of her bad moods--a fact easily tobe accounted for by Schilsky's absence. Maurice had evidently been madeto suffer under it, too, for not a syllable was to be drawn from him, and, after several unavailing attempts she let him alone. 

As they crossed the ROSSPLATZ, which lay wide and deserted in thestarlight, Louise said abruptly: "Suppose, instead of going home, wewalk to Connewitz?"

At this proposal, and at Maurice's seconding of it, Madeleine laughedwith healthy derision. 

"That is just like one of your crazy notions, " she said "What acreature you are! For my part, I decline with thanks. I have to get aMoscheles ETUDE ready by to-morrow afternoon, and need all my wits. Butdon't let me hinder you. Walk to Grimma if you want to. "

"What do you say? Shall you and I go on?" Louise turned to Maurice; andthe young man did not know whether she spoke in jest or in earnest. 

Madeleine knew her better. "Louise!" she said warningly. "Maurice haswork to do to-morrow, too. "

"You thought I meant it, " said the girl, and laughed so ungovernablythat Madeleine was again driven to remonstrance. 

"For goodness' sake, be quiet! We shall have a policeman after us, ifyou laugh like that. "

Nothing more was said until they stood before the housedoor in theBRUDERSTRASSE. There Louise, who had lapsed once more into her formerindifference, asked Madeleine to come upstairs with her. 

"I will look for the purse again; and then I can give you what I oweyou. Or else I am sure to forget. Oh, it's still early; and the nightis so long. No one can think of sleep yet. "

Madeleine was not a night-bird, but she was also not averse to having adebt paid. Louise looked from her to Maurice. "Will you come, too, Mr. Guest? It will only take a few minutes, " she said, and, seeing hisunhappy face, and remembering what had passed between them, she spokemore gently than she had yet done. 

Maurice felt that he ought to refuse; it was late. But Madeleineanswered for him. "Of course. Come along, Maurice, " and he crossed thethreshold behind them. 

After lighting a taper, they entered a paved vestibule, and mounted aflight of broad and very shallow stairs; half-way up, there was a deeprecess for pot-plants, and a wooden seat was attached to the wall. Thehouse had been a fine one in its day; it was solidly built, had massivedoors with heavy brass fittings, and thick mahogany banisters. On thefirst floor were two doors, a large and a small one, side by side. Louise unlocked the larger, and they stepped into a commodious lobby, off which several rooms opened. She led the way to the furthest ofthese, and entered in front of her companions. 

Maurice, hesitating just inside the door, found himself close to agrand piano, which stood free on all sides, was open, and disorderlywith music. It was a large room, with three windows; and one end of itwas shut off by a high screen, which stretched almost from wall towall. A deep sofa stood in an oriel-window; a writing-table was coveredwith bric-a-brac, and three tall flower-vases were filled with purplelilac. But there was a general air of untidiness about the room; forstrewn over the chairs and tables were numerous small articles of dressand the toilet-hairpins, a veil, a hat and a skirt--all traces of herintimate presence. 

As she lifted the lamp from the writing-table to place it on the squaretable before the sofa, Madeleine called her attention to a folded paperthat had lain beneath it. 

"It seems to be a letter for you. "

She caught at it with a kind of avidity, tore it open, and heedless oftheir presence, devoured it, not only with her eyes: but with herparted lips and eager hands. When she looked up again, her cheeks had atinge of colour in them; her eyes shone like faceted jewels; her smilewas radiant and infectious. With no regard for appearances, shebuttoned the note in the bosom of her dress. 

"Now we will look for the purse, " she said. "But come in, Mr. Guest--you are still standing at the door. I shall think you areoffended with me. Oh, how hot the room is!--and the lilac is stifling. First the windows open! And then this scarf off, and some more light. You will help me to look, will you not?"

It was to Maurice she spoke, with a childlike upturning of her face tohis--an irresistibly confiding gesture. She disappeared behind thescreen, and came out bareheaded, nestling with both hands at the coilof hair on her neck. Then she lit two candles that stood on the pianoin brass candlesticks, and Maurice lighted her round the room, whileshe searched in likely and unlikely places--inside the piano, in emptyvases, in the folds of the curtains--laughing at herself as she did so, until Madeleine said that this was only nonsense, and came after themherself. When Maurice held the candle above the writing-table, helighted three large photographs of Schilsky, one more dandified thanthe other; and he was obliged to raise his other hand to steady thecandlestick. 

At last, following a hint from Madeleine, they discovered the pursebetween the back of the sofa and the seat; and now Louise rememberedthat it had been in the pocket of her dressing-gown that afternoon. 

"How stupid of me! I might have known, " she said contritely. "So manythings have gone down there in their day. Once a silver hair-brush thatI was fond of; and I sometimes look there when bangles or hat-pins aremissing, " and letting her eyes dance at Maurice, she threw back herhead and laughed. 

Here, however, another difficulty arose; except for a few nickel coins, the purse was found to contain only gold, and the required change couldnot be made up. 

"Never mind; take one of the twenty-mark pieces, " she urged. "Yes, Madeleine, I would rather you did;" and when Madeleine hinted thatMaurice might not find it too troublesome to come back with the changethe following day, she turned to the young man, and saying: "Yes, ifMr. Guest would be so kind, " smiled at him with such a gracious warmththat it was all he could do to reply with a decent unconcern. 

But the hands of the clock on the writing-table were nearing half-pasteleven, and now it was she who referred to the lateness of the hour. 

"Thank you very much, " she said to Maurice on parting. "And you mustforget the nonsense I talked this evening. I didn't mean it--not a wordof it. " She laughed and held out her hand. "I wouldn't shake hands withyou this afternoon, but now--if you will? For to-night I am notsuperstitious. Nothing bad will happen; I'm sure of that. And I am verymuch obliged to you--for everything. Good night. "

Only a few minutes back, he had been steeped in pity for her; now itseemed as if no one had less need of pity or sympathy than she. He wasbewildered, and went home to pass alternately from a mood of rapture toone of jealous despair. And the latter was torturous, for, as theywalked, Madeleine had let fall such a vile suspicion that he had partedfrom her in anger, calling as he went that if he believed what she saidto be true, he would never put faith in a human being again. 

In the light of the morning, of course, he knew that it was incredible, a mere phantasm born of the dark; and towards four o'clock thatafternoon, he called at the BRUDERSTRASSE with the change. But Louisewas not at home, and as he did not find her in on three successivedays, he did not venture to return. He wrote his name on a card, andleft this, together with the money, in an envelope. 

X. 

After parting from the rest, Dove and the two Cayhills continued theirway in silence: they were in the shadow thrown by the steep vaulting ofthe THOMASKIRCHE, before a word was exchanged between them. Johanna hadseveral times glanced inquiringly at her sister, but Ephie had turnedaway her head, so that only the outline of her cheek was visible, andas Dove had done exactly the same, Johanna could only conclude that thetwo had fallen out. It was something novel for her to be obliged totalk when Ephie was present, but it was impossible for them to walk thewhole way home as mum as this, especially as Dove had already heavedmore than one deep sigh. 

So, as they turned into the PROMENADE, Johanna said with a jerk, andwith an aggressiveness that she could not subdue: "Well, that is thefirst and the last time anyone shall persuade me to go to a so-calledopera by Wagner. "

"Is not that just a little rash?" asked Dove. He smiled, unruffled, with a suggestion of patronage; but there was also a preoccupation inhis manner, which showed that he was thinking of other things. 

"You call that music, " said Johanna, although he had done nothing ofthe kind. "I call it noise. I am not musical myself, thank goodness, but at least I know a tune when I hear one. "

"If my opinion had been asked, I should certainly have suggestedsomething lighter--LOHENGRIN OR TANNHAUSER, for instance, " said Dove. 

"You would have done us a favour if you had, " replied Johanna; and shemeant what she said, in more ways than one. She had been at a loss toaccount for Ephie's sudden longing to hear DIE WALKURE, and had gone tothe theatre against her will, simply because she never thwarted Ephieif she could avoid it. Now, after she had heard the opera, she feltaggrieved with Dove as well; as far as she had been able to gather fromhis vague explanations, from the bawling of the singers, and fromsubsequent events, the first act treated of relations so infamous that, by common consent, they are considered non-existent; and Johanna was ofthe opinion that, instead of being so ready to take tickets for them, Dove might have let drop a hint of the nature of the piece Ephie wishedto see. 

After this last remark of Johanna's there was another lengthy pause. Then Dove, looking fondly at what he could see of Ephie's cheek, said:"I am afraid Miss Ephie has not enjoyed it either; she is so quiet--sounlike herself. "

Ephie, who had been staring into the darkness, bit her lip: he was atit again. After the unfriendly way in which Maurice Guest had desertedher, and forced her into Dove's company, Dove had worried her rightdown the GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE, to know what the matter was, and how hehad offended her. She felt exasperated with every one, and if he beganhis worryings again, would have to vent her irritation somehow. 

"Ephie has only herself to blame if she didn't enjoy it; she was benton going, " said Johanna, in the mildly didactic manner she invariablyused towards her sister. "But I think she is only tired--or a littlecross. "

"Oh, that is not likely, " Dove hastened to interpose. 

"I am not cross, Joan, " said Ephie angrily. "And if it was my fault youhad to come--I've enjoyed myself very much, and I shall go again, asoften as I like. But I won't be teased--I won't indeed!"

This was the sharpest answer Johanna had ever received from Ephie. Shelooked at her in dismay, but made no response, for of nothing wasJohanna more afraid than of losing the goodwill Ephie bore her. Mentally she put her sister's pettishness down to the noise and heat ofthe theatre, and it was an additional reason for bearing Wagner and hismusic a grudge. Dove also made no further effort to converseconnectedly, but his silence was of a conciliatory kind, and, as theyadvanced along the PROMENADE, he could not deny himself the pleasure ofdrawing the pretty, perverse child's attention to the crossings, theruts in the road, the best bits of pavement, with a: "Walk you here, Miss Ephie, " "Take care, " "Allow me, " himself meanwhile dancing fromone side of the footpath to the other, until the young girl was almostdistracted. 

"I can see for myself, thank you. I have eyes in my head as well asanyone else, " she exclaimed at length; and to Johanna's amazed:"Ephie!" she retorted: "Yes, Joan, you think no one has a right to berude but yourself. "

Johanna was more hurt by these words than she would have confessed. Shehad hitherto believed that Ephie--affectionate, lazy littleEphie--accepted her individual peculiarities as an integral part of hernature: it had not occurred to her that Ephie might be standing aloofand considering her objectively--let alone mentally using such anunkind word as rudeness of her. But Ephie's fit of ill-temper, for suchit undoubtedly was, made Johanna see things differently; it hinted atunsuspected, cold scrutinies in the past, and implied a somewhat lamingcare of one's words in the days to come, which would render itdifficult ever again to be one's perfectly natural self. 

Had Johanna not been so occupied with her own feelings, she would haveheard the near tears in Ephie's voice; it was with the utmostdifficulty that the girl kept them back, and at the house-door, she hadvanished up the stairs long before Dove had finished saying good-night. In the corridor, she hesitated whether or no, according to custom, sheshould go to her mother's room. Then she put a brave face on it, andopened the door. 

"Here we are, mummy. Good night. I hope the evening wasn't too long. "

Long?--on the contrary the hours had flown. Mrs. Cayhill, left toherself, had all the comfortable sensations of a tippler in the companyof his bottle. She could forge ahead, undeterred by any sense of duty;she had not to interrupt herself to laugh at Ephie's wit, nor was shetroubled by Johanna's cold eye--that eye which told more plainly thanwords, how her elder daughter regarded her self-indulgence. Propped upin bed on two pillows, she now laid down her book, and put out her handto draw Ephie to her. 

"Did you enjoy it, darling? Were you amused? But you will tell me allabout it in the morning. "

"Yes, mother, in the morning. I am a little tired--but it was verysweet, " said Ephie bravely. "Good night. "

Mrs. Cayhill kissed her, and nodded in perfect contentment at thepretty little figure before her. Ephie was free to go. And at last shewas in her own room--at last!

She hastily locked both doors, one leading to the passage and one toher sister's room. A moment later, Johanna was at the latter, trying toopen it. 

"Ephie! What is the matter? Why have you locked the door? Open it atonce, I insist upon it, " she cried anxiously, and as loudly as shedared, for fear of disturbing the other inmates of the house. 

But Ephie begged hard not to be bothered; she had a bad headache, andonly wanted to be quiet. 

"Let me give you a powder, " urged her sister. "You are so excited--I amsure you are not well;" and when this, too, was refused: "You hadnothing but some tea, child--you must be hungry. And they have left oursupper on the table. "

No, she was not hungry, didn't want any supper, and was very sleepy. 

"Well, at least unlock your door, " begged Johanna, with visions of thedark practices which Ephie, the soul of candour, might be contemplatingon the other side. "I will not come in, I promise you, " she added. 

"Oh, all right, " said Ephie crossly. But as soon as she heard thatJohanna had gone, she returned to the middle of the room withouttouching the door; and after standing undecided for a moment, as if notquite sure what was coming next, she sat down on a chair at the foot ofthe bed, and suddenly began to cry. The tears had been in waiting forso long that they flowed without effort, abundantly, rolling one overanother down her cheeks; but she was careful not to make a sound; for, even when sobbing bitterly, she did not forget that at any momentJohanna might enter the adjoining room and overhear her. And then, whata fuss there would be! For Ephie was one of those fortunate people whoalways get what they want, and but rarely have occasion to cry. All herdesires had moved low, near earth, and been easily fulfilled. Did shebreak her prettiest doll, a still prettier was forthcoming; didanything happen to cross wish or scheme of hers, half a dozen brainswere at work to think out a compensation. 

But now she wept in earnest, behind closed doors, for she had receivedan injury which no one could make good. And the more she thought of it, the more copiously her tears flowed. The evening had been one longtragedy of disappointment: her fevered anticipation beforehand, herearly throbs of excitement in the theatre, her growing consternation asthe evening advanced, her mortification at being slighted--a sensationwhich she experienced for the first time. Again and again she askedherself what she had done to be treated in this way. What had happenedto change him?

She was sitting upright on her chair, letting the tears streamunchecked; her two hands lay upturned on her knee; in one of them was adiminutive lace handkerchief, rolled to a ball, with which now and thenshe dabbed away the hottest tears. The windows of the room were stillopen, the blinds undrawn, and the street-lamps threw a flickering meshof light on the wall. In the glass that hung over the washstand, shesaw her dim reflection: following an impulse, she dried her eyes, and, with trembling fingers, lighted two candles, one on each side of themirror. By this uncertain light, she leant forward with both hands onthe stand, and peered at herself with a new curiosity. 

She was still just as she had come out of the theatre: a many-colouredsilk scarf was twisted round her head, and the brilliant, danglingfringes, and the stray tendrils of hair that escaped, made a frame forthe rounded oval of her face. And then her skin was so fine, her eyeswere so bright, the straight lashes so black and so long!--she put herhead back, looked at herself through half-closed lids, turned her facethis way and that, even smiling, wet though her cheeks were, in orderthat she might see the even line of teeth, with their slightly notchededges. The smile was still on her lips when the tears welled up again, ran over, trickled down and dropped with a splash, she watching them, until a big, unexpected sob rose in her throat, and almost choked her. Yes, she was pretty--oh, very, very pretty! But it made what hadhappened all the harder to understand. How had he had the heart totreat her so cruelly?

She knelt down by the open window, and laid her head on the sill. Themoon, a mere sharp line of silver, hung fine and slender, like apolished scimitar, above the dark mass of houses opposite. Turning herhot face up to it, she saw that it was new, and instantly felt a throbof relief that she had not caught her first glimpse of it throughglass. She bowed her head to it, quickly, nine times running, and sentup a prayer to the deity of fortune that had its home there. Goodluck!--the fulfilment of one's wish! She wished in haste, withtight-closed eyes--and who knew but what, the very next day, her wishmight come true! Tired with crying, above all, tired of the griefitself, she began more and more to let her thoughts stray to themorrow. And having once yielded to the allurements of hope, she evenendeavoured to make the best of the past evening, telling herself thatshe had not been alone for a single instant; he had really had nochance of speaking to her. In the next breath, of course, she remindedherself that he might easily have made a chance, had he wished; and ahealthier feeling of resentment stole over her. Rising from her crampedposition, she shut the window. She resolved to show him that she wasnot a person who could be treated in this off-hand fashion; he shouldsee that she was not to be trifled with. 

But she played with her unhappiness a little longer, and even had anidea of throwing herself on the bed without undressing. She was verysleepy, though, and the desire to be between the cool, soft sheets wastoo strong to be withstood. She slipped out of her clothes, leavingthem just where they fell on the floor, like round pools; and beforeshe had finished plaiting her hair, she was stifling a hearty yawn. Butin bed, when the light was out, she lay and stared before her. 

"I am very, very unhappy. I shall not sleep a wink, " she said toherself, and sighed at the prospect of the night-watch. 

But before five minutes had passed her closed hand relaxed, and layopen and innocent on the coverlet; her breath came regularly--she wasfast asleep. The moon was visible for a time in the setting of theunshuttered window; and when she wakened next day, toward nine o'clock, the full morning sun was playing on the bed. 

For several months prior to this, Ephie had worshipped Schilsky at adistance. The very first time she saw him play, he had made a profoundimpression on her: he looked so earnest and melancholy, so supremelyindifferent to every one about him, as he stood with his head bent tohis violin. Then, too, he had beautiful hands; and she did not knowwhich she admired more, his auburn hair with the big hat set sojauntily on it, or the thrillingly impertinent way he had of staring atyou--through half-closed eyes, with his head well back--in a manner atonce daring and irresistible. 

Having come through a period of low spirits, caused by an acuteconsciousness of her own littleness and inferiority, Ephie so farrecovered her self-confidence that she was able to look at her divinitywhen she met him; and soon after this, she made the intoxicatingdiscovery that not only did he return her look, but that he also tooknotice of her, and deliberately singled her out with his gaze. And thebelief was pardonable on Ephie's part, for Schilsky made it a point ofhonour to stare any pretty girl into confusion; besides which, he had ahabit of falling into sheep-like reveries, in which he saw no more ofwhat or whom he looked at, than do the glassy eyes of the blind. Morethan once, Ephie had blushed and writhed in blissful torture underthese stonily staring eyes. 

From this to persuading herself that her feelings were returned wasonly a step. Events and details, lighter than puff-balls, were to herlinks of iron, which formed a wonderful chain of evidence. She wentabout nursing the idea that Schilsky desired an introduction as much asshe did; that he was suffering from a romantic and melancholyattachment, which forbade him attempting to approach her. 

At this date, she became an adept at inventing excuses to go to theConservatorium when she thought he was likely to be there; and, suddenly grown rebellious, she shook off Johanna's protectorship, whichuntil now had weighed lightly on her. She grew fastidious about herdress, studied before the glass which colours suited her best, and theeffect of a particular bow or ribbon; while on the days she had herviolin-lessons, she developed a coquetry which made nothing seem goodenough to wear, and was the despair of Johanna. When Schilsky played atan ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, she sat in the front row of seats, and made herhands ache with applauding. Afterwards she lay wakeful, with hotcheeks, and dreamt extravagant dreams of sending him great baskets andbouquets of flowers, with coloured streamers to them, such as thesingers in the opera received on a gala night. And though no name wasgiven, he would know from whom they came. But on the only occasion shetried to carry out the scheme, and ventured inside a florist's shop, her scant command of German, and the excessive circumstantiality of thematter, made her feel so uncomfortable that she had fled precipitately, leaving the shopman staring after her in surprise. 

Things were at this pass when, one day late in May, Ephie went as usualto take her lesson. It was two o'clock on a cloudless afternoon, and sowarm that the budding lilac in squares and gardens began to give outfragrance. In the whitewashed, many-windowed corridors of theConservatorium, the light was harsh and shadowless; it jarred on one, wounded the nerves. So at least thought Schilsky, who was hanging aboutthe top storey of the building, in extreme ill-humour. He had beenforced to make an appointment with a man to whom he owed money; thelatter had not yet appeared, and Schilsky lounged and swore, with histwo hands deep in his pockets, and his sulkiest expression. Butgradually, he found himself listening to the discordant tones of aviolin--at first unconsciously, as we listen when our thoughts areelsewhere engaged, then more and more intently. In one of the juniormasters' rooms, some one had begun to play scales in the thirdposition, uncertainly, with shrill feebleness, seeking out each note, only to produce it falsely. As this scraping worked on him, Schilskycould not refrain from rubbing his teeth together, and screwing up hisface as though he had toothache; now that the miserable little toneshad successfully penetrated his ear, they hit him like so many blows. 

"Damn him for a fool!" he said savagely to himself, and found an outletfor his irritation in repeating these words aloud. Then, however, as anETUDE was commenced, with an impotence that struck him as purelyvicious, he could endure the torment no longer. He had seen in theBUREAU the particular master, and knew that the latter had not yet comeupstairs. Going to the room from which the sounds issued, he stealthilyopened the door. 

A girl was standing with her back to him, and was so engrossed inplaying that she did not hear him enter. On seeing this, he proposed tohimself the schoolboy pleasure of creeping up behind her and giving hera well-deserved fright. He did so, with such effect that, had he notcaught it, her violin would have fallen to the floor. 

He took both her wrists in his, held them firm, and, from his superiorheight--he was head and shoulders taller than Ephie--looked down on themiscreant. He recognised her now as a pretty little American whom hehad noticed from time to time about the building; but--but . .. Well, that she was as astoundingly pretty as this, he had had no notion. Hiseyes strayed over her face, picking out all its beauties, and he felthimself growing as soft as butter. Besides, she had crimsoned down toher bare, dimpled neck; her head drooped; her long lashes covered hereyes, and a tremulous smile touched the corners of her mouth, whichseemed uncertain whether to laugh or to cry--the short, upper-liptrembled. He felt from her wrists, and saw from the uneasy movement ofher breast, how wildly her heart was beating--it was as if one held abird in one's hand. His ferocity died away; none of the hard words hehad had ready crossed his lips; all he said, and in his gentlest voice, was: "Have I frightened you?" He was desperately curious to know thecolour of her eyes, and, as she neither answered him nor looked up, butonly grew more and more confused, he let one of her hands fall, andtaking her by the chin, turned her face up to his. She was forced tolook at him for a moment. Upon which, he stooped and kissed her on themouth, three times, with a pause between each kiss. Then, at a noise inthe corridor, he swung hastily from the room, and was just in time toavoid the master, against whom he brushed up in going out of the door. 

Herr Becker looked suspiciously at his favourite pupil's tell-tale faceand air of extreme confusion; and, throughout the lesson, his manner toher was so cold and short that Ephie played worse than ever before. After sticking fast in the middle of a passage, she stopped altogether, and begged to be allowed to go home. When she had gone, and some oneelse was playing, Herr Becker stood at the window and shook his head:round this innocent baby face he had woven several pretty fancies. 

Meanwhile Ephie flew rather than walked home, and having reached herroom unseen, flung herself on the bed, and buried her burning cheeks inthe white coolness of the pillows. Johanna, finding her thus, a shorttime after, was alarmed, put questions of various kinds, felt sure thesun had been too hot for her, and finally stood over the bed, holdingher unfailing remedy, a soothing powder for the nerves. 

"Oh, do for goodness' sake, leave me alone, Joan, " said Ephie. "I don'twant your powders. I am all right. Just let me be. "

She drank the mixture, however, and catching sight of Johanna's anxiousface, and aware that she had been cross, she threw her arms round hersister, hugged her, and called her a "dear old darling Joan. " But therewas something in the stormy tenderness of the embrace, in the flushedcheeks and glittering eyes that made Johanna even more uneasy. Sheinsisted upon Ephie lying still and trying to sleep; and, after takingoff her shoes for her, and noiselessly drawing down the blinds, shewent on tiptoe out of the room. 

Ephie burrowed more deeply in her pillow, and putting both hands to hercars, to shut out the world, went over the details of what hadhappened. It was like a fairy-story. She walked lazily down the sunnycorridor, entered the class-room, and took off her hat, which HerrBecker hung up for her, after having playfully examined it. She hadjust taken her violin from its case, when he remembered something hehad to do in the BUREAU, and went out of the room, bidding her practiseher scales during his absence; she heard again and smiled at the funnyaccent with which he said: "Just a moment. " She saw the bare walls ofthe room, the dust that lay white on the lid on the piano, wasconscious of the difficulties of C sharp minor. She even knew the verynote at which HE had been beside her--without a word of warning, assuddenly as though he had sprung from the earth. She heard the cry shehad given, and felt his hands--the hands she had so oftenadmired--clasp her wrists. He was so close to her that she felt hisbreath, and knew the exact shape of the diamond ring he wore on hislittle finger. She felt, too, rather than saw the audacious admirationof his eyes; and his voice was not the less caressing because a littlethick. And then--then--she burrowed more firmly, held her ears moretightly to, laughed a happy, gurgling laugh that almost choked her:never, as long as she lived, would she forget the feel of his moustacheas it scratched her lips!

When she rose and looked at herself in the glass, it seemedextraordinary that there should be no outward difference in her; andfor several days she did not lose this sensation of being mysteriouslychanged. She was quieter than usual, and her movements were a littlelanguid, but a kind of subdued radiance peeped through and shone in hereyes. She waited confidently for something to happen: she did notherself know what it would be, but, after the miracle that hadoccurred, it was beyond belief that things could jog on in their oldfamiliar course; and so she waited and expected--at every letter thepostman brought, each time the door-bell rang, whenever she went intothe street. 

But after a week had dragged itself to an end, and she had not evenseen Schilsky again, she grew restless and unsure; and sometimes atnight, when Johanna thought she was asleep, she would stand at herwindow, and, with a very different face from that which she wore byday, put countless questions to herself, all of which began with whyand how. And Johanna was again beset by the fear that Ephie wassickening for an illness, for the child would pass from bursts ofrather forced gaiety to fits of real fretfulness, or sink into brownstudies, from which she wakened with a start. But if, on some suchoccasion, Johanna said to her: "Where ARE your thoughts, Ephie?" shewould only laugh, and answer, with a hug: "Wool-gathering, you dear oldbumble-bee!"

From the lesson following the eventful one, Ephie played truant, on theground of headache, partly because her fancy pictured him lying in waitlike an ogre to eat her up, and partly from a poor little foolish fearlest he should think her too easily won. Now, however, she blamedherself for not having given him an opportunity to speak to her, andbegan to frequent the Conservatorium assiduously. When, after ten longdays, she saw him again, an unfailing instinct guided her aright. 

It was in the vestibule, as she was leaving the building, and they metface to face. Directly she espied him, though her heart thumpedalarmingly, Ephie tossed her head, gazed fixedly at some distantobject, and was altogether as haughty as her parted lips would allowof. And she played her part so well that Schilsky's attention wasarrested; he remembered who she was, and stared hard at her as shepassed. Not only this, but pleased, he could not have told why, heturned and followed her out, and standing on the steps, looked afterher. She went down the street with her head in the air, holding herdress very high to display a lace-befrilled petticoat, and clatteringgracefully on two high-heeled, pointed shoes. He screwed up his eyesagainst the sun, in order to see her better--he was short-sighted, too, but vanity forbade him to wear glasses--and when, at the corner of thestreet, Ephie rather spoilt the effect of her behaviour by throwing ahasty glance back, he laughed and clicked his tongue against the roofof his mouth. 

"VERDAMMT!" he said with expression. 

And both on that day and the next, when he admired a well-turned ankleor a pretty petticoat, he was reminded of the provoking littleAmerican, with the tossed head and baby mouth. 

A few days later, in the street that ran alongside the Gewandhaus, hesaw her again. 

Ephie, who, in the interval, had upbraided herself incessantly, wasnone the less, now the moment had come, about to pass as before--evenmore frigidly. But this time Schilsky raised his hat, with a tentativesmile, and, in order not to appear childish, she bowed ever soslightly. When he was safely past, she could not resist giving afurtive look behind her, and at precisely the same moment, he turned, too. In spite of her trouble, Ephic found the coincidence droll; shetittered, and he saw it, although she immediately laid the back of herhand on her lips. It was not in him to let this pass unnoticed. With afew quick steps, he was at her side. 

He took off his hat again, and looked at her not quite sure how tobegin. 

"I am happy to see you have not forgotten me, " he said in excellentEnglish. 

Ephie had impulsively stopped on hearing him come up with her, and now, colouring deeply, tried to dig a hole in the pavement with the toe ofher shoe. She, too, could not think what to say; and this, togetherwith the effect produced on her by his peculiar lisp, made her feelvery uncomfortable. She was painfully conscious of his insistent eyeson her face, as he waited for her to speak; but there was a distressingpause before he added: "And sorry to see you are still angry with me. "

At this, she found her tongue. Looking, not at him, but at a passer-byon the opposite side of the street, she said: "Why, I guess I have aright to be. "

She tried to speak severely, but her voice quavered, and once more theyoung man was not sure whether the trembling of her lip signified tearsor laughter. 

"Are you always so cruel?" he asked, with an intentness that made hereyes seek the ground again. "Such a little crime! Is there no hope forme?"

She attempted to be dignified. "Little! I am really not accustomed----"

"Then I'm not to be forgiven?"

His tone was so humble that suddenly she had to laugh. Shooting a quickglance at him, she said:

"That depends on how you behave in future. If you promise never to----"

Before the words were well out of her mouth, she was aware of herstupidity; her laugh ended, and she grew redder than before. Schilskyhad laughed, too, quite frankly, and he continued to smile at theconfusion she had fallen into. It seemed a long time before he saidwith emphasis: "That is the last thing in the world you should ask ofme. "

Ephie drooped her head, and dug with her shoe again; she had never beenso tongue-tied as to-day, just when she felt she ought to say somethingvery cold and decisive. But not an idea presented itself, and meanwhilehe went on: "The punishment would be too hard. The temptation was sogreat. "

As she was still obstinately silent, he stooped and peeped under theoverhanging brim of her hat. "Such pretty lips!" he said, and then, ason the former occasion, he took her by the chin and turned her face upto his. 

But she drew back angrily. "Mr. Schilskyl . .. How dare you! Take yourhand away at once. "

"There!--I have sinned again, " he said, and folded his hands in mocksupplication. "Now I am afraid you will never forgive me. --But listen, you have the advantage of me; you know my name. Will you not tell meyours?"

Having retreated a full yard from him, Ephie regained some of hernative self-composure. For the first time, she found herself able tolook straight at him. "No, " she said, with a touch of her usuallightness. "I shall leave you to find it out for yourself; it will giveyou something to do. "

They both laughed. "At least give me your hand, " he said; and when heheld it in his, he would not let her go, until, after much seemingreluctance on her part, she had detailed to him the days and hours ofher lessons at the Conservatorium, and where he would be likely to meether. As before, he stood and watched her go down the street, hopingthat she would turn at the corner. But, on this day, Ephie whiskedalong in a great hurry. 

On after occasions, he waylaid her as she came and went, and eitherstood talking to her, or walked the length of the street beside her. Atthe early hour of the afternoon when Ephie had her lessons, he did notneed to fear being seen by acquaintances; the sunshine was undisturbedin the quiet street. The second time they met, he told her that he hadfound out what her name was; and his efforts to pronounce it affordedEphie much amusement. Their conversation was always of the same nature, half banter, half earnest. Ephie, who had rapidly recovered herassurance, invariably began in her archest manner, and it became hisspecial pleasure to reduce her, little by little, to a crimson silence. 

But one day, about a fortnight later, she came upon him at a differenthour, when he was not expecting to see her. He was strolling up anddown in front of the Conservatorium, waiting for Louise, who mightappear at any moment. Ephie had been restless all the morning, and hadfinally made an excuse to go out: her steps naturally carried her tothe Conservatorium, where she proposed to study the notice-board, onthe chance of seeing Schilsky. When she caught sight of him, her eyesbrightened; she greeted him with an inviting smile, and a saucy remark. But Schilsky did not take up her tone; he cut her words short. 

"What are you doing here to-day?" he asked with a frown of displeasure, meanwhile keeping a watchful eye on the inner staircase--visiblethrough the glass doors--down which Louise would come. "I haven't amoment to spare. "

Mortally offended by his manner, Ephie drew back her extended hand, andgiving him a look of surprise and resentment, was about to pass him bywithout a further word. But this was more than Schilsky could bear; heput out his hand to stop her, always, though, with one eye on the door. 

"Now, don't be cross, little girl, " he begged impatiently. "It's not myfault--upon my word it isn't. I wasn't expecting to see you to-day--youknow that. Look here, tell me--this sort of thing is sounsatisfactory--is there no other place I could see you? What do you dowith yourself all day? Come, answer me, don't be angry. "

Ephie melted. "Come and visit us on Sunday afternoon, " she said. "Weare always at home then. "

He laughed rudely, and took no notice of her words. "Come, think ofsomething--quick!" he said. 

He was on tenterhooks to be gone, and showed it. Ephie grew flustered, and though she racked her brains, could make no further suggestion. 

"Oh well, if you can't, you know, " he said crossly, and loosened hishold of her arm. 

Then, at the last moment, she had a flash of inspiration; sheremembered how, on the previous Sunday, Dove had talkedenthusiastically of an opera-performance, which, if she were notmistaken, was to take place the following night. Dove had declared thatall musical Leipzig would probably be present in the theatre. Surelyshe might risk mentioning this, without fear of another snub. 

"I am going to the opera to-morrow night, " she said in a small, meekvoice, and was on the verge of tears. Schilsky hardly heard her; Louisehad appeared at the head of the stairs. "The very thing, " he said. "Ishall look out for you there, little girl. Good-bye. AUF WIEDERSEHEN!"

He went down the steps, without even raising his hat, and when Louisecame out, he was sauntering towards the building again, as if he hadcome from the other end of the street. 

Ephie went home in a state of anger and humiliation which was new toher. For the first few hours, she was resolved never to speak toSchilsky again. When this mood passed, she made up her mind that heshould atone for his behaviour to the last iota: he should grovelbefore her; she would scarcely deign to look at him. But the nearer thetime came for their meeting, the more were her resentful feelingsswallowed up by the wish to see him. She counted off the hours till theopera commenced; she concocted a scheme to escape Johanna'ssurveillance; she had a story ready, if it should be necessary, of howshe had once been introduced to Schilsky. Her fingers trembled withimpatience as she fastened on a pretty new dress, which had just beensent home: a light, flowered stuff, with narrow bands of black velvetartfully applied so as to throw the fairness of her hair and skin intorelief. 

The consciousness of looking her best gave her manner a light surenessthat was very charming. But from the moment they entered the FOYER, Ephie's heart began to sink: the crowd was great; she could not seeSchilsky; and in his place came Dove, who was not to be shaken off. Even Maurice was bad enough--what concern of his was it how she enjoyedherself? When, finally, she did discover the person she sought, he waswith some one else, and did not see her; and when she had succeeded inmaking him look, he frowned, shook his head, and made angry signs thatshe was not to speak to him, afterwards going downstairs with thesallow girl in white. What did it mean? All through the tedious secondact, Ephie wound her handkerchief round and round, and in and out ofher fingers. Would it never end? How long would the fat, uglyBrunnhilde stand talking to Siegmund and the woman who lay soungracefully between his knees? As if it mattered a straw what thesesham people did or felt! Would he speak to her in the next interval, orwould he not?

The side curtains had hardly swept down before she was up from herseat, hurrying Johanna away. This time she chose to stand against thewall, at the end of the FOYER. After a short time, he came in sight, but he had no more attention to spare for her than before; he did noteven look in her direction. Her one consolation was that obviously hewas not enjoying himself; he wore a surly face, was not speaking, and, to a remark the girl in white made, he answered by an angry flap of thehand. When they had twice gone past in this way, and she had each timevainly put herself forward, Ephie began to take an interest in whatDove was saying, to smile at him and coquet with him, and the moreopenly, the nearer Schilsky drew. Other people grew attentive, and Dovewent into a seventh heaven, which made it hard for him placidly toaccept the fit of pettish silence, she subsequently fell into. 

The crowning touch was put to this disastrous evening by the fact thatSchilsky's companion of the FOYER walked the greater part of the wayhome with them; and, what was worse, that she took not the slightestnotice of Ephie. 

XI. 

Before leaving her bedroom the following morning, Ephie wrote on herscented pink paper a short letter, which began: "Dear Mr. Schilsky, "and ended with: "Your sincere friend, Euphemia Stokes Cayhill. " In thisletter, she "failed to understand" his conduct of the previous evening, and asked him for an explanation. Not until she had closed theenvelope, did she remember that she was ignorant of his address. Shebit the end of her pen, thinking hard, and directly breakfast was over, put on her hat and slipped out of the house. 

It was the first time Ephie had had occasion to enter the BUREAU of theConservatorium; and, when the heavy door had swung to behind her, andshe was alone in the presence of the secretaries, each of whom was bentover a high desk, writing in a ledger, her courage almost failed her. The senior, an old, white-haired man, with a benevolent face, did notlook up; but after she had stood hesitating for some minutes, anunder-secretary solemnly laid down his pen, and coming to the counter, wished in English to know what he could do for her. Growing very red, Ephie asked him if he "would . .. Could . .. Would please tell her whereMr. Schilsky lived. "

Herr Kleefeld leaned both hands on the counter, and disconcerted her bystaring at her over his spectacles. 

"Mr. Schilsky? Is it very important?" he said with a leer, as if hewere making a joke. 

"Why, yes, indeed, " replied Ephie timidly. 

He nodded his head, more to himself than to her, went back to his desk, opened another ledger, and ran his finger down a page, repeating aloudas he did so, to her extreme embarrassment: "Mr. Schilsky--let me see. Mr. Schilsky--let me see. "

After a pause, he handed her a slip of paper, on which he hadpainstakingly copied the address: "TALSTRASSE, 12 III. "

"Why, I thank you very much. I have to ask him about some music. Isthere anything to pay?" stammered Ephie. 

But Herr Kleefeld, leaning as before on the counter, shook his headfrom side to side, with a waggish air, which confused Ephie still more. She made her escape, and left him there, still wagging, like a chinaMandarin. 

Having addressed the letter in the nearest post office, she entered aconfectioner's and bought a pound of chocolate creams; so that whenJohanna met her in the passage, anxious and angry at her leaving thehouse without a word, she was able to assert that her candy-box hadbeen empty, and she felt she could not begin to practise till it wasrefilled. But Johanna was very cantankerous, and obliged her to studyan hour overtime to atone for her escapade. 

Then followed for Ephie several unhappy days, when all the feeling sheseemed capable of concentrated itself on the visits of the postman. Sheremained standing at the window until she had seen him come up thestreet, and she was regularly the first to look through the mails asthey lay on the lobby table. Two days brought no reply to her letter. On the third fell a lesson, which she was resolved not to take. Butwhen the hour came, she dressed herself with care and went as usual. Schilsky was nowhere to be seen. Half a week later, the same thing wasrepeated, except that on this day, she made herself prettier than ever:she was like some gay, garden flower, in a big white hat, round thebrim of which lay scarlet poppies, and a dress of a light blue, whichheightened the colour of her cheeks, and, reflected in her eyes, madethem bluer than a fjord in the sun. But her spirits were low; if shedid not see him this time, despair would crush her. 

But she did--saw him while she was still some distance off, standingnear the portico of the Conservatorium; and at the sight of him, afterthe uncertainty she had gone through during the past week, she couldhardly keep back her tears. He did not come to meet her; he stood andwatched her approach, and only when she reached him, indolently heldout his hand. As she refused to notice it, and went to the extreme edgeof the pavement to avoid it, he made a barrier of his arms, and forcedher to stand still. Holding her thus, with his hand on her elbow, helooked keenly at her; and, in spite of the obdurate way in which shekept her eyes turned from him, he saw that she was going to cry. For amoment he hesitated, afraid of the threatening scene, then, with adecisive movement, he took her violin-case out of her hand. Ephie madean ineffectual effort to get possession of it again, but he held itabove her reach, and saying: "Wait a minute, " ran up the steps. He cameback without it, and throwing a swift glance round him, took the younggirl's arm, and walked her off at a brisk pace to the woods. She made afew, faint protests. But he replied: "You and I have something to sayto each other, little girl. "

A full hour had elapsed when Ephie appeared again. She was alone, andwalked quickly, casting shy glances from side to side. On reaching theConservatorium, she waited in a quiet corner of the vestibule fornearly a quarter of an hour, before Schilsky sauntered in, and releasedher violin from the keeping of the janitor, a good friend of his. 

They had not gone far into the wood; Schilsky knew of a secluded seat, which was screened by a kind of boscage; and here they had remained. Atfirst, Ephie had cried heartily, in happy relief, and he had not beenable to console her. He had come to meet her with many goodresolutions, determined not to let the little affair, so lightly begun, lead to serious issues; but Ephie's tears, and the tale they told, andthe sobbed confessions that slipped out unawares, made it hard for himto be wise. He put his arm round her, dried her tears with his ownhandkerchief, kissed the hand he held. And when he had in this waypetted her back to composure, she suddenly looked up in his face, and, with a pretty, confiding movement, said:

"Then you do care for me a little?"

It would have need a stronger than he to answer otherwise. "Of course Ido, " was easily said, and to avoid the necessity of more, he kissed thepink dimples at the base of her four fingers, as well as the babycrease that marked the wrist. The poppy-strewn hat lay on the seatbeside them; the fluffy head and full white throat were bare; in themellow light of the trees, the lashes looked jet-black on her cheeks;at each word, he saw her small, even teeth: and he was so unnerved bythe nearness of all this fresh young beauty that, when Ephie with heraccustomed frankness had told him everything he cared to know, he foundhimself saying, in place of what he had intended, that they must bevery cautious. In the meantime, it would not do for them to be seentogether: it might injure his prospects, be harmful to his future. 

"Yes, but afterwards?" she asked him promptly. 

He kissed her cheek. But she repeated the question, and he was obligedto reply: that would be a different matter. It was now her turn to becurious, and one of the first questions she put related to the darkgirl he had been with at the theatre. Playing lightly with her fingers, Schilsky told her that this was one of his best friends, some one hehad known for a long, long time, to whom he owed much, and whom hecould under no circumstances offend. Ephie looked grave for a moment;and, in the desire of provoking a pretty confession, he asked her ifshe had minded very much seeing him with some one else. But she madehim wince by responding with perfect candour: "With her? Oh, no! She'squite old. "

Before parting, they arranged the date of the next meeting, and, abeginning once made, they saw each other as often as was feasible. Ephie grew wonderfully apt at excuses for going out at odd times, andfor prolonged absences. Sound fictions were needed to satisfy Johanna, and even Maurice Guest was made to act as dummy: he had taken her for awalk, or they had been together to see Madeleine Wade; and by thesemeans, and also by occasionally shirking a lesson, she gained a gooddeal of freedom. Johanna would as soon have thought of herself beinguntruthful as of doubting Ephie, whom she had never known to tell alie; and if she did sometimes feel jealous of all the new claims madeon her little sister's attention, such a feeling was only temporary, and she was, for the most part, content to see Ephie content. 

At night, in her own room, lying wakeful with hot cheeks and big eyes, Ephie went over in memory all that had taken place at their lastmeeting, or built high, top-heavy castles for the future. She wasabsurdly happy; and her mother and sister had never found her morecharming and lovable, or richer in those trifling inspirations forbrightening life, which happiness brings with it. She looked forwardwith secret triumph to the day when she would be able to announce herengagement to the celebrated young violinist, and the only shadow onher happiness was that she could not do this immediately. It did notonce cross her mind to doubt the issue: she had always had her way, and, in her own mind, had long since arranged just how this matter wasto fall out. She would return to America--where, of course, they wouldlive--and get her clothes ready, and then he would come, and they wouldbe married--a big wedding, with descriptions in the newspapers. Theywould have a big house, and he would play at concerts--as she had onceheard Sarasate play in New York--and every one would stand on tiptoe tosee him. She sat proud and conspicuous in the front row. "His wife. That is his wife!" people whispered, and they drew respectfully back tolet her pass, as, in a very becoming dress, she swept into the littleroom behind the platform, which she alone was permitted to enter. 

One day at this time there was a violent thunderstorm. Towards midday, the eastern sky grew black with clouds, which, for hours, had beenominously gathering; a sudden wind rose and swept the dust house-highthrough the streets; the thunder rumbled, and each roll came nearer. When, after a prolonged period of expectation, the storm finally burst, there was a universal sigh of relief. 

The afternoon was damply refreshing. As soon as the rain ceased, Maurice shut his piano, and walked at a brisk pace to Connewitz, hishead bared beneath the overhanging branches, which were still weigheddown by their burden of drops. At the WALDCAFE on the bank of theriver, in a thickly grown arbour which he entered to drink a glass ofbeer, he found Philadelphia Jensen and the pale little American, Fauvre, taking coffee. 

The lady welcomed him with a large, outstretched hand, in theeffusively hearty manner with which she, as it were, took possession ofpeople; and towards six o'clock, the three walked back through thewoods together, Miss Jensen, resolute of bust as of voice, slightlyahead of her companions, carrying her hat in her hand, Fauvre draggingbehind, hitting indolently at stones and shrubs, and singing scraps ofmelodies to himself in his deep baritone. 

Miss Jensen, who had once been a journalist, was an earnest worker forwoman's emancipation, and having now successfully mounted her hobby, spoke with a thought-deadening eloquence. Maurice had never been calledon to think about the matter, and listened to her wordsabsent-mindedly, comparing her, as she swept along, to a ship in fullsail. She was just asserting that the ordinary German woman was littlemore than means to an end, the end being the man-child, when hisattention was arrested, and, in an instant, jerked far away from MissJensen's theories. As they reached the bend of a path, a sound ofvoices came to them through the trees, and on turning a corner, Mauricecaught a glimpse of two people who were going in the oppositedirection, down a side-walk--a passing but vivid glimpse of a light, flowered dress, of a grey suit of clothes, and auburn hair. Ephie! Hecould have sworn to voice and dress; but to whom in all the world wasshe talking, so confidentially? At the name that rose to his lips, healmost stopped short, but the next moment he was afraid lest hiscompanions should also have seen who it was, and, quickening his steps, he incited Miss Jensen to talk on. First, however, that lady said in asurprised tone: "Say, that was Mr. Schilsky, wasn't it? Who was thelady? Did you perceive?" So there was no possible doubt of it. 

After parting from his companions, he did an errand in the town, andfrom there went to the Cayhills' PENSION, determined to ascertainwhether it had really been Ephie he had seen, and if so, what themeaning of it was. 

Mrs. Cayhill and Johanna were in the sitting-room; Johanna looked verysurprised to see him. They had this moment risen from the supper-table, she told him; Ephie had only just got home in time. Before anythingfurther could be said, Ephie herself came into the room; her face wasflushed, and she did not seem well-pleased at his unexpected visit. Shehardly greeted him, and instead, commenced talking about the weather. 

"Then you had a pleasant walk?" asked Johanna in a preoccupied fashion, without looking up from the letter she was writing; and before Mauricecould speak, Ephie, fondling her sister's neck, answered: "How could itbe anything but sweet--after the rain?"

In the face of this frankness, it was on Maurice's tongue to say: "Thenit was you, I saw?" but again she did not give him time. Still standingbehind Johanna's chair, her eyes fixed on the young man's face with acurious intentness, she continued: "We walked right to Connewitz andback without a rest. "

"I don't think you should take her so far, " said Mrs. Cayhill, lookingup from her book with her kindly smile. "She has never been used towalking and is easily tired--aren't you, my pet?"

"Yes, and then she can't get up the next morning, " said Johanna, mildlydogmatic, considering the following sentence of her letter. 

Gradually it broke upon Maurice that Ephie had been making use of hisname. His consternation at the discovery was such that he changedcolour. The others, however, were both too engrossed to notice it. Ephie grew scarlet, but continued to rattle on, covering his silence. 

"Well, perhaps to-day it was a little too far, " she admitted. "Butmummy, I won't have you say I'm not strong. Why, Herr Becker is alwaystelling me how full my tone is getting. Yes indeed. And look at mymuscle. "

She turned back the loose sleeve of her blouse, baring almost the wholeof her rounded arm; then, folding it sharply to her, she invited oneafter another to test its firmness. 

"Quite a prize-fighter, I declare!" laughed Mrs. Cayhill, at the sametime drawing her little daughter to her, to kiss her. But Johannafrowned, and told Ephie to put down her sleeve at once; there wassomething in the childish action that offended the elder sister, shedid not know why. But Maurice had first to lay two of his fingers onthe soft skin, and then to help her to button the cuff. 

When, soon after this, he took his leave, Ephie went out of the roomwith him. In the dark passage, she caught at his hand. 

"Morry, you mustn't tell tales on me, " she whispered; and addedpettishly: "Why ever did you just come to-night?"

He tried to see her face. "What is it all about, Ephie?" he asked. "Then it WAS you, I saw, in the NONNE--by the weir?"

"Me? In the NONNE!" She was genuinely surprised. "You saw me?"

He nodded. By the light that came from the stairs as she opened thehall-door, she noticed that he looked troubled, and an impulse rose inher to throw her arms round his neck and say: "Yes, yes, it was me. Oh, Morry, I am so happy!" But she remembered the reasons for secrecy thathad been imposed on her, and, at the same time, felt somewhat defiantlyinclined towards Maurice. After all, what business was it of his? Whyshould he take her to task for what she chose to do? And so she merelylaughed, with assumed merriment, her own charming, assuaging laugh. 

"In the wood?--you old goose! Listen, Morry, I told them I had beenwith you, because--why, because one of the girls in my class asked meto go to the CAFE FRANCAIS with her, and we stayed too long, and atetoo much ice-cream, and Joan doesn't like it, and I knew she would becross--that's all! Don't look so glum, you silly! It's nothing, " andshe laughed again. 

As long as this laugh rang in his ears--to the bottom of the street, that is--he believed her. Then, the evidence of his senses reasserteditself, and he knew that what she had told him was false. He had heardher voice in the wood too distinctly to allow of any mistake, and shewas still wearing the same dress. Besides, she had lied so artlessly tothe others, without a tremor of her candid eyes--why should she not lieto him, too? She was less likely to be considerate of him than ofJohanna. But his distress at her skill in deceit was so great that hesaid: "Ephie, little Ephie!" aloud to himself, just as he might havedone had he heard that she was stricken down by a mortal illness. 

On the top of this, however, came less selfish feelings. What wasalmost a sense of guilt took possession of him; he felt as if, in someway, he were to blame for what had happened; as if nature had intendedhim to stand in the place of a brother to this pretty, thoughtlesschild. And yet what could he have done? He did not now see Ephie asoften as formerly, and hardly ever alone; on looking back, he began tosuspect that she had purposely avoided him. The exercises in harmony, which had previously brought them together, had been discontinued. First, she had said that her teacher was satisfied with what sheherself could do; then, that he had advised her to give up harmonyaltogether: she would never make anything of it. In the light of whathad come to pass, Maurice saw that he had let himself be duped by her;she had lied then as now. 

He puzzled his brains to imagine how she had learned to know Schilskyin the first instance, and when the affair had begun: what he hadoverheard that afternoon implied an advanced stage of intimacy; and herevolved measures by means of which a stop might be put to it. The onlycourse he could think of was to lay the matter before Johanna; and yetwhat would the use of that be? Ephie would deny everything, make hisstory ludicrous, himself impossible, and never forgive him into thebargain. In the end, he might do more good by watching over hersilently, at a distance. If it had only not been Schilsky who wasconcerned! Some of the ugly stories he had heard related of the youngman rose up and took vivid shape before his eyes. If any harm came toEphie, he alone would be to blame for it; not Johanna, only he knew thefrivolous temptations the young girl was exposed to. Why, in Heaven'sname, had he not taken both her hands, as they stood in the passage, and insisted on her confessing to him? No, credulous as usual, he hadonce more allowed himself to be hoodwinked and put off. 

Thus he fretted, without arriving at any clearer conclusion than this:that he had unwittingly been made accessory to an unpleasant secret. But where his mind baulked, and refused to work, was when he tried tounderstand what all this might mean to the third person involved. DidLouise know or suspect anything? Had she, perhaps, for weeks past beensuffering under the knowledge?

He stood irresolute, at the crossing where the MOZARTSTRASSE joined thePROMENADE. A lamp-lighter was beginning his rounds; he came up with hislong pole to the lamp at the corner, and, with a mild explosion, thelittle flame sprang into life. Maurice turned on his heel and went tosee Madeleine. 

The latter was making her supper of tea, bread, and cold sausage, andwhen she heard that he had not eaten, she set a cup and plate beforehim, and was glad that she happened to be late. Propped open on thetable was a Danish Grammar, which she conned as she ate; for, in thecoming holidays, she was engaged to go to Norway, as guide andtravelling-companion to a party of Englishwomen. 

"I had a letter from London to-day, " she said, "with definitearrangements. So I at once bought this book. I intend to try and masterat least the rudiments of the language--barbarous though it is--for Iwant to get some good from the journey. And if one has one's wits aboutone, much can be learnt from cab-drivers and railway-porters. "

She traced on a map with her forefinger the route they proposed tofollow, and laughed at the idea of the responsibility lying heavy onher. But when they had finished their supper, and she had talkedinformingly for a time of Norway, its people and customs, she looked atthe young man, who sat irresponsive and preoccupied, and considered himattentively. 

"Is anything the matter to-night? Or are you only tired?"

He was tired. But though she herself had suggested it, she was notsatisfied with his answer. 

"Something has bothered you. Has your work gone badly?"

No, it was nothing of that sort. But Madeleine persisted: could she beof any help to him?

"The merest trifle--not worth talking about. "

The twilight had grown thick around them; the furniture of the roomlost its form, and stood about in shapeless masses. Through the openwindow was heard the whistle of a distant train; a large fly that hadbeen disturbed buzzed distractingly, undecided where to re-settle forthe night. It was sultry again, after the rain. 

"Look here, Maurice, " Madeleine said, when she had observed him forsome time in silence. "I don't want to be officious, but there'ssomething I should like to say to you. It's this. You are far toosoft-hearted. If you want to get on in life, you must think more aboutyourself than you do. The battle is to the strong, you know, and thestrong, within limits, are certainly the selfish. Let other people lookafter themselves; try not to mind how foolish they are--you can'timprove them. It's harder, I daresay, than it is to be a person ofunlimited sympathies; it's harder to pass the maimed and crippled by, than to stop and weep over them, and feel their sufferings throughyourself. But YOU have really something in you to occupy yourself with. You're not one of those people--I won't mention names!--whose ownemptiness forces them to take an intense interest in the doings ofothers, and who, the moment they are alone with their thoughts, arebored to desperation, just as there are people who have no talent formaking a home home-like, and are only happy when they are out of it. "

Here she laughed at her own seriousness. 

"But you are smiling inwardly, and thinking: the real old school-marm!"

"You don't practise what you preach, Madeleine. Besides, you'remistaken. At heart, I'm a veritable egoist. "

She contradicted him. "I know you better than you know yourself. "

He did not reply, and a silence fell, in which the commonplace wordsshe had last said, went on sounding and resounding, until they had nomore likeness to themselves. Madeleine rose, and pushed back her chair, with a grating noise. 

"I must light the lamp. Sitting in the dark makes for foolishness. Come, wake up, and tell me what plans you have for the holidays. "

"If I had a sister, I should like her to be like you, " said Maurice, watching her busy with the lamp. "Clear-headed, and helpful to afellow. "

"I suppose men always will continue to consider that the greatestcompliment they can pay, " said Madeleine, and turned up the light sohigh that they both blinked. --And then she scolded the young mansoundly for his intention of remaining in Leipzig during the holidays. 

But when he rose to go, she said, with an impulsiveness that wasforeign to her: "I wish you had a friend. "

It was his turn to smile. "Have you had enough of me?"

Madeleine, who was sitting with crossed arms, remained grave. "I mean aman. Some one older than yourself, and who has had experience. Thebest-meaning woman in the world doesn't count. "

Only a very few days later, an occasion offered when, with profit tohimself, he might have acted upon Madeleine's introductory advice. Hehad been for a quick, solitary walk, and was returning, in the eveningbetween nine and ten o'clock, along one of the paths of the wood, whensuddenly, and close at hand, he heard the sound of voices. He stoppedinstantaneously, for by the jump his heart gave, he knew that Louisewas one of the speakers. What she said was inaudible to him; but it wasenough to be able to listen, unseen, to her voice. Hearing it likethis, as something existing for itself, he was amazed at its depth andclearness; he felt that her personal presence had, until now, hinderedhim from appreciating a beautiful but immaterial thing at its trueworth. At first, like a cadence that repeats itself, its tones rose andfell, but with more subtle inflections than the ordinary voice has:there was a note in it that might have belonged to a child's voice;another, more primitive, that betrayed feeling with as little reserveas the cry of an animal. Then it sank, and went on in a monotone, likea Hebrew prayer, as if reiterating things worn threadbare byrepetition, and already said too often. Gradually, it died away in thesurrounding silence. There was no response but a gentle rustling of theleaves overhead. It began anew, and, in the interval, seemed to havegained in intensity; now there was a bitterness in it which, when itswelled, made it give out a tone like the roughly touched strings of aninstrument; it seemed to be accusing, to be telling of unmeritedsuffering. And, this time, it elicited a reply, but a casual, indifferent one, which might have related to the weather, or to thetime of night. Louise gave a shrill laugh, and then, as plainly as ifthe words were being carved in stone before his eyes, Maurice heard hersay: "You have never given me a moment's happiness. "

As before, no answer was returned, and almost immediately his earcaught a muffled sound of footsteps. At the same moment, a night-windshook the tree-tops; there was a general fluttering and swaying aroundhim; and he came back to himself to find that he was standing rigid, holding on to a slender tree that grew close by the path. His firstconscious thought was that this wind meant rain . .. There would beanother storm in the night . .. And the summer holidays--time ofpartings--were at the door. She would go away . .. And he would perhapsnever see her again. 

Since the evening they had walked home from the theatre together, hehad had no further chance of speaking to her. If they met in thestreet, she gave him, as Madeleine had foretold of her, a nod and asmile; and from this coolness, he had drawn the foolish inference thatshe wished to avoid him. Abnormally sensitive, he shrank out of herway. But now, the mad sympathy that had permeated him on the night shehad made him her confidant grew up in him again; it swelled out intosomething monstrous--a gigantic pity that rebounded on himself. For heknew now why she suffered; and he was cast down both for her and forhimself. It seemed unnatural that he was debarred from giving her justa fraction of the happiness she craved--he, who, had there been theleast need for it, would have lain himself down for her to tread on. And in some of the subsequent nights when he could not sleep, hecomposed fantastic letters to her, in which he told her this and more, only to colour guiltily, with the return of daylight, at theimpertinent folly of his thoughts. 

But he could not forget the words he had heard her say; they hauntedhim like an importunate refrain. Even his busiest hours were set tothem--"You have never given me a moment's happiness"--and they werealike a torture and a joy. 

XII. 

The second half of July scattered the little circle in all directions. Maurice spent a couple of days at the different railway-stations, seeing his friends off. One after another they passed into thatanticipatory mood, which makes an egoist of the prospective traveller:his thoughts start, as it were, in advance; he has none left for thepeople who are remaining behind, and receives their care and attentionas his due. 

Dove was packed and strapped, ready to set out an hour after he had hadhis last lesson; and while he printed labels for his luggage, and tooka circumstantial leave of his landlady and her family, with whom he wasa prime favourite by reason of his decent and orderly habits, Mauricefetched for him from the lending library, the pieces of music set bySchwarz as a holiday task. Dove was on tenterhooks to be off. Of late, things had gone superlatively well with him: he had performed withapplause in an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, and been highly commended by Schwarz;while, as for Ephie, she had been so sweet and winning, so modestlyencouraging of his suit, that he had every reason to hope for successin this quarter also. Too dutiful a son, however, to take, unauthorised, such an important step as that of proposing marriage, hewas now travelling home to sound two elderly people, resident in a sidestreet in Peterborough, on the advisability of an Americandaughter-in-law. 

The Cayhills had been among the first to leave, and would be absenttill the middle of September. One afternoon, Maurice started them fromthe THURINGER BAHNHOF, on their journey to Switzerland. Having seenMrs. Cayhill comfortably settled with her bags, books and cushions, inthe corner of a first-class carriage, and given Johanna assistance withthe tickets, he stood till the train went, talking to Ephie; and helong retained a picture of her, standing with one foot on the step, ina becoming travelling-dress, a hat with a veil flying from it, and asmall hand-bag slung across her shoulder, laughing and dimpling, andwell aware of the admiring glances that were cast at her. It was arelief to Maurice that she was going away for a time; his feeling ofresponsibility with regard to her had not flagged, and he had made apoint of seeing her more often, and of knowing more of her movementsthan before. As, however, he had not observed anything further todisturb him, his suspicions were on the verge of subsiding--assuspicions have a way of doing when we wish them to--and in the lastday or two, he had begun to feel much less sure, and to wonder if, after all, he had not been mistaken. 

"I shall miss you, Morry. I almost wish I were not going, " said Ephie, and this was not untrue, in spite of the pretty new dresses her trunkscontained. "Say, I don't believe I shall enjoy myself one bit. You willwrite, Morry, won't you, and tell me what goes on? All the news youhear and who you see and everything. "----

"Be sure you write, " said Madeleine, too, when he saw her off early inthe morning to Berlin, where she was to meet her English charges. "Christiania, POSTE RESTANTE, till the first, and then Bergen. 'FROKENWADE, ' don't forget. "

The train started; her handkerchief fluttered from the window until thecarriage was out of sight. 

Maurice was alone; every one he knew disappeared, even Furst, who hadobtained a holiday engagement in a villa near Dresden. An odd stillnessreigned in the BRAUSTRASSE and its neighbourhood; from houses which hadhitherto been clangrous with musical noises, not a sound issued. Familiar rooms and lodgings were either closely shuttered, or, inprocess of scouring, hung out their curtains to flutter on the sill. 

The days passed, unmarked, eventless, like the uniform pages of a dullbook. When the solitude grew unbearable, Maurice went to visit FrauFurst, and had his supper with the family. He was a welcome guest, forhe not only paid for all the beer that was drunk, but also brought sucha generous portion of sausage for his own supper, that it supplied oneor other of the little girls as well. Afterwards, they sat round thekitchen-table, listening, the children with the old-fashioned solemnitythat characterised them, to Frau Furst's reminiscences. Otherwise, hehardly exchanged a word with anyone, but sat at his piano the livelongday. Of late, Schwarz had been somewhat cool and off-hand in mannerwith him; the master had also not displayed the same detailed interestin his plans for the summer, as in those of the rest of the class. Thiswas one reason why he had not gone away like every one else; the other, that he had been unwilling to write home for an increase of allowance. Sometimes, when the day was hot, he envied his friends refreshingthemselves by wood, mountain or sea; but, in the main, he workedbriskly at Czerny's FINGERFERTIGKEIT, and with such perseverance thatultimately his fingers stumbled from fatigue. 

With the beginning of August, the heat grew oppressive; all day long, the sun beat, fierce and unremittent, on this city of the plains, andthe baked pavements were warm to the feet. Business slackened, and themidday rest in shops and offices was extended beyond its usual limit. Conservatorium and Gewandhaus, at first given over to relays ofcharwomen, their brooms and buckets, soon lay dead and deserted, too;and if, in the evening, Maurice passed the former building, he wouldsee the janitor sitting at leisure in the middle of the pavement, smoking his long black cigar. The old trees in the PROMENADE, and theyoung striplings that followed the river in the LAMPESTRASSE, droopedtheir brown leaves thick with dust; the familiar smell of roastingcoffee, which haunted most house- and stair-ways, was intensified; andout of drains and rivers rose nauseous and penetrating odours, fromwhich there was no escape. Every three or four days, when theatmosphere of the town had reached a pitch of unsavouriness which itseemed impossible to surpass, sudden storms swept up, tropical in theirviolence: blasts of thunder cracked like splitting beams; lightningdarted along the narrow streets; rain fell in white, sizzling sheets. But the morning after, it was as hot as ever. 

Maurice grew so accustomed to meet no one he knew, that one afternoontowards the middle of August, he was pulled up by a jerk of surprise infront of the PLEISSENBURG, on stumbling across Heinrich Krafft. He hadstopped and impulsively greeted the young man, before he recalled hisprevious antipathy to him. 

Krafft was sauntering along with his hands in his pockets, and, onbeing accosted, he looked vaguely and somewhat moodily at Maurice. Thenext moment, however, he laid a hand on the lappel of Maurice's coat, and, without preamble, burst into a witty and obscene anecdote, whichhad evidently been in his mind when they met. This story, and the factthat, by the North Sea, he had stood before breakers twenty feet high, were the only particulars Maurice bore away from their interview. Hisprevious impatience with such eccentricity returned, but none the less, he looked grudgingly after the other's vanishing form. 

A day or two later, towards evening, he saw Krafft again. As he wasgoing through an outlying street, he came upon a group of children, whowere amusing themselves by teasing a cat; the animal had been hit inthe eye by a stone, and cowered, terrified and blinded, against thewall of a house. The children formed a half circle round it, and two ofthe biggest boys held a young and lively dog by the collar, inciting itand restraining it, and revelling in the cat's convulsive starts ateach capering bark. 

While Maurice was considering how to expostulate with them, Krafft cameswiftly up behind, jerked two of the children apart, and, with a deftand perfectly noiseless movement, caught up the cat and hid its headunder his coat. Then, cuffing the biggest boy, he kicked the dog, andordered the rest to disperse. The children did so lingeringly; and onceout of his reach, stood and mocked him. 

He begged Maurice to accompany him to his lodgings, and there Mauriceheld the animal, a large, half-starved street-cat, while Krafft, on hisknees before it, examined the wound. As he did this, he crooned in awordless language, and the cat was quiet, in spite of the pain hecaused it. But directly he took his hands off it, it jumped from thetable, and fled under the furthest corner of the sofa. 

Krafft next fetched milk and a saucer, from a cupboard in the wall, andwent down on his knees again: while Maurice sat and watched andwondered at his tireless endeavours to induce the animal to advance. Heexplained his proceedings in a whisper. 

"If I put the saucer down and leave it, " he said, "it won't help atall. A cat's confidence must be won straight away. "

He was still in this position, making persuasive little noises, whenthe door opened, and Avery Hill, his companion of a previous occasion, entered. At the sight of Krafft crouching on the floor, she paused withher hand on the door, and looked from him to Maurice. 

"Heinz?" she said interrogatively. Then she saw the saucer of milk, andunderstood. "Heinz!" she said again; and this time the word was areprimand. 

"Ssh!--be quiet, " said Krafft peevishly, without looking up. 

The girl took no notice of Maurice's attempt to greet her. Letting fallon the grand piano, some volumes of music she was carrying, shecontinued sternly: "Another cat!--oh, it is abominable of you! This isthe third he has picked up this year, " she said explanatorily, yet notmore to Maurice than to herself. "And the last was so dirty anddestructive that Frau Schulz threatened to turn him out, if he did notget rid of it. He knows as well as I do that he cannot keep a cat here. "

Her placidly tragic face had grown hard; and altogether, the anger shedisplayed seemed out of proportion to the trival offence. 

Krafft remained undisturbed. "It's not the least use scolding. Go andmake it right with the old crow. --Come, puss, come. "

The girl checked the words that rose to her lips, gave a slight shrug, and went out of the room. They heard her, in the passage, disputingwith the landlady, who was justly indignant. 

"If it weren't for you, Fraulein, I wouldn't keep him another day, " shedeclared. 

Meanwhile the cat, which, in the girl's presence, had shrunk stillfurther into its hiding-place, began to make advances. It crept a stepforward, retreated again, stretched out its nose to sniff at the milk, and, all of a sudden, emerged and drank greedily. 

Krafft touched its head, and the animal paused in its hungry gulping torub its back against the caressing hand. When the last drop of milk wasfinished, it withdrew to its corner, but less suspiciously. 

Krafft rose to his feet and stretched himself, and when Avery returned, he smiled at her. 

"Now then, is it all right?"

She did not reply, but went to the piano, to search for something amongthe scattered music. Krafft clasped his hands behind his head, andleaning against the table, watched her with an ironical curl of the lip. 

"O LENE! LENE! O MAGDALENE!" he sang under his breath; and, for thesecond time, Maurice received the impression that a by-play was beingcarried on between these two. 

"Look at this, " said Krafft after a pause. "Here, ladies and gentlemen, is one of those rare persons who have a jot of talent in them, and offshe goes--I don't mean at this moment, but tomorrow, the day after, every day--to waste it in teaching children finger-exercises. If youask her why she does it, she will tell you it is necessary to live. Necessary to live!--who has ever proved that it is?"

For an instant, it seemed as if the girl were going to flash out abitter retort that might have betrayed her. Then she showed the sameself-control as before, and went, without a word, into the next room. She was absent for a few minutes, and when she reappeared, carried whatwas unmistakably a bundle of soiled linen, going away with this on onearm, the volumes of music she had picked out on the other. She did notwish the young men good-night, but, in passing Maurice, she said in anunfriendly tone: "Do you know what time it is?" and to Krafft: "It islate, Heiriz, you are not to play. "

The door had barely closed behind her, when Krafft broke into the loud, repellent laugh that had so jarred on Maurice at their former meeting. He had risen at once, and now said he must go. But Krafft would nothear of it; he pressed him into his seat again, with an effusive warmthof manner. 

"Don't mind her. Stay, like a good fellow. Of course, I am going toplay to you. "

He flicked the keys of the piano with his handkerchief, adjusted thedistance of his seat, threw back his head, and half closing his eyes, began to play. Except for the unsteady flickerings cast on the wall bya street-lamp, the room was soon in darkness. 

Maurice resumed his seat reluctantly. He had been dragged upstairsagainst his will; and throughout the foregoing scene, had sat anuncomfortable spectator. He had as little desire for the girl to returnand find him there, as for Krafft to play to him. But no excuse forleaving offered itself, and each moment made it harder to interrupt theplayer, who had promptly forgotten the fact of his presence. 

After he had listened for a time, however, Maurice ceased to think ofescaping. Madeleine had once alluded to Krafft's skill as aninterpreter of Chopin, but, all the same, he had not expected anythinglike what he now heard, and at first he could not make anything of it. He had hitherto only known Chopin's music as played in the sentimentalfashion of the English drawing-room. Here, now, came some one who madeit clear that, no matter how pessimistic it appeared on the surface, this music was, at its core an essentially masculine music; it kickeddesperately against the pricks of existence; what failed it was onlythe last philosophic calm. He could not, of course, know that varioussmall things had combined to throw the player into one of his mostprodigal moods: the rescue and taming of the cat, the passage-at-armswith Avery, her stimulating forbiddal, and, last and best, the onesilent listener in the dark--this stranger, picked up at random in thestreets, who had never yet heard him play, and to whom he might revealhimself with an indecency that friendship precluded. 

When at length, Frau Schulz entered, in her bed-jacket, to say that itwas long past ten o'clock, Krafft wakened as if out of a trance, andhid his eyes from the light. Frau Schulz, a robust person, disregardedhis protests, and herself locked the piano and took the key. 

"She makes me promise to, " she whispered to Maurice, pointing over hershoulder at an imaginary person. "If I didn't, he'd go on all night. He's no more fit to look after himself than a baby--and he gets itagain with his boots in the morning. --Yes, yes, call me names if itpleases you. Names don't kill. And if I am a hag, you're a rascal, that's what you are! The way you treat that poor, good creature makesone's blood boil. "

Krafft waved her away, and opening the window, leaned out on the sill:a wave of warm air filled the room. Maurice rose with renewed decision, and sought his hat. But Krafft also took his down from a peg. "Yes, letus go out. "

It was a breathless August night, laden with intensified scents andsmells, and the moonlight lay thick and white on the ground: a night toprovoke to extravagant follies. In the utter stillness of the woods, the young men passed from places of inky blackness into bluish whitepatches, dropped through the trees like monstrous silver thalers. Thetown lay behind them in a glorifying haze; the river stretchedsilver-scaled in the moonlight, like a gigantic fish-back. 

Krafft walked in front of his companion, in preoccupied silence. Hisslender hands, dangling loosely, still twitched from their recentexertions, and from time to time, he turned the palms outward, with animpatient gesture. Maurice wished himself alone. He was not at easeunder this new companionship that had thrust itself upon him; indeed, astrong mental antagonism was still uppermost in him, towards the moodycreature at whose heels he followed; and if, at this moment, he hadbeen asked to give voice to his feelings, the term "crazy idiot" wouldhave been the first to rise to his lips. 

Suddenly, without turning, or slackening his pace, Krafft commenced tospeak: at first in a low voice, as if he were thinking aloud. But oneword gave another, his thoughts came rapidly, he began to gesticulate, and finally, wrought on by the beauty of the night, by this choicemoment for speech, still excited by his own playing, and in an infiniteneed of expression, he swept the silence before him with the force of aflood set free. If he thought Maurice were about to interrupt him, hemade an imploring gesture, and left what he was saying unfinished, tospring over to the next theme ready in his brain. Names jostled oneanother on his tongue: he passed from Beethoven and Chopin to Berliozand Wagner, to Liszt and Richard Strauss--and his words were to Mauricelike the unrolling of a great scroll. In the same breath, he was withNietzsche, and Apollonic and Dionysian; and from here he went on toRichard Dehmel, to ANATOL, and the gentle "Loris" of the early verses;to Max Klinger, and the propriety of coloured sculpture; to PAPA HAMLETand the future of the LIED. Maurice, listening intently, had fleetingglimpses into a land of which he knew nothing. He kept as still as amouse, in order not to betray his ignorance; for Krafft was notdidactic, and talked as if the subjects he touched on were as familiarto Maurice as to himself. On the other hand, Maurice believed it was amatter of indifference to him whether he was understood or not; hespoke for the pure joy of talking, out of the motley profusion of hisknowledge. 

Meanwhile, he had grown personal. And while he was still speaking withfervour of Vienna--which was his home--of gay, melancholy Wien, heflung round and put a question to his companion. 

"Do you ever think of death?"

Maurice had been the listener for so long that he started. 

"Death?" he echoed, and was as much embarrassed as though asked whetherhe believed in God. "I don't know. No, I don't think I do. Why shouldone think of death when one is alive and well?"

Krafft laughed at this, with a pitying irony. "Happy you!" he said. "Happy you!" His voice sank, and he continued almost fearfully: "I havethe vision of it before me, always wherever I go. Listen; I will tellyou; it is like this. " He laid his hand on Maurice's arm, and drew himnearer. "I know--no matter how strong and sound I may be at thismoment; no matter how I laugh, or weep, or play the fool; no matter howlittle thought I give it, or whether I think about it all day long--Iknow the hour will come, at last, when I shall gasp, choke, grow blackin the face, in the vain struggle for another single mouthful of thatair which has always been mine at will. And no one will be able to helpme; there is no escape from that hour; no power on earth can keep itfrom me. And it is all a matter of chance when it happens--a greatlottery: one draws to-day, one to-morrow; but my turn will surely come, and each day that passes brings me twenty-four hours nearer the end. "He drew still closer to Maurice. "Tell me, have you never stood beforea doorway--the doorway of some strange house that you have perhapsnever consciously gone past before--and waited, with the atrociouscuriosity that death and its hideous paraphernalia waken in one, for acoffin to be carried out?--the coffin of an utter stranger, who is ofinterest to you now, for the first and the last time. And have you notthought to yourself, with a shudder, that some day, in this selfsameway, under the same indifferent sky, among a group of loiterers as idlycurious as these, you yourself will be carried out, feet foremost, likea bale of goods, like useless lumber, all will and dignity gone fromyou, never to enter there again?--there, where all the little humanthings you have loved, and used, and lived amongst, are lying just asyou left them--the book you laid down, the coat you wore--now all of agreater worth than you. You are mere dead flesh, and behind the horridlid lie stark and cold, with rigid fingers and half-closed eyes, andthe chief desire of every one, even of those you have loved most, is tobe rid of you, to be out of reach of sight and smell of you. And so, after being carted, and jolted, and unloaded, you will be thrown into ahole, and your body, ice-cold, and as yielding as meat to thetouch--oh, that awful icy softness!--your flesh will begin to rot, tobe such that not your nearest friend would touch you. God, it isunbearable!"

He wiped his forehead, and Maurice was silent, not knowing what to say;he felt that such rational arguments as he might be able to offer, would have little value in the face of this intensely personal view, which was stammered forth with the bitterness of an accusation. But asthey crossed the suspension bridge, Krafft stopped, and stood lookingat the water, which glistened in the moonlight like a living thing. 

"No, it is impossible for me to put death out of my mind, " he went on. "And yet, a spring into this silver fire down here would end all that, and satisfy one's curiosity as well. Why is one not readier to make thespring?--and what would one's sensations be? The mad rush through theair--the crash--the sinking in the awful blackness . .. "

"Those of fear and cold. You would wish yourself out again, " answeredMaurice; and as Krafft nodded, without seeming to resent his tone, heventured to put forward a few points for the other side of thequestion. He suggested that always to be brooding over death unfittedyou for life. Every one had to die when his time came; it was foolishto look upon your own death as an exception to the rule. Besides, whensensation had left you--the soul, the spirit, whatever you liked tocall it--what did it matter what afterwards became of your body? Itwas, then, in reality, nothing but lumber, fresh nourishment for thesoil; and it was morbid to care so much how it was treated, justbecause it had once been your tenement, when it was now as worthless asthe crab's empty shell. 

He stuttered this out piece-wise, in his halting German; then paused, not sure how his companion would take the didactic tone he had falleninto. But Krafft had turned, and was gazing at him, considering himattentively for the first time. When Maurice ceased to speak, he noddeda hasty assent: "Yes, yes, it is quite true. Go on. " And as the former, having nothing more to say, was mute, he added: "You are like some oneI once knew. He was a great musician. I saw him die; he died by inches;it lasted for months; he could neither die nor live. "

"Why do you brood over these things, if you find them so awful? Are younot afraid your nerves will go through with you, and make you dosomething foolish?" asked Maurice, and was himself astonished at hisboldness. 

"Of course I am. My life is a perpetual struggle against suicide, "answered Krafft. 

In the distance, a church-clock struck a quarter to twelve, and it wason Maurice's tongue to suggest that they should move homewards, when, with one of his unexpected transitions, Krafft turned to him and saidin a low voice: "What do you say? Shall you and I be friends?"

Maurice hesitated, in some embarrassment. "Why yes, I should be veryglad. "

"And you will let me say 'DU' to you?"

"Certainly. If you are sure you won't regret it in the morning. "

Krafft stretched out his hand. As Maurice held in his the fine, slimfingers, which seemed mere skin and muscle, a hitherto unknown feelingof kindliness came over him for the young man at his side. At thismoment, he had the lively sensation that he was the stronger and wiserof the two, and that it was even a little beneath him to take the othertoo seriously. 

"You think so poorly of me then? You think no good thing can come outof me?" asked Krafft, and there was an appealing note in his voice, which, but a short time back, had been so overbearing. 

Had Maurice known him better, he would have promptly retorted: "Don'tbe a fool. " As it was, he laughed. "Who am I to sit in judgment? Theonly thing I do know is, that if I had your talent--no, a quarter ofit--I should pull myself together and astonish the world. "

"It sounds so easy; but I have too many doubts of myself, " said Krafft, and laid his hand on Maurice's shoulder. "And I have never had anyoneto keep me up to the mark--till now. I have always needed some one likeyou. You are strong and sympathetic; and one has the feeling that youunderstand. "

Maurice was far from certain that he did. However, he answered in afrank way, doing his best to keep down the sentimental tone that hadinvaded the conversation. At heart he was little moved by this newfriendship, which hail begun with the word itself; he told himself thatit was only a whim of Krafft's, which would be forgotten in themorning. But, as they stood thus on the bridge, shoulder to shoulder, he did not understand how he could ever have taken anything this frailcreature did, amiss. At the moment, there was a clinging helplessnessabout Krafft, which instinctively roused his manlier feelings. He saidto himself that he had done wrong in lightly condemning his companion;and, impelled by this sudden burst of protectiveness, he seized themoment, and spoke earnestly to Krafft of earnest things, of duty, notonly to one's fellows, but to oneself and one's abilities, of theinspiring gain of unremitted endeavour. 

Afterwards, they sauntered home--first to Maurice's lodging, then toKrafft's, and once again to Maurice's. At this stage, Krafft wasfrankness itself; Maurice learnt to his surprise that the slim, boyishlad at his side was over twenty-seven years of age; that, for severalsemesters, Krafft had studied medicine in Vienna, then had thrown upthis "disgusting occupation, " to become a clerk in a wealthy uncle'scounting-house. From this, he had drifted into journalism, and finally, at the instigation of Hans von Bullow, to music; he had been for twoand a half years with Bullow, on travel, and in Hamburg, and was atpresent in Leipzig solely to have his "fingers put in order. " His plansfor the future were many, and widely divergent. At one time, a musicalcareer tempted him irresistibly; every one but Schwarz--thisfinger-machine, this generator of living metronomes--believed that hecould make a name for himself as a player of Chopin. At other times, and more often, he contemplated retiring from the world and entering amonastery. He spoke with a morbid horror--yet as if the idea of itfascinated him--of the publicity of the concert-platform, and paintedin glowing colours a monastery he knew of, standing on a wooded hill, not far from Vienna. He had once spent several weeks there, recoveringfrom an illness, and the gardens, the trimly bedded flowers, theglancing sunlight in the utter silence of the corridors, were things hecould not forget. He had lain day for day on a garden-bench, readingNovalis, and it still seemed to him that the wishless happiness ofthose days was the greatest he had known. 

Beside this, Maurice's account of himself sounded tame and unimportant;he felt, too, that the circumstances of English life were too farremoved from his companion's sphere, for the latter to be able tounderstand them. 

On waking next morning, Maurice recalled the incidents of the eveningwith a smile; felt a touch of warmth at the remembrance of the momentwhen he had held Krafft's hand in his; then classed the whole episodeas strained, and dismissed it from his mind. He had just shut thepiano, after a busy forenoon, when Krafft burst in, his cheeks pinkwith haste and excitement. He had discovered a room to let, in thehouse he lived in, and nothing would satisfy him but that Mauriceshould come instantly to see it. Laughing at his eagerness, Maurice putforward his reasons for preferring to remain where he was. But Krafftwould take no denial, and not wishing to hurt his feelings, Mauricegave way, and agreed at least to look at the room. 

It was larger and more cheerful than his own, and had also, aconvenient alcove for the bedstead; and after inspecting it, Mauricefelt willing to expend the extra marks it cost. They withdrew toKrafft's room to come to a decision. There, however, they found AveryHill, who, as soon as she heard what they contemplated, put a veto onit. Growing pale, as she always did where others would have flushed, she said: "It is an absurd idea--sheer nonsense! I won't have it, understand that! Pray, excuse me, " she continued to Maurice, speakingin a more friendly tone than she had yet used to him, "but you must notlisten to him. It is just one of his whims--nothing more. In less thana week, you would wish yourself away again. You have no idea howchangeable he is--how impossible to live with. "

Maurice hastened to reassure her. Krafft did not speak; he stood at thewindow, with his back to them, his forehead pressed against the glass. 

So Maurice continued to live in the BRAUSTRASSE, under the despoticrule of Frau Krause, who took every advantage of his good-nature. Butafter this, not a day passed without his seeing Krafft; the lattersought him out on trivial pretexts. Maurice hardly recognised him: hewas gentle, amiable, and amenable to reason; he subordinated himselfentirely to Maurice, and laid an ever-increasing weight on his opinion. Maurice became able to wind him round his finger; and the hint of areproof from him served to throw Krafft into a state of nervousdepression. Without difficulty, Maurice found himself to rights in hisrole of mentor, and began to flatter himself that he would ultimatelymake of Krafft a decent member of society. As it was, he soon inducedhis friend to study in a more methodical way; they practised for thesame number of hours in the forenoon, and met in the afternoon; andKrafft only sometimes broke through this arrangement, by appearing inthe BRAUSTRASSE early in the morning, and, despite remonstrance, throwing himself on the sofa, and remaining there, while Mauricepractised. The latter ended by growing accustomed to this whim as toseveral other things that had jarred on him--such as Krafft's love fora dirty jest--and overlooked or forgave them. At first embarrassed bythe mushroom growth of a friendship he had not invited, he soon grewgenuinely attached to Krafft, and missed him when he was absent fromhim. 

Avery Hill could hardly be termed third in the alliance; Maurice'sadvent had thrust her into the background, where she kept watch overtheir doings with her cold, disdainful eye. Maurice was not clear howshe regarded his intrusion. Sometimes, particularly when she saw theimprovement in Heinrich's way of life, she seemed to tolerate hispresence gladly; at others again, her jealous aversion to him was tooopen to be overlooked. The jealousy was natural; he was an interloper, and Heinz neglected her shamefully for him; but there was somethingelse behind it, another feeling, which Maurice could not make out. Heby no means understood the relationship that existed between his friendand this girl of the stone-grey eyes and stern, red lips. The two livedalmost door by door, went in and out of each other's rooms at allhours, and yet, he had never heard them exchange an affectionate word, or seen a mark of endearment pass between them. Avery's attachment--ifsuch it could be called--was noticeable only in the many small ways inwhich she cared for Krafft's comfort; her manner with him wasinvariably severe and distant, with the exception of those occasionswhen a seeming trifle raised in her a burst of the dull, passionateanger, beneath which Krafft shrank. Maurice believed that his friendwould be happier away from her; in spite of her fresh colouring, he, Maurice, found her wanting in attraction, nothing that a woman ought tobe. But her name was rarely mentioned between them; Krafft was, as arule, reticent concerning her, and when he did speak of her, it was ina tone of such contempt that Maurice was glad to shirk the subject. 

"It's all she wants, " Krafft had replied, when his companion venturedto take her part. "She wouldn't thank you to be treated differently. Believe me, women are all alike; they are made to be trodden on. Ill-usage brings out their good points--just as kneading makes doughlight. Let them alone, or pamper them, and they spread like a weed, andchoke you"--and he quoted a saying about going to women and notforgetting the whip, at which Maurice stood aghast. 

"But why, if you despise a person like that--why have her always aboutyou?" he cried, at the end of a flaming plea for woman's dignity andworth. 

Krafft shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose the truth is we are dependenton them--yes, dependent, from the moment we are laid in the cradle. It's a woman who puts on our first clothes and a woman who puts on ourlast. But why talk about these things?"--he slipped his arm throughMaurice's. "Tell me about yourself; and when you are tired of talking, I will play. "

It usually ended in his playing. They ranged through the highways andbyways of music. 

One afternoon--it was a warm, wet, grey day towards the end ofAugust--Maurice found Krafft in a strangely apathetic mood. Theweather, this moist warmth, had got on his nerves, he said; he had beenunable to settle to anything; was weighed down by a lassitude heavierthan iron. When Maurice entered, he was stretched on the sofa, withclosed eyes; on his chest slept Wotan, the one-eyed cat, now growingsleek and fat. While Maurice was trying to rally him, Krafft sprang up. With a precipitance that was the extreme opposite of his previoussloth, he lowered both window-blinds, and, lighting two candles, setthem on the piano, where they dispersed the immediate darkness, but nomore. 

"I am going to play TRISTAN to you. "

Maurice had learnt by this time that it was useless to try to thwartKrafft. He laughed and nodded, and having nothing in particular to do, lay down in the latter's place on the sofa. 

Krafft shook his hair back, and began the prelude to the opera in arapt, ecstatic way, finding in the music an outlet for all hisnervousness. At first, he played from memory; when this gave out, heset the piano-score up before him, then forgot it again, and went onplaying by heart. Sometimes he sang the different parts, in a light, sweet tenor; sometimes recited them, with dramatic fervour. Only henever ceased to play, never gave his hearer a moment in which torecover himself. 

Frau Schulz's entry with the lamp, and her grumblings at the"UNVERSCHAMTE SPEKTAKEL" passed unheeded. A strength that was more thanhuman seemed to take possession of the frail youth at the piano. Evening crept on afternoon, night on evening, and still he continued, drunk with the most emotional music conceived by a human brain. 

Even when hands and fingers could do no more, the frenzy that was inhim would not let him rest: he paced the room, and talked--talked forhours, his eyes ablaze. A church-clock struck ten, then half-past, theneleven, and not for a moment was he still; his speech seemed, indeed, to gather impetus as it advanced like a mountain torrent. 

Then, all of a sudden, in the middle of a vehement defence ofanti-Semitism, to which he had been led by the misdeeds of those"arch-charlatans, " Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, he stopped short, like arun-down clock, and, falling into a chair before the table, buried hisface in his arms. There was silence, the more intense for all that hadpreceded it. Wotan wakened from sleep, and was heard to stretch hislimbs, with a yawn and a sigh. The spell was broken; Maurice, his headin a whirl, rose stiff and cramped from his uncomfortable position onthe sofa. 

"You rascal, you make one lose all sense of time. And I am starving. Imust snatch something at Canitz's as I go by. "

Krafft started, and raised a haggard face with twitching lips. "You arenot going to leave me?--like this?"

Maurice was both hungry and tired--worn out, in fact. 

"We will go somewhere in the town, " said Krafft. "And then for a walk. The rain has stopped--look!"

He drew up one of the blinds, and they saw that the stars were shining. 

"Yes, but what about to-morrow?--and to-morrow's work?"

"To-morrow may never come. And to-night is. "

"Those are only words. Do you know the time?"

Krafft turned quickly from the window. "And if I make it a test of thefriendship you have professed for me, that you stay here with meto-night?--You can sleep on the sofa. "

"Why on earth get personal?" said Maurice; he could not find his hat, which had fallen in a dark corner. "Heinz, dear boy, be reasonable. Come, give me the house-key--like a good fellow. "

"It's the first--the only thing, I have asked of you. "

"Nonsense. You have asked dozens. "

Krafft took a few steps towards him, and threw the key on the floor athis feet. Wotan, who was at the door, mewing to be let out, sprangback, in affright. 

"Go, go, go!" Krafft cried. "I never want to see you again. "

Earlier than usual the next morning, Maurice returned to set thingsright, and to laugh with Heinz at their extravagance the night before. But Krafft was not to be seen. From Frau Schulz, who flounced past himin the passage, first with hot water, then with black coffee, Mauricelearned that Krafft had been brought home early that morning, in adisgraceful state of intoxication. Frau Schulz still boiled at theremembrance. 

"SO 'N SCHWEIN, SO 'N SCHWEIN!" she cried. "But this time he goes. Ihave said it before and, fool that I am, have always let them persuademe. But this is the end. Not a day after the fifteenth will I have himin the house. "

Maurice slipped away. 

Two days passed before he saw his friend again. He found him pale anddejected, with reddish, heavy eyes and a sneering smile. He was whollychanged; his words were tainted with the perverse irony, which, at thebeginning of their acquaintance, had made his manner so repellent. Butnow, Maurice was not, at once, frightened away by it; he could notbelieve Heinrich's pique was serious, and gave himself trouble to winhis friend back. He chid, laughed, rallied, was earnest and apologetic, and all this without being conscious of having done wrong. 

"I think you had better leave him alone, " said Avery, after watchinghis fruitless efforts. "He doesn't want you. "

It was true; now Krafft had no thought for anyone but Avery. It wasAvery here, and Avery there. He called her by a pet name, was anxiousfor her comfort, and hung affectionately on her arm. --The worst of itwas, that he did not seem in the least ashamed of his fickleness. 

Maurice made one further attempt to move him, then, hurt and angry, intruded no more. At first, he was chiefly angry. But, gradually, thehurt deepened, and became a sense of injury, which made him avoid thestreet Krafft lived in, and shun him when they met. He missed him, after the close companionship of the past weeks, and felt as if he hadbeen suddenly deprived of a part of himself. And he would no doubt havemissed him more keenly still, if, just at this juncture, his attentionhad not been engrossed by another and more important matter. 

XIII. 

The commencement of the new term had just assembled the incomingstudents to sign their names in the venerable rollbook, when the reportspread that Schilsky was willing to play his symphonic poem, ZARATHUSTRA, to those of his friends who cared to hear it. Curiosityswelled the number, and Furst lent his house for the occasion. 

"You'll come, of course, " said the latter to Maurice, as they leftSchwarz's room after their lesson; and Madeleine said the same thingwhile driving home from the railway-station, where Maurice had met her. She was no more a friend of Schilsky's than he was, but she certainlyintended to be present, to hear what kind of stuff he had turned out. 

On the evening of the performance, Maurice and she walked together tothe BRANDVORWERKSTRASSE. Madeleine had still much to say. She hadreturned from her holiday in the best of health and spirits, liberallyrewarded for her trouble, and possessed of four new friends, who, nodoubt, would all be of use to her when she settled in England again. This was to be her last winter in Leipzig, and she was drawing updetailed plans of work. From now on, she intended to take privatelessons from Schwarz, in addition to those she received in the class. 

"Even though they do cost ten marks each, it makes him ever so muchbetter disposed towards you. "

She also told him that she had found a letter from Louise waiting forher, in which the latter announced her return for the following week. Louise wrote from England, and all her cry was to be back in Leipzig. 

"Of course--now he is here, " commented Madeleine. "You know, I suppose, that he has been travelling with Zeppelin? He has the luck of I don'tknow what. "

The Cayhills would be absent till the middle of the month; Maurice hadreceived from Ephie one widely written note, loud in praise of a familyof "perfectly sweet Americans, " whom they had learnt to know inInterlaken, but also expressing eagerness to be at home again in "dearold Leipzig. " Dove had arrived a couple of days ago--and here Madeleinelaughed. 

"He is absolutely shiny with resolution, " she declared. "Mind, Maurice, if he takes you into confidence--as he probably will--you are not onany account to dissuade him from proposing. A snub will do him worldsof good. "

They were not the first to climb the ill-lighted stair that wound up tothe Fursts' dwelling. The entry-door on the fourth storey stood open, and a hum of voices came from the sitting-room. The circular hat-standin the passage was crowded with motley headgear. 

As they passed the kitchen, the door of which was ajar, Frau Furstpeeped through the slit, and seeing Maurice, called him in. Thecoffee-pot was still on the stove; he must sit down and drink a cup ofcoffee. 

"There is plenty of time. Schilsky has not come yet, and I have onlythis moment sent Adolfchen for the beer. "

Maurice asked her if she were not coming in to hear the music. Shelaughed good-naturedly at the idea. 

"Bless your heart, what should I do in there, among all you youngpeople? No, no, I can hear just as well where I am. When my goodhusband had his evenings, it was always from the kitchen that Ilistened. "

Pausing, with a saucepan in one hand, a cloth in the other, she said:"You will hear something good to-night, Herr Guest. Oh, he has talent, great talent, has young Schilsky! This is not the usual work of apupil. It has form, and it has ideas, and it is new and daring. I knowone of the motives from hearing Franz play it, " and she hummed a themeas she replaced on the shelf, the scrupulously cleaned pot. "For such ayoung man, it is wonderful; but he will do better still, depend uponit, he will. "

Here she threw a hasty glance round the tiny kitchen, at three of thechildren sitting as still as mice in the corner, laid a finger on herlips, and, bursting with mystery, leaned over the table and askedMaurice if he could keep a secret. 

"He is going away, " she whispered. 

Maurice stared at her. "Going away? Who is? What do you mean?" heasked, and was so struck by her peculiar manner that he set his cupdown untouched. 

"Why Schilsky, of course. " She thought his astonishment was disbelief, and nodded confirmingly. "Yes, yes, he is going away. And soon, too. "

"How do you know?" cried Maurice. Sitting back in his chair, he stemmedhis hands against the edge of the table, and looked challengingly atFrau Furst. 

"Ssh--not so loud, " said the latter. "It's a secret, a deadsecret--though I'm sure I don't know why. Franz----"

At this very moment, Franz himself came into the kitchen. He lookeddistrustfully at his whispering mother. 

"Now then, mother, haven't you got that beer yet?" he demanded. Hisgenial bonhomie disappeared, as if by magic, when he entered his homecircle, and he was particularly gruff with this adoring woman. 

"GLEICH, FRANZCHEN, GLEICH, " she answered soothingly, and whisked abouther work again, with the air of one caught napping. 

Maurice followed Furst's invitation to join the rest of the party. 

The folding-doors between the "best room" and the adjoining bedroom hadbeen opened wide, and the guests were distributed over the two rooms. The former was brilliantly lighted by three lamps and two candles, andall the sitting-accommodation the house contained was ranged in asemicircle round the grand piano. Here, not a place was vacant; thosewho had come late were in the bedroom, making shift with whateveroffered. Two girls and a young man, having pushed back the feather-bed, sat on the edge of the low wooden bedstead, with their arms interlacedto give them a better balance. Maurice found Madeleine on a ricketylittle sofa that stood at the foot of the bed. Dove sat on a chest ofdrawers next the sofa, his long legs dangling in the air. BesideMadeleine, with his head on her shoulder, was Krafft. 

"Oh, there you are, " cried Madeleine. "Well, I did my best to keep theplace for you; but it was of no use, as you see. Just sit down, however. Between us, we'll squeeze him properly. "

Maurice was glad that the room, which was lighted only by one smalllamp, was in semi-darkness; for, at the sound of his own voice, itsuddenly became clear to him that the piece of gossip Frau Furst hadvolunteered, had been of the nature of a blow. Schilsky's departurethreatened, in a way he postponed for the present thinking out, todisturb his life; and, in an abrupt need of sympathy, he laid his handon Krafft's knee. 

"Is it you, old man? What have you been doing with yourself?"

Krafft gave him one of those looks which, in the early days of theiracquaintance, had proved so disconcerting--a look of strugglingrecollection. 

"Oh, nothing in particular, " he replied, without hostility, but alsowithout warmth. His mind was not with his words, and Maurice withdrewhis hand. 

Madeleine leaned forward, dislodging Krafft's head from itsresting-place. 

"How long have you two been 'DU' to each other?" she asked, and atMaurice's curt reply, she pushed Krafft from her. "Sit up and behaveyourself. One would think you had an evil spirit in you to-night. "

Krafft was nervously excited: bright red spots burnt on his cheeks, hishands twitched, and he jerked forward in his seat and threw himselfback again, incessantly. 

"No, you are worse than a mosquito, " cried Madeleine, losing patience. "Anyone would think you were going to play yourself. And he will be ascool as an iceberg. The sofa won't stand it, Heinz. If you can't stopfidgeting, get up. "

He had gone, before she finished speaking; for a slight stir in thenext room made them suppose for a moment that Schilsky was arriving. Afterwards, Krafft was to be seen straying about, with his hands in hispockets; and, on observing his rose-pink cheeks and tumbled curly hair, Madeleine could not refrain from remarking: "He ought to have been agirl. "

The air was already hot, by reason of the lamps, and the many breaths, and the firmly shut double-windows. The clamour for beer had becomeuniversal by the time Adolfchen arrived with his arms full of bottles. As there were not enough glasses to go round, every two or threepersons shared one between them--a proceeding that was carried out withmuch noisy mirth. Above all other voices was to be heard that of MissJensen, who, in a speckled yellow dress, with a large feather fan inher hand, sat in the middle of the front row of seats. It was she whodirected how the beer should be apportioned; she advised a fewlate-comers where they would still find room, and engaged Furst toplace the lights on the piano to better advantage. Next her, a Mrs. Lautenschlager, a plump little American lady, with straight yellow hairwhich hung down on her shoulders, was relating to her neighbour on theother side, in a tone that could be clearly heard in both rooms, howshe had "discovered" her voice. 

"I come to Schwarz, last fall, " she said shaking back her hair, andmaking effective use of her babyish mouth; "and he thinks no end of me. But the other week I was sick, and as I lay in bed, I sung some--justfor fun. And my landlady--she's a regular singer herself--who wasfixing up the room, she claps her hands together and says: 'My goodnessme! Why YOU have a voice!' That's what put it in my head, and I went toSperling to hear what he'd got to say. He was just tickled to death, Iguess he was, and he's going to make something dandy of it, so I stoplong enough. I don't know what my husband'll say though. When I wrotehim I was sick, he says: 'Come home and be sick at home'--that's whathe says. "

Miss Jensen could not let pass the opportunity of breaking a lance forher own master, the Swede, and of cutting up Sperling's method, whichshe denounced as antiquated. She made quite a little speech, in thecourse of which she now and then interrupted herself to remindFurst--who, was as soft as a pudding before her--of something he hadforgotten to do, such as snuffing the candles or closing the door. 

"Just let me hear your scale, will you?" she said patronisingly to Mrs. Lautenschlager. The latter, nothing loath, stuck out her chin, openedher mouth, and, for a short time, all other noises were drowned in afine, full volume of voice. 

On their sofa, Madeleine and Maurlee sat in silence, pretending tolisten to Dove, who was narrating his journey. Madeleine was out ofhumour; she tapped the floor, and had a crease in her forehead. As forMaurice, he was in such poor spirits that she could not but observe it. 

"Why are you so quiet? Is anything the matter?"

He shook his head, without speaking. His vague sense of impendingmisfortune had crystallised into a definite thought; he knew now whatit signified. If Schilsky went away from Leipzig, Louise would probablygo, too, and that would be the end of everything. 

"I represented to him, " he heard Dove saying, "that I had seen theluggage with my own eyes at Flushing. What do you think he answered? Helooked me up and down, and said: 'ICH WERDE TELEGRAPHIEREN UNDERKUNDIGUNGEN EINZIEHEN. ' Now, do you think if you said to an Englishstation-master: 'Sir, I saw the luggage with my own eyes, ' he would notbelieve you? No, in my opinion, the whole German railway-system needsrevision. Would you believe it, we did not make fifty kilometers in thehour, and yet our engine broke down before Magdeburg?"

So this would be the end; the end of foolish dreams and weak hopes, which he had never put into words even to himself, which had neverproperly existed, and yet had been there, nevertheless, a mass ofgloriously vague perhapses. The end was at hand--an end before therehad been any beginning. 

". .. The annoyance of the perpetual interruptions, " went on the voiceon the other side. "A lady who was travelling in the samecompartment--a very pleasant person, who was coming over to be ateacher in a school in Dresden--I have promised to show her our lionswhen she visits Leipzig: well, as I was saying, she was quite alarmedthe first time he entered in that way, and it took me some time, Iassure you, to make her believe that this was the German method ofrevising tickets. "

The break occasioned by the arrival of the beer had been of shortduration, and the audience was growing impatient; at the back of theroom, some one began to stamp his feet; others took it up. Furstperspired with anxiety, and made repeated journeys to the stair-head, to see if Schilsky were not coming. The latter was almost an hour lateby now, and jests, bald and witty, were made at his expense. Some oneoffered to take a bet that he had fallen asleep and forgotten theappointment, and at this, one of the girls on the bed, a handsomecreature with bold, prominent eyes, related an anecdote to herneighbours, concerning Schilsky's powers of sleep. All three explodedwith laughter. In a growing desire to be asked to play, Boehmer had forsome time hung about the piano, and was now just about to drop, as ifby accident, upon the stool, when the cry of: "No Bach!" wasraised--Bach was Boehmer's specialty--and re-echoed, and he retired redand discomfited to his Place in a corner of the room, where hiscompanion, a statuesque little English widow, made biting observationson the company's behaviour. The general rowdyism was at its height, when some one had the happy idea that Krafft should sing them hisnewest song. At this, there was a unanimous shriek of approval, andseveral hands dragged Krafft to the piano. But himself the wildest ofthem all, he needed no forcing. Flinging himself down on the seat, hepreluded wildly in imitation of Rubinstein. His hearers sat with theirmouths open, a fixed smile on their faces, laughter ready in theirthroats, and only Madeleine was coolly contemptuous. 

"Tom-fool!" she said in a low voice. 

Krafft was confidently expected to burst into one of those songs forwhich he was renowned. Few of his friends were able to sing them, andno one but himself could both sing and play them simultaneously: theywere a monstrous, standing joke. Instead of this, however, he turned, winked at his audience, and began a slow, melancholy ditty, with arecurring refrain. He was not allowed to finish the first verse; a howlof disapproval went up; his hearers hooted, jeered and stamped. 

"Sick cats!"

"Damn your 'WENIG SONNE!'"--this was the refrain. 

"Put your head in a bag!"

"Pity he drinks!"

"Give us one of the rousers--the rou . .. Sers!"

Krafft himself laughed unbridledly. "DAS ICH SPRICHT!"--he announced. "In C sharp major. "

There was a hush of anticipation, in which Dove, stopping his BRETZELhalf-way to his mouth, was heard to say in his tone of measuredsurprise: "C sharp major! Why, that is----"

The rest was drowned in the wild chromatic passages that Krafft sent upand down the piano with his right hand, while his left followed withfull-bodied chords, each of which exceeded the octave. Before, however, there was time to laugh, this riot ceased, and became a mournfulcadence, to the slowly passing harmonies of which, Krafft sang:

 I am weary of everything that is, under the sun. I sicken at the long lines of rain, which are black against the sky; They drip, for a restless heart, with the drip of despair: For me, winds must rage, trees bend, and clouds sail stormily. 

The whirlwind of the prelude commenced anew; the chords became stillvaster; the player swayed from side to side, like a stripling-tree in astorm. Madeleine said, "Tch!" in disgust, but the rest of the company, who had only waited for this, burst into peals of laughter; some bentdouble in their seats, some leant back with their chins in the air. Even Dove smiled. Just, however, as those whose sense of humour wasmost highly developed, mopped their faces with gestures of exhaustion, and assured their neighbours that they "could not, really could notlaugh any more, " Furst entered and flapped his hands. 

"Here he comes!"

A sudden silence fell, broken only by a few hysterical giggles from theladies, and by a frivolous American, who cried: "Now for ALSO SCHRIEZENOPHOBIA!" Krafft stopped playing, but remained sitting at the piano, wiping down the keys with his handkerchief. 

Schilsky came in, somewhat embarrassed by the lull which had succeededthe hubbub heard in the passage, but wholly unconcerned at the latenessof the hour: except in matters of practical advancement, time did notexist for him. As soon as he appeared, the two ladies in the front rowbegan to clap their hands; the rest of the company followed theirexample, then, in spite of Furst's efforts to prevent it, rose andcrowded round him. Miss Jensen and her friend made themselvesparticularly conspicuous. Mrs Lauterischlager had an infatuation forthe young man, of which she made no secret; she laid her handcaressingly on his coat-sleeve, and put her face as near his aspropriety admitted. 

"Disgusting, the way those women go on with him!" said Madeleine. "Andwhat is worse, he likes it. "

Schilsky listened to the babble of compliments with that mixture ofboyish deference and unequivocal superiority, which made him soattractive to women. He was too good-natured to interrupt them and freehimself, and would have stood as long as they liked, if Furst had notcome to the rescue and led him to the piano. Schilsky laid his handaffectionately on Krafft's shoulder, and Krafft sprang up inexaggerated surprise. The audience took its seats again; the thickmanuscript-score was set up on the music-rack, and the three young menat the piano had a brief disagreement with one another about turningthe leaves: Krafft was bent on doing it, and Schilsky objected, forKrafft had a way of forgetting what he was at in the middle of a page. Krafft flushed, cast an angry look at his friend, and withdrew, in highdudgeon, to a corner. 

Standing beside the piano, so turned to those about him that the two onthe sofa in the next room only saw him sideways, and ill at that, Schilsky gave a short description of his work. He was nervous, whichaggravated his lisp, and he spoke so rapidly and in such a low voicethat no one but those immediately in front of him, could understandwhat he said. But it did not matter in the least; all present had comeonly to hear the music; they knew and cared nothing about Zarathustraand his spiritual development; and one and all waited impatiently forSchilsky to stop speaking. The listeners in the bedroom----merelycaught disjointed words--WERDEGANG, NOTSCHREI, TARANTELN--but not onewas curious enough even to lean forward in his seat. Madeleine madesarcastic inward comments on the behaviour of the party. 

"It's perfectly clear to you, I suppose, " she could not refrain fromobserving as, at the finish, Dove sagely wagged his head in agreement. 

It transpired that there was an ode to be sung before the last sectionof the composition, and a debate ensued who, should sing it. The twoladies in the front had quite a little quarrel--without knowinganything about the song--as to which of their voices would best suitit. Schilsky was silent for a moment, tapping his fingers, then saidsuddenly: "Come on, Heinz, " and looked at Krafft. But the latter, whowas standing morose, with folded arms, did not move. He had a dozenreasons why he should not sing; he had a cold, was hoarse, was out ofpractice, could not read the music from sight. 

"Good Heavens, what a fool Heinz is making of himself tonight!" saidMadeleine. 

But Schilsky thumped his fist on the lid, and said, if Krafft did notsing it, no one should; and that was the end of the matter. Krafft waspulled to the piano. 

Schilsky took his seat, and, losing his nervousness as soon as hetouched the keys, preluded firmly and easily, with his large, whitehands. Now, every one leaned forward to see him better; especially theladies threw themselves into positions from which they could watch hairand hands, and the slender, swaying figure. 

"Isn't he divine?" said the bold-eyed girl on the bed, in a loudwhisper, and hung upon her companion's neck in an ecstatic attitude. 

After the diversity of noises which had hitherto interfered with histhinking connectedly, Maurice welcomed the continuous sound of themusic, which went on without a break. He sat in a listening attitude, shading his eyes with his hand. Through his fingers, he surreptitiouslywatched the player. He had never before had an opportunity of observingSchilsky so closely, and, with a kind of blatant generosity, he nowpointed out to himself each physical detail that he found prepossessingin the other, every feature that was likely to attract--in the nextbreath, only to struggle with his honest opinion that the composer wasa slippery, loose-jointed, caddish fellow, who could never be proved tobe worthy of Louise. But he was too down-hearted at what he had learntin the course of the evening, to rise to any active feeling of dislike. 

Intermittently he heard, in spite of himself, something of Schilsky'smusic; but he was not in a frame of mind to understand or to retain anyimpression of it. He was more effectively jerked out of hispreoccupation by single spoken words, which, from time to time, struckhis ear: this was Furst, who, in the absence of a programme, announcedfrom his seat beside Schilsky, the headings of the different sectionsof the work: WERDEGANG; SEILTANZER--here Maurice saw Dove conductingwith head and hand--NOTSCHREI; SCHWERMUT; TARANTELN--and here again, but vaguely, as if at a distance, he heard suppressed laughter. But hewas thoroughly roused when Krafft, picking up a sheet of music andcoming round to the front of the piano, began to sing DAS TRUNKENELIED. By way of introduction, the low F in the bass of F minor soundedpersistently, at syncopated intervals; Schilsky inclined his head, andKrafft sang, in his sweet, flute-like voice:

 Oh, Mensch! Gieb Acht! Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht? "Ich schlief, ich schlief, Aus tiefem Schlaf bin ich erwacht: Die Welt ist tief, Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht. "

--the last phrase of which was repeated by the accompaniment, asemitone higher. 

 Tief ist ihr Weh, Lust--tiefer noch als Herzeleid:

As far as this, the voice had been supported by simple, full-soundingharmonies. Now, from out the depths, still of F minor, rose ahesitating theme, which seemed to grope its way: in imagination, oneheard it given out by the bass strings; then the violas reiterated it, and dyed it purple; voice and violins sang it together; the high littleflutes carried it up and beyond, out of reach, to a half close. 

 Weh spricht: vergeh!

Suddenly and unexpectedly, there entered a light yet mournful phrase inF major, which was almost a dance-rhythm, and seemed to be a small, frail pleading for something not rightly understood. 

 Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit, Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit. 

The innocent little theme passed away, and the words were sung again toa stern and fateful close in D flat major. 

The concluding section of the work returned to these motives, developedthem, gathered them together, grouped them and interchanged them, incomplicated thermatic counterpoint. Schilsky was barely able to copewith the difficulties of the score; he exerted himself desperately, laboured with his head and his whole body, and surmounted sheerlyunplayable parts with the genial slitheriness that is the privilege ofcomposers. 

When, at last, he crashed to a close and wiped his face in exhaustion, there was a deafening uproar of applause. Loud cries were uttered andexclamations of enthusiasm; people rose from their seats and crowdedround the piano to congratulate the player. Mrs. Lautenschlager couldnot desist from kissing his hand. A tall, thin Russian girl inspectacles, who had assiduously taken notes throughout, asked in a loudvoice, and her peculiar, hoppy German, for information about theorchestration. What use had he made of the cymbals? She trusted apurely Wagnerian one. Schilsky hastened to reopen the score, and sathimself to answer the question earnestly and at length. 

"Come, Maurice, let us go, " said Madeleine, rising and shaking thecreases from her skirt. "There will be congratulations enough. He won'tmiss ours. "

Maurice had had an idea of lingering till everybody else had gone, onthe chance of picking up fresh facts. But he was never good at excuses. So they slipped out into the passage, followed by Dove; but while thelatter was looking for his hat, Madeleine pulled Maurice down thestairs. 

"Quick, let us go!" she whispered; and, as they heard him coming afterthem, she drew her companion down still further, to the cellar flight, where they remained hidden until Dove had passed them, and his stepshad died away in the street. 

"We should have had nothing but his impressions and opinions all theway home, " she said, as they emerged. "He was bottled up from having tokeep quiet so long--I saw it in his face. And I couldn't stand itto-night. I'm in a bad temper, as you may have observed--or perhaps youhaven't. "

No, he had not noticed it. 

"Well, you would have, if you hadn't been so taken up with yourself. What on earth is the matter with you?"

He feigned surprise: and they walked in silence down one street andinto the next. Then she spoke again. "Do you know--but you're sure notto know that either--you gave me a nasty turn to-night?"

"I?" His surprise was genuine this time. 

"Yes, you--when I heard you say 'DU' to Heinz. "

He looked at her in astonishment; but she was not in a hurry tocontinue. They walked another street-length, and all she said was: "Howrefreshing the air is after those stuffy rooms!"

As they turned a corner however, she made a fresh start. 

"I think it's rather hard on me, " she said, and laughed as she spoke. "Here am I again, having to lecture you! The fact is, I suppose, one'sMETIER clings to one, in spite of oneself. But there must be somethingabout you, too, Maurice Guest, that makes one want to do it--want tolook after you, so to speak--as if you couldn't be trusted to take careof yourself. Well, it disturbed me to-night, to see how intimate youand Heinz have got. "

"Is that all? Why on earth should that trouble you? And anyhow, " headded, "the whole affair came about without any wish of mine. "

"How?" she demanded; and when he had told her: "And since then?"

He went into detail, coolly, without the resentment he had previouslyfelt towards Krafft. 

"And that's all?"

"Isn't it enough--for a fellow to go on in that way?"

"And you feel aggrieved?"

"No, not now. At first I was rather sore, though, for Heinz is aninteresting fellow, and we were very thick for a time. "

"Yes, of course--until Schilsky comes back. As soon as he appears onthe scene, Master Heinz gives you the cold shoulder. Or perhaps youdidn't know that Heinz is the attendant spirit of that heaven-borngenius?"

Maurice did not reply, and when she spoke again, it was with renewedseriousness. "Believe me, Maurice, he is no friend for you. It's notonly that you ought to be above letting yourself be treated in thisway, but Heinz's friendship won't do you any good. He belongs to a badset here--and Schilsky, too. If you were long with Heinz, you would bebound to get drawn into it, and then it would be good-bye to anythingyou might have done--to work and success. No, take my advice--it'ssincerely meant--and steer clear of Heinz. "

Maurice smiled to himself at her womanly idea of Krafft leading him toperdition. "But you're fond of him yourself, Madeleine, " he said. "Youcan't help liking him either. "

"I daresay I can't. But that is quite a different matter--quite;" andas if more than enough had now been said, she abruptly left the subject. 

Before going home that night, Maurice made the old round by way of theBRUDERSTRASSE, and stood and looked up at the closed windows behindwhich Louise lived. The house was dark, and as still as was thedeserted street. Only the Venetian blinds seemed to be faintly alive;the outer windows, removed for the summer, had not yet been replaced, and a mild wind flapped the blinds, just as it swayed the tops of thetrees in the opposite garden. There was a breath of autumn in the air. He told himself aloud, in the nightly silence, that she was goingaway--as if by repeating the words, he might ultimately grow used totheir meaning. The best that could be hoped for was that she would notgo immediately, but would remain in Leipzig for a few weeks longer. Then a new fear beset him. What if she never came back again?--if shehad left the place quietly, of set purpose?--if these windows wereclosed for good and all? A dryness invaded his throat at thepossibility, and on the top of this evening of almost apatheticresignation to the inevitable, the knowledge surged up in him that allhe asked was to be allowed to see her just once more. Afterwards, letcome what might. Once again, he must stand face to face with her--muststamp a picture of her on his brain, to carry with him for ever. 

For ever!--And through his feverish sleep ran, like a thread, the wordshe had heard Krafft sing, of an eternity that was deep and dreamless, ajoy without beginning or end. 

Madeleine had waved her umbrella at him. He crossed the road to whereshe was standing in rain-cloak and galoshes. She wished to tell himthat the date of her playing in the ABENDUNTERHALTUNG had beendefinitely fixed. About to go, she said:

"Louise is back--did you know?"

Of course he knew, though he did not tell her so--knew almost the exacthour at which the blinds had been drawn up, the windows opened, and aflower-pot, in a gaudy pink paper, put out on the sill. 

Not many days after this, he came upon Louise herself. She was standingtalking, at a street-corner, to the shabby little Englishman, Eggis, with whom she had walked the FOYER of the theatre. Maurice was about tobow and pass by, but she smiled and held out her hand. 

"You are back, too, then? To-day I am meeting all my friends. "

She had fur about her neck, although the weather was not really cold, and her face rose out of this setting like a flower from its cup. 

This meeting, and the few cordial words she had spoken, helped him overthe days that followed. Sometimes, while he waited for the blow tofall, his daily life grew very unimportant; things that had hithertointerested him, now went past like shadows; he himself was a mereautomaton. But sometimes, too, and especially after he had seen Louise, and touched her living hand, he wondered whether he were not perhapstormenting himself unnecessarily. Nothing more had come to light; noone had hinted by a word at Schilsky's departure; it might yet prove tobe all a mistake. 

Then, however, he received a postcard from Madeleine, saying that shehad something interesting to tell him. He went too early, and spent aquarter of an hour pacing her room. When she entered, she threw him alook, and, before she had finished taking off her wraps, said:

"Maurice, I have a piece of news for you. Schilsky is going away. "

He nodded; his throat was dry. 

"Why, you don't mean to say you knew?" she cried, and paused half-wayout of her jacket. 

Maurice went to the window, and stood with his back to her. In one ofthe houses opposite, at a window on the same level, a girl waspractising the violin; his eyes followed the mechanical movements ofthe bow. 

He cleared his throat. "Do you--Is it likely--I mean, do you think?----"

Madeleine understood him. "Yes, I do. Louise won't stay here a daylonger than he does; I'm sure of that. "

But otherwise she knew no more than Maurice; and she did not offer todetain him, when, a few minutes later, he alleged a pressingappointment. Madeleine was annoyed, and showed it; she had come in withthe intention of being kind to him, of encouraging him, and discussingthe matter sympathetically, and it now turned out that not only had heknown it all the time, but had also kept it a secret from her. She didnot like underhand ways, especially in people whom she believed sheknew inside out. 

Now that the pledge of secrecy had been removed from him, Maurice feltthat he wanted facts; and, without thinking more about it than if hehad been there the day before, he climbed the stairs that led toKrafft's lodging. 

He found him at supper; Avery was present, too, and on the table satWotan, who was being regaled with strips of skin off the sausage. Krafft greeted Maurice with a touch of his former effusiveness; for hewas in a talkative mood, and needed an audience. At his order, Averyput an extra plate on the table, and Maurice had to share their meal. It was not hard for him to lead Krafft round to the desired subject. Itseemed that one of the masters in the Conservatorium had expressed avery unequivocal opinion of Schilsky's talents as a composer, andKrafft was now sarcastic, now merry, at this critic's expense. Mauricelaid down his knife, and, in the first break, asked abruptly: "Whendoes he go?"

"Go?--who?" said Krafft indifferently, tickling Wotan's nose with apiece of skin which he held out of reach. 

"Who?--why, Schilsky, of course. "

It sounded as if another than he had said the words: they were so shortand harsh. The plate Avery was holding fell to the floor. Krafft satback in his chair, and stared at Maurice, with a face that was all eyes. 

"You knew he was going away?--or didn't you?" asked Maurice in a roughvoice. "Every one knows. The whole place knows. "

Krafft laughed. "The whole place knows: every one knows, " he repeated. "Every one, yes--every one but me. Every one but me, who had most rightto know. Yes, I alone had the right; for no one has loved him as Ihave. "

He rose from the table, knocking over his chair. "Or else it is nottrue?"

"Yes, it is true. Then you didn't know?" said Maurice, bewildered bythe outburst he had evoked. 

"No, we didn't know. " It was Avery who spoke. She was on her knees, picking up the pieces of the plate with slow, methodical fingers. 

Krafft stood hesitating. Then he went to the piano, opened it, adjustedthe seat, and made all preparations for playing. But with his fingersready on the keys, he changed his mind and, instead, laid his arms onthe folded rack and his head on his arms. He did not stir again, and along silence followed. The only sound that was to be heard came fromWotan, who, sitting on his haunches on a corner of the table, washedthe white fur of his belly with an audible swish. 

XIV. 

Whistling to him to stop, Furst ran the length of a street-block afterMaurice, as the latter left the Conservatorium. 

"I say, Guest, " he said breathlessly, on catching up with him. "Lookhere, I just wanted to tell you, you must be sure and join us to-night. We are going to give Schilsky a jolly send-off. "

They stood at the corner of the WACHTERSTRASSE; it was a blowy day. Maurice replied evasively, with his eyes on the unbound volume ofBeethoven that Furst was carrying; its tattered edges moved in the wind. 

"When does he go?" he asked, without any show of concern. 

Furst looked warily round him, and dropped his voice. "Well, look here, Guest, I don't mind telling you, " he said; he was perspiring from hisrun, and dried his neck and face. "I don't mind telling you; you won'tpass it on; for he has his reasons--family or domestic reasons, if onemay say so, tra-la-la!"--he winked, and nudged Maurice with hiselbow--"for not wanting it to get about. It's deuced hard on him thatit should have leaked out at all. I don't know how it happened; for Iwas mum, 'pon my honour, I was. "

"Yes. And when does he go?" repeated his hearer with the same want ofinterest. 

"To-morrow morning early, by the first train. "

Now to be rid of him! But it was never easy to get away from Furst, andsince Maurice had declared his intention of continuing to take lessonsfrom him, as good as impossible. Furst was overpowering in hisfriendliness, and on this particular occasion, there was no escape forMaurice before he had promised to make one of the party that was tomeet that night, at a restaurant in the town. Then he bluffly allegedan errand in the PLAGWITZERSTRASSE, and went off in an oppositedirection to that which his companion had to take. 

As soon as Furst was out of sight, he turned into the path that led tothe woods. Overhead, the sky was a monotonous grey expanse, and a soft, moist wind drove in gusts, before which, on the open meadow-land, hebent his head. It was a wind that seemed heavy with unfallen rain; amelancholy wind, as the day itself was melancholy, in its fadedcolours, and cloying mildness. With his music under his arm, Mauricewalked to the shelter of the trees. Now that he had learnt the worst, akind of numbness came over him; he had felt so intensely in the courseof the past week that, now the crisis was there, he seemed destitute offeeling. 

His feet bore him mechanically to his favourite seat, and here heremained, with his head in his hands, his eyes fixed on the troddengravel of the path. He had to learn, once and for all, that, bytomorrow, everything would be over; for, notwithstanding thewretchedness of the past days, he was as far off as ever fromunderstanding. But he was loath to begin; he sat in a kind of torpor, conscious only of the objects his eyes rested on: some children hadbuilt a make-believe house of pebbles, with a path leading up to thedoorway, and at this he gazed, estimating the crude architectural ideasthat had occurred to the childish builders. He felt the wind in hishair, and listened to the soothing noise it made, high above his head. But gradually overcoming this physical dullness, his mind began to workagain. With a sudden vividness, he saw himself as he had walked thesevery woods, seven months before; he remembered the brilliant colouringof the April day, and the abundance of energy that had possessed him. Then, on looking into the future, all his thoughts had been ofstrenuous endeavour and success. Now, success was a word like anyother, and left him cold. 

For a long time, in place of passing on to his real preoccupation, heconsidered this, brooding over the change that had come about in him. Was it, he asked himself, because he had so little whole-heartedendurance, that when once a thing was within his grasp, that graspslackened? Was it that he was able to make the effort required for aleap, then, the leap over, could not right himself again? He believedthat the slackening interest, the inability to fix his attention, whichhe had had to fight against of late, must have some such deepersignificance; for his whole nature--the inherited common sense ofgenerations--rebelled against tracing it back to the day on which hehad seen a certain face for the first time. It was too absurd to becredible that because a slender, dark-eyed girl had suddenly comewithin his range of vision, his life should thus lose form andpurpose--incredible and unnatural as well--and, in his present mood, hewould have laughed at the suggestion that this was love. To his mind, love was something frank and beautiful, made for daylight and the sun;whereas his condition was a source of mortification to him. To love, without any possible hope of return; to love, knowing that the personyou loved regarded you with less than indifference, and, what wasworse, that this person was passionately attached to another man--no, there was something indelicate about it, at which his blood revolted. It was the kind of thing that it suited poets to make tragedies of, butit did not--should not--happen in sober, daily life. And if, as itseemed in this case, it was beyond mortal's power to prevent it, thenthe only fitting thing to do was promptly to make an end. And because, over the approach of this end, he suffered, he now called himself hardnames. What had he expected? Had he really believed that matters couldalways dally on, in this pleasant, torturous way? Would he always havebeen content to be third party, and miserable outsider? No; the bestthat could happen to him was now happening; let the coming day once bepast, let a very few weeks have run their course, and the parting wouldhave lost its sting; he would be able to look back, regretfully nodoubt, but as on something done with, irrecoverable. Then he wouldapply himself to his work with all his heart; and it would be possibleto think of her, and remember her, calmly. If once an end were put tothese daily chances of seeing her, which perpetually fanned his unrest, all would go well. 

And yet . .. Did he close his eyes and let her face rise up beforehim--her sweet, white face, with the unfathomable eyes, and pale, sensuous mouth--he was shaken by an emotion that knocked hisresolutions as flat as a breath knocks a house of cards. It was notlove, nor anything to do with love, this he could have sworn to: it wasmerely the strange physical effect her presence, or the remembrance ofher presence, had had upon him, from the first day on: a tightening ofall centres, a heightening of all faculties, an intense hope, and asintense a despair. And in this moment, he confessed to himself that hewould have been over-happy to live on just as he had been doing, ifonly sometimes he might see her. He needed her, as he had never feltthe need of anyone before; his nature clamoured for her, imperiously, as it clamoured for light and air. He had no concern with anyone buther--her only--and he could not let her go. It was not love; it was abodily weakness, a pitiable infirmity: he even felt it degrading thatanother person should be able to exercise such an influence over him, that there should be a part of himself over which he had no control. Not to see her, not to be able to gather fresh strength from eachchance meeting, meant that the grip life had of him would relax--hegrew sick even at the thought of how, in some unknown place, in themidst of strangers, she would go on living, and giving her hand and hersmile to other people, while he would never see her again. And he saidher name aloud to himself, as if he were in bodily pain, or as if thesound of it might somehow bring him aid: he inwardly implored whateverfate was above him to give him the one small chance he asked--thechance of fair play. 

The morning passed, without his knowing it. When, considerably afterhis usual dinner-hour, he was back in his room, he looked at familiarobjects with unseeing eyes. He was not conscious of hunger, but goinginto the kitchen begged for a cup of the coffee that could be smeltbrewing on Frau Krause's stove. When he had drunk this, a veil seemedto lift from his brain; he opened and read a letter from home, and waspricked by compunction at the thought that, except for a few scales runhastily that morning, he had done no work. But while he still stood, with his arm on the lid of the piano, an exclamation rose to his lips;and taking up his hat, he went down the stairs again, and out into thestreet. What was he thinking of? If he wished to see Louise once more, his place was under her windows, or in those streets she would belikely to pass through. 

He walked up and down before the house in the BRUDERSTRASSE, sometimesincluding a side street, in order to avoid making himself conspicuous;putting on a hurried air, if anyone looked curiously at him; lingeringfor a quarter of an hour on end, in the shadow of a neighbouringdoorway. Gradually, yet too quickly, the grey afternoon wore to aclose. He had paced to and fro for an hour now, but not a trace of herhad he seen; nor did even a light burn in her room when darkness fell. A fear lest she should have already gone away, beset him again, and gotthe upper hand of him; and wild schemes flitted through his mind. Hewould mount the stairs, and ring the door-bell, on some pretext orother, to learn whether she was still there; and his foot was on thelowest stair, when his courage failed him, and he turned back. But theidea had taken root; he could not bear much longer the uncertainty hewas in; and so, towards seven o'clock, when he had hung about for threehours, and there was still no sign of life in her room, he went boldlyup the broad, winding stair and rang the bell. When the door wasopened, he would find something to say. 

The bell, which he had pulled hard, pealed through the house, jangledon, and, in a series of after-tinkles, died away. There was noimmediate answering sound; the silence persisted, and having waited forsome time, he rang again. Then, in the distance, he heard a door creak;soft, cautious footsteps crept along the passage; a light moved; theglass window in the upper half of the door was opened, and a little oldwoman peered out, holding a candle above her head. On seeing the paleface close before her, she drew back, and made as if to shut thewindow; for, as a result of poring over newspapers, she lived incontinual expectation of robbery and murder. 

"She is not at home, " she said with tremulous bravado, in answer to theyoung man's question, and again was about to close the window. ButMaurice thrust in his hand, and she could not shut without crushing it. 

"Then she is still here? Has she gone out? When will she be back?" hequeried. 

"How should I know? And look here, young man, if you don't take awayyour hand and leave the house at once, I shall call from the window fora policeman. "

He went slowly down the stairs and across the street, and took up anewhis position in the dark doorway--a proceeding which did not reassureFraulein Grunhut, who, regarding his inquiries as a feint, was watchinghis movements from between the slats of a window-blind. But Maurice hadnot stood again for more than a quarter of an hour, when a feeling ofnausea seized him, and this reminded him that he had practically eatennothing since the morning. If he meant to hold out, he must snatch abite of food somewhere; afterwards, he would return and wait, if he hadto wait all night. 

In front of the PANORAMA on the ROSSPLATZ, he ran into the arms ofFurst, and the latter, when he heard where Maurice was going, hadnothing better to do than to accompany him, and drink a SCHNITT. Furst, who was in capital spirits at the prospect of the evening, laughedheartily, told witty anecdotes, and slapped his fat thigh, the type ofrubicund good-humour; and as he was not of an observant turn of mind, he did not notice his companion's abstraction. Hardly troubling todissemble, Maurice paid scant attention to Furst's talk; he ate avidly, and as soon as he had finished, pushed back his chair and called to thewaiter for his bill. 

"I must go, " he said, and rose. "I have something important to do thisevening, and can't join you. "

Furst, cut short in the middle of a sentence, let his double chin fallon his collar, and gazed open-mouthed at his companion. 

"But I say, Guest, look here!. .. " Maurice heard him expostulate as theouter door slammed behind him. 

He made haste to retrace his steps. The wind had dropped; a fine rainwas beginning to fall; it promised to be a wet night, of empty streetsand glistening pavements. There was no visible change in the windows ofthe BRUDERSTRASSE; they were as blankly dark as before. Turning up hiscoat-collar, Maurice resumed his patrollings, but more languidly; hewas drowsy from having eaten, and the air was chill. A weaknessovercame him at the thought of the night-watch he had set himself; itseemed impossible to endure the crawling past of still more hours. Hewas tired to exhaustion, and a sudden, strong desire arose in him, somehow, anyhow, to be taken out of himself, to have his thoughtsdiverted into other channels. And this feeling grew upon him with suchforce, the idea of remaining where he was, for another hour, became sointolerable, that he forgot everything else, and turned and ran backtowards the PANORAMA, only afraid lest Furst should have gone withouthim. 

The latter was, in fact, just coming out of the door. He stared inastonishment at Maurice. 

"I've changed my mind, " said Maurice, without apology. "Shall we go?Where's the place?"

Furst mumbled something inaudible; he was grumpy at the other'sbehaviour. Scanning him furtively, and noting his odd, excited manner, he concluded that Maurice had been drinking. 

They walked without speaking; Furst hummed to himself. In thethick-sown, business thoroughfare, the BRUHL, they entered a dingy cafeand while Furst chattered with the landlord and BUFFETDAME, with bothof whom he was on very friendly terms, Maurice went into the side-room, where the KNEIPE was to be held, and sat down before a long, narrowtable, spread with a soiled red and blue-checked tablecloth. He feltcold and sick again, and when the wan PICCOLO set a beer-mat beforehim, he sent the lad to the devil for a cognac. The waiter came withthe liqueur-bottle; Maurice drank the contents of one and then anotherof the tiny glasses. A genial warmth ran through him and his nauseaceased. He leaned his head on his hands, closed his eyes, and, soothedby the heat of the room, had a few moments' pleasant lapse ofconsciousness. 

He was roused by the entrance of a noisy party of three. These werestrangers to him, and when they had mentioned their names and learnedhis, they sat down at the other end of the table and talked amongthemselves. They were followed by a couple of men known to Maurice bysight. One, an Italian, a stout, animated man, with prominent jet-blackeyes and huge white teeth, was a fellow-pupil of Schilsky's, and aviolinist of repute, notwithstanding the size and fleshiness of hishands, which were out of all proportion to the delicate build of hisinstrument. The other was a slender youth of fantastic appearance. Hewore a long, old-fashioned overcoat, which reached to his heels, andwas moulded to a shapely waist; on his fingers were numerous rings; hisbushy hair was scented and thickly curled, his face painted andpencilled like a woman's. He did not sit down, but, returning to thepublic room, leaned over the counter and talked to the BUFFETDAME, in atone which had nothing in common with Furst's hearty familiarity. 

Next came a couple of Americans, loud, self-assertive, careless ofdress and convention; close behind them still another group, and at itsheels, Dove. The latter entered the room with an apologetic air, and onsitting down at the head of the table, next Maurice, mentioned at oncethat, at heart, he was not partial to this kind of thing, and was onlythere because he believed the present to be an exceptional occasion:who knew but what, in after years, he might not be proud to claimhaving, made one of the party on this particular evening?--the plaintruth being that Schilsky was little popular with his own sex, and, inconsequence of the difficulty of beating up a round dozen of men, Fursthad been forced to be very pressing in his invitations, to haverecourse to bribes and promises, or, as in the case of Dove, tostimulating the imagination. The majority of the guests present werenot particular who paid for their drink, provided they got it. 

At Krafft's entry, a stifled laugh went round. To judge from hisappearance, he had not been in bed the previous night: sleep seemed tohang on his red and sunken eyelids; his hands and face were dirty, andwhen he took off his coat, which he had worn turned up at the neck, itwas seen that he had either lost or forgotten his collar. Shirt andwaistcoat were insufficiently buttoned. His walk was steady, but hiseyes had a glassy stare, and did not seem to see what they rested on. Astrong odour of brandy went out from him; but he had not been manyminutes in the room before a stronger and more penetrating smell madeitself felt. The rest of the company began to sniff and ejaculate, andFurst, having tracked it to the corner where the overcoats hung, drewout of one of Krafft's pockets a greasy newspaper parcel, evidentlysome days old, containing bones, scraps of decaying meat, and rancidfish. The PICCOLO, summoned by a general shout, was bade to dispose ofthe garbage instantly, and to hang the coat in a draughty place to air. Various epithets were hurled at Krafft, who, however, sat picking histeeth with unconcern, as if what went on around him had nothing to dowith him. 

They were now all collected but Schilsky, and much beer had been drunk. Furst was in his usual state of agitation lest his friend should forgetto keep the appointment; and the spirits of those--there were severalsuch present--who suffered almost physical pain from seeing anotherthan themselves the centre of interest, went up by leaps and bounds. But at this juncture, Schilsky's voice was heard in the next room. Itwas raised and angry; it snarled at a waiter. Significant glances flewround the table: for the young man's outbursts of temper were wellknown to all. He entered, making no response to the greetings that wereoffered him, displaying his anger with genial indifference to whatothers thought of him. To the PICCOLO he tossed coat and hat, and sworeat the boy for not catching them. Then he let his loose-limbed bodydown on the vacant chair, and drank off the glass of PILSENER that wasset before him. 

There was a pause of embarrassment. The next moment, however, severalmen spoke at once: Furst continued a story he was telling, some oneelse capped it, and the mirth these anecdotes provoked was more thanordinarily uproarious. Schilsky sat silent, letting his sullen mouthhang, and tapping the table with his fingers. Meanwhile, he emptied oneglass of beer after another. The PICCOLO could hardly cope with thedemands that were made on him, and staggered about, top-heavy, with hisload of glasses. 

But it was impossible to let the evening pass as flatly as this;besides, as the general hilarity increased, it made those present lesssensitive to the mood of the guest of honour. Furst was a born speaker, and his heart was full. So, presently, he rose to his feet, struck hisglass, and, in spite of Schilsky's deepening scowl, held a floweryspeech about his departing friend. The only answer Schilsky gave was amuttered request to cease making an idiot of himself. 

This was going rather too far; but no one protested, except Ford, thepianist, who said in English: "Speesch? Call that a speesch?"

Furst, inclined in the first moment of rebuff to be touchy, allowed hisnatural goodness of heart to prevail. He leaned forward, and said, notwithout pathos: "Old man, we are all your friends here. Something's thematter. Tell us what it is. "

Before Schilsky could reply, Krafft awakened from his apparent stuporto say with extreme distinctness: "I'll tell you. There's been thedevil to pay. "

"Now, chuck it, Krafft!" cried one or two, not without alarm at theturn things might take. 

But Schilsky, whose anger had begun to subside under the influence ofthe two litres he had drunk, said slowly and thickly: "Let him be. Whathe says is the truth--gospel truth. "

"Oh, say, that's to' bad!" cried one of the Americans--a lean man, withthe mouth and chin of a Methodist. 

All kept silence now, in the hope that Schilsky would continue. As hedid not, but sat brooding, Furst, in his role of peacemaker, clappedhim on the back. "Well, forget it for to-night, old man! What does itmatter? To-morrow you'll be miles away. "

This struck a reminiscence in Ford, who forthwith tried to sing:

 I'm off by the morning train, Across the raging main----

"That's easily said!" Schilsky threw a dark look round the table. "Bythose who haven't been through it. I have. And I'd rather have lost ahand. "

Krafft laughed--that is to say, a cackle of laughter issued from hismouth, while his glazed eyes stared idiotically. "He shall tell usabout it. Waiter, a round of SCHNAPS!"

"Shut up, Krafft!" said Furst uneasily. 

"Damn you, Heinz!" cried Schilsky, striking the table. He swallowed hisbrandy at a gulp, and held out the glass to be refilled. His anger fellstill more; he began to commiserate himself. "By Hell, I wish a plaguewould sweep every woman off the earth!"

"The deuce, why don't you keep clear of them?"

Schilsky laughed, without raising his heavy eyes. "If they'd only giveone the chance. Damn them all!--old and young----I say. If it weren'tfor them, a man could lead a quiet life. "

"It'll all come out in the wash, " consoled the American. 

Maurice heard everything that passed, distinctly; but the words seemedto be bandied at an immeasurable distance from him. He remained quiteundisturbed, and would have felt like a god looking on at the doings ofan infinitesimal world, had it not been for a wheel which revolved inhis head, and hindered him from thinking connectedly. So far, drinkinghad brought him no pleasure; and he had sense enough to find theproximity of Ford disagreeable; for the latter spilt half the liquor hetried to swallow over himself, and half over his neighbour. 

A fresh imprecation of Schilsky's called forth more laughter. On itssubsidence, Krafft awoke to his surroundings again. "What has the oldwoman given you?" he asked, with his strange precision of speech andhis drunken eyes. 

Schilsky struck the table with his fist. "Look at him!--shamming drunk, the bitch!" he cried. 

"Never mind him; he don't count. How much did she give you?"

"Oh, gee, go on!"

But Schilsky, turned sullen again, refused to answer. 

"Out with it then, Krafft!--you know, you scoundrel, you!"

Krafft put his hand to the side of his mouth. "She gave him threethousand marks. "

On all sides the exclamations flew. 

"Oh, gee-henna!"

"Golly for her!"

"DREI TAUSEND MARK!--ALLE EHRE!"

Again Krafft leaned forward with a maudlin laugh. 

"JAWOHL--but on what condition?"

"Heinz, you ferret out things like a pig's snout, " said Furst with anexaggerated, tipsy disgust. 

"What, the old louse made conditions, did she?"

"Is she jealous?"

There was another roar at this. Schilsky looked as black as thunder. 

Again Furst strove to intercede. "Jealous?--in seven devils' name, whyjealous? The old scarecrow! She hasn't an ounce of flesh to her bones. "

Schilsky laughed. "Much you know about it, you fool! Flesh or no flesh, she's as troublesome as the plumpest. I wouldn't go through the lastmonth again for all you could offer me. Month?--no, nor the last sixmonths either! It's been a hell of a life. Three of 'em, whole damnedthree, at my heels, and each ready to tear the others' eyes out. "

"Three! Hullo!"

"Three? Bah!--what's three?" sneered the painted youth. 

Schilsky turned on him. "What's three? Go and try it, if you want toknow, you pap-sodden suckling! Three, I said, and they've ended bymaking the place too hot to hold me. But I'm done now. No more forme!--if my name's what it is. "

Having once broken through his reserve, he talked on, with heatedfluency; and the longer he spoke, the more he was carried away by hisgrievances. For, all he had asked for, he assured his hearers, had beenpeace and quiet--the peace necessary to important work. "Jesus andMary! Are a fellow's chief obligations not his obligations to himself?"At the same time, it was not his intention to put any of the blame onLulu's shoulders: she couldn't help herself. "Lulu is Lulu. I'm damnedfond of Lulu, boys, and I've always done my best by her--is thereanyone here who wants to say I haven't?"

There was none; a chorus of sympathetic ayes went up from the partythat was drinking at his expense. 

Mollified, he proceeded, asserting vehemently that he would have gonemiles out of his way to avoid causing Lulu pain. "I'm a soft-heartedfool--I admit it!--where a woman is concerned. " But he had yielded toher often enough--too often--as it was; the time had come for him tomake a stand. Let those present remember what he had sacrificed onlythat summer for Lulu's sake. Would anyone else have done as much forhis girl? He made bold to doubt it. For a man like Zeppelin to come tohim, and to declare, with tears in his eyes, that he could teach him nomore--could he afford to treat a matter like that with indifference?Had he really been free to make a choice?

Again he looked round the table with emphasis, and those who had theirmuscles sufficiently under control, hastened to lay their faces inseemly folds. 

Then, however, Schilsky's mood changed; he struck the table so that theglasses danced. "And shall I tell you what my reward has been for notgoing? Do you want to know how Lulu has treated me for staying on here?'You are a quarter of an hour late: where have you been? You've onlywritten two bars since I saw you this morning: what have you beendoing? A letter has come in a strange writing: who is it from? You'veput on another tie: who have you been to see?' HIMMELSAKRAMENT!" Hedrained his glass. "I've had the life of a dog, I tell you--of a dog!There's not been a moment in the day when she hasn't spied on me, andfollowed me, and made me ridiculous. Over every trifle she has got up afresh scene. She's even gone so far as to come to my room and search mypockets, when she knew I wasn't at home. "

"Yes, yes, " sneered Krafft. "Exactly! And so, gentlemen he was now forslinking off without a word to her. "

"Oh, PFUI!" spat the American. 

"Call him a liar!" said a voice. 

"Liar?" repeated Schilsky dramatically. "Why liar? I don't deny it. Iwould have done it gladly if I could--isn't that just what I've beensaying? Lulu would have got over it all the quicker alone. And then, why shouldn't I confess it? You're all my friends here. " He dropped hisvoice. "I'm afraid of Lulu, boys. I was afraid she'd get round me, andthen my chance was gone. She might have shot me, but she wouldn't havelet me go. You never know how a woman of that type'll break out--never!"

"But she didn't!" said Krafft. "You live. "

Schilsky understood him. 

"Some brute, " he cried savagely, "some dirty brute had nothing betterto do than to tell her. "

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the painted boy. 

Furst blew his nose. "It wasn't me. I was mum. 'Pon my honour, I was. "

"My God!" said Schilsky, and fell to remembering it. "What a time I'vebeen through with her this afternoon!" He threatened to be overcome bythe recollection, and supported his head on his hands. "A woman has nogratitude, " he murmured, and drew his handkerchief from his pocket. "Itis a weak, childish sex--with no inkling of higher things. " Here, however, he suddenly drew himself up. "Life is very hard!" he cried, ina loud voice. "The perpetual struggle between duty and inclination fora man of genius . .. !"

He grew franker, and gave gratuitous details of the scene that hadtaken place in his room that afternoon. Most of those present were inecstasies at this divulging of his private life, which went forward tothe accompaniment of snores from Ford, and the voice of Dove, who, withportentous gravity, sang over and over again, the first strophe of THELAST ROSE OF SUMMER. 

"A fury!" said Schilsky. "A . .. A what do you call it?--a . .. Meg . .. AMeg--" He gave it up and went on: "By God, but Lulu knows how! Keepclear of her nails, boys--I'd advise you!" At this point, he pulledback his collar, and exhibited a long, dark scratch on the side of hisneck. "A little remembrance she gave me to take away with me!" While hedisplayed it, he seemed to be rather proud of it; but immediatelyafterwards, his mood veered round again to one of bitter resentment. Toillustrate the injustice she had been guilty of, and his ownlong-suffering, he related, at length, the story of his flirtation withEphie, and the infinite pains he had been at to keep Louise inignorance of what was happening. He grew very tender with himself as hetold it. For, according to him, the whole affair had come about withoutany assistance of his. "What the deuce was I to do? Chucked herselffull at my head, did the little one. No invitation necessary--a ripeplum, boys! Touch the plum--and off it tumbles! As pretty a littlething, too, as ever was made! Had everything arranged by the secondmeeting. Papa to set us up; house in New York; money IN HULLE UNDFULLE!"

At the mention of New York, the lean American looked grave. "Look here, you, don't think you're the whole shoot because you've got a wave inyour hair!" he murmured in English. 

But Schilsky did not hear him; his voice droned on, giving the fullparticulars of this particular case. He grew momentarily opener. 

"One no sooner out of the door than the other was in, " he asserted, andlaughed long to himself. 

For some time past, Maurice had been possessed by the idea that whatwas happening concerned him very nearly, and that he ought to interfereand put his foot down. His hands had grown cold, and he sat vainlytrying to speak: nothing, however, came, but little drunken gulps andhiccups. But the first mention of Ephie's name seemed to put newstrength into him; he made a violent effort, and rose to his feet, holding on to the table with both hands. He could not, however, manageto attract attention; no one took any notice of him; and besides this, he had himself no notion what it was that he really wanted to say. 

"And drowns his sorrows in the convivial glass!" he suddenly shouted inEnglish, at the top of his voice, which he had found. He had a vaguebelief that he was quoting a well-known line of poetry, and, though hedid not in the least understand how it applied to the situation, hecontinued to repeat it, with varying shades of fervour, till some onecalled out: "Oh, stop your blasted rot!"

He laughed hoarsely at this, could not check himself, and was soexhausted when he had finished that it took him some time to rememberwhy he was on his feet. Schilsky was still relating: his face wasdarkly red, his voice husky, and he flapped his arms with meaninglessgestures. A passionate rebellion, a kind of primitive hatred, grippedMaurice, and when Schilsky paused for breath, he could contain himselfno longer. He felt the burning need of contradicting the speaker, eventhough he could not catch the drift of what was said. 

"It's a lie!" he cried fiercely, with such emphasis that every face wasturned to him. "A damned lie!"

"A lie? What the devil do you mean?" responded not one but manyvoices--the whole table seemed to be asking him, with the exception ofDove, who sang on in an ever decreasing tempo. 

"Get out!--Let him alone; he's drunk. He doesn't know what he'ssaying--He's got rats in his head!" he heard voices asserting. Forthwith he began a lengthy defence of himself, broken only by gaps inwhich his brain refused to work. Conscious that no one was listening tohim, he bawled more and more loudly. 

"Oh, quit it, you double-barrelled ass!" said the American. 

Schilsky, persuaded by those next him to let the incident passunnoticed, contented himself with a: "VERFLUCHTE SCHWEINEREI!" spat, after Furst's gurgled account of Maurice's previous insobriety, acrossthe floor behind him, to express his contempt, and proceeded asdominatingly as before with the narration of his love-affairs. 

The blood rushed to Maurice's head at the sound of this voice which hecould neither curb nor understand. Rage mastered him--a vehement desireto be quits. He kicked back his chair, and rocked to and fro. 

"It's a lie--a dirty lie!" he cried. "You make her unhappy--God, howunhappy you make her! You illtreat her. You've never given her a day'shappiness. S . .. Said so . .. Herself. I heard her . .. I swear . .. I----"

His voice turned to a whine; his words came thick and incoherent. 

Schilsky sprang to his feet and aimed the contents of a half-emptiedglass at Maurice's face. "Take that, you blasted spy!--you Englishman!"he spluttered. "I'll teach you to mix your dirty self in my affairs!"

Every one jumped up; there was noise and confusion; simultaneously twowaiters entered the room, as if they had not been unprepared forsomething of this kind. Furst and another man restrained Schilsky bythe arms, reasoning with him with more force than coherence. Maurice, the beer dripping from chin, collar and shirt-front, struggledfuriously with some one who held him back. 

"Let me get at him--let me get at him!" he cried. "I'll teach him totreat a woman as he does. The sneak--the cur--the filthy cad! He's notfit to touch her hand--her beautiful hand--her beau . .. Ti . .. Ful----"Here, overpowered by his feelings, as much as by superior strength, hesank on a chair and wept. 

"I'll break his bones!" raved Schilsky. "What the hell does he mean byit?--the INFAME SCHUFT, the AAS, the dirty ENGLANDER! Thinks he'llsneak after her himself, does he?--What in Jesus' name is it to him howI treat her? I'll take a stick to her if I like--it's none of hisblasted business! Look here, do you see that?" He freed one hand, fumbled in his pocket, and, almost inarticulate with rage and liquor, brandished a key across the table. "Do you see that? That's a key, isn't it, you drunken hog? Well, with that key, I can let myself intoLulu's room at any hour I want to; I can go there now, this veryminute, if I like--do you think she'll turn me out, you infernal spy?Turn me out?--she'd go down on her knees here before you all to get meback to her!"

Unwilling to be involved in the brawl, the more sober of the party hadbegun to seek out their hats and to slink away. A little group roundSchilsky blarneyed and expostulated. Why should the whole sport of theevening be spoilt in this fashion? What did it matter what the damnedcranky Englishman said? Let him be left to his swilling. They wouldclear out, and wind up the night at the BAUER; and at four, when thatshut, they would go on to the BAYRISCHE BAHNHOF, where they could notonly get coffee, but could also see Schilsky off by a train soon afterfive. These persuasions prevailed, and, still swearing, andthreatening, and promising, by all that was holy, to bring Lulu there, by the hair of her head if necessary, to show whether or no he had thepower over her he boasted of, Schilsky finally allowed himself to bedragged off, and those who were left lurched out in his wake. 

With their exit an abrupt silence fell, and Maurice sank into a heavysleep, in which he saw flowery meadows and heard a gently tricklingbrook. .. . 

"Now then, up with you!--get along!" some one was shouting in his ear, and, bit by bit, a pasty-faced waiter entered his field of view. "It'spast time, anyhow, " and yawning loudly, the waiter turned out all thegas-jets but one. "Don't yer hear? Up with you! You'll have to lookafter the other--now, damn me, if there isn't another of you as well!"and, from under the table, he drew out a recumbent body. 

Maurice then saw that he was still in the company of Dove, who satstaring into space--like a dead man. Krafft, propped on a chair, hunghis head far back, and the collarless shirt exposed the whole of hiswhite throat. 

The waiter hustled them about. Maurice was comparatively steady on hislegs; and it was found that Dove could walk. But over Krafft, the manscratched his head and called a comrade. At the mention of a droschke, however, Maurice all but wept anew with ire and emotion: this was hisdearest friend, the friend of his bosom; he was ready at any time tostake his life for him, and now he was not to be allowed even to seehim home. 

A difficulty arose about Maurice's hat: he was convinced that the onethe waiter jammed so rudely on his head did not belong to him; and itseemed as if nothing in the world had ever mattered so much to him asnow getting back his own hat. But he had not sufficient fluency toexplain all he meant; before he had finished, the man lost patience;and suddenly, without any transition, the three of them were in thestreet. The raw night air gave them a shock; they gasped and choked alittle. Then the wall of a house rose appositely and met them. Theyleaned against it, and Maurice threw the hat from him and trampled onit, chuckling at the idea that he was revenging himself on the waiter. 

It was a journey of difficulties; not only was he unclear what localitythey were in, but innumerable lifeless things confronted them andformed obstacles to their progress; they had to charge anadvertisement-column two or three times before they could get round it. Maurice grew excessively angry, especially with Dove. For while Heinzlet himself be lugged this way and that, Dove, grown loud and wilful, had ideas of his own, and, in addition to this, sang the whole timewith drunken gravity:

 Sez the ragman, to the bagman, I'll do yees no harm. 

"Stop it, you oaf!" cried Maurice, goaded to desperation. "You beastly, blathering, drunken idiot!"

Then, for a street-length, he himself lapsed into semi-consciousness, and when he wakened, Dove was gone. He chuckled anew at the thoughtthat somehow or other they had managed to outwit him. 

His intention had been to make for home, but the door before which theyultimately found themselves was Krafft's. Maurice propped his companionagainst the wall, and searched his own pockets for a key. When he hadfound one, he could not find the door, and when this was secured, thekey would not fit. The perspiration stood out on his forehead; he triedagain and again, thought the keyhole was dodging him, and asserted thefact so violently that a window in the first storey was opened and ahead thrust out. 

"What in the name of Heaven are you doing down there?" it cried. "Youdrunken SCHWEIN, can't you see the door's open?"

In the sitting-room, both fell heavily over a chair; after that, withinfinite labour, he got Heinz on the sofa. He did not attempt to make alight; enough came in from a street-lamp for him to see what he wasdoing. 

Lying on his face, Krafft groaned a little, and Maurice suddenlygrasped that he was taken ill. Heinz was ill, Heinz, his best friend, and he was doing nothing to help him! Shedding tears, he poured out aglass of water. He believed he was putting the carafe safely back onthe table, but it dropped with a crash to the floor. He was afraid FrauSchulz would come in, and said in a loud voice: "It's that fellowthere, he's dead drunk, beastly drunk!" Krafft would not drink thewater, and in the attempt to force him, it was spilled over him. Hestirred uneasily, put up his arms and dragged Maurice down, so that thelatter fell on his knees beside the sofa. He made a few ineffectualefforts to free himself; but one arm held him like a vice; and in thisuncomfortable position, he went to sleep. 

Part II

 O viva morte, e dilettoso male!

PETRARCH. 

I. 

The following morning, towards twelve o'clock, a note from Madeleinewas handed to Maurice. In it, she begged him to account to Schwarz forher absence from the rehearsal of a trio, which was to have taken placeat two. 

GO AND EXPLAIN THAT IT IS QUITE IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO COME, she wrote. LOUISE IS VERY ILL; THE DOCTOR IS AFRAID OF BRAIN FEVER. I AM RUSHING, OFF THIS MOMENT TO SEE ABOUT A NURSE--AND SHALL STAY TILL ONE COMES. 

He read the words mechanically, without taking in their meaning. Fromthe paper, his eyes roved round the room; he saw the tumbled, unopenedbed, from which he had just risen, the traces of his boots on thecoverings. He could not remember how he had come there; his lastrecollection was of being turned out of Krafft's room, in what seemedto be still the middle of the night. Since getting home, he must haveslept a dead sleep. 

"Ill? Brain fever?" he repeated to himself, and his mind strove topierce the significance of the words. What had happened? Why should shebe ill? A racking uneasiness seized him and would not let him rest. Hisinclination was to lay his aching head on the pillow again; but thiswas out of the question; and so, though he seldom braved Frau Krause, he now boldly went to her with a request to warm up his coffee. 

When he had drunk it, and bathed his head, he felt considerably better. But he still could not call to mind what had occurred. The previousevening was blurred in its details; he only had a sense of oppressionwhen he thought of it, as of something that had threatened, and stilldid. He was glad to have a definite task before him, and went out atonce, in order to catch Schwarz before he left the Conservatorium; butit was too late; the master's door was locked. It was a bright, coldday with strong sunlight; Maurice's eyes ached, and he shrank from thewind at every corner. Instead of going home, he went to Madeleine'sroom and sat down to wait for her. She had evidently been away sinceearly morning; the piano was dusty and unopened; the blind at the headof it had not been drawn up. It was a pleasant dusk; he put his arms onthe table, his head on his arms, and, in spite of his anxiety, fellinto a sound sleep. 

He was wakened by Madeleine's entrance. It was three o'clock. She camebustling in, took off her hat, laid it on the piano, and at once drewup the blind. She was not surprised to find him there, but exclaimed athis appearance. 

"Good gracious, Maurice, how dreadful you look! Are you ill?"

He hastened to reassure her, and she was a little put out at her wastedsympathy. 

"Well, no wonder, I'm sure, after the doings there were last night. Apretty way to behave! And that you should have mixed yourself up in itas you did!--I wouldn't have believed it of you. How I know? My dearboy, it's the talk of the place. "

Her words called up to him a more lucid remembrance of the past eveningthan he had yet been capable of. In his eagerness to recollecteverything, he changed colour and looked away. Madeleine put hisconfusion down to another cause. 

"Never mind, it's over now, and we won't say any more about it. Sitstill, and I'll make you some tea. That will do your head good--for youhave a splitting headache, haven't you? I shall be glad of some myself, too, after all the running about I've had this morning. I'm quite wornout. "

When she heard that he had had no dinner, she sent for bread andsausage, and was so busy and unsettled that only when she sat down, with her cup before her, did he get a chance to say: "What is it, Madeleine? Is she very ill?"

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders. "Yes, she is ill enough. It's noteasy to say what the matter is, though. The doctor is to see her againthis evening. And I found a nurse. "

"Then she is not going away?" He did not mean to say the words aloud;they escaped him against his will. 

His companion raised her eyebrows, filling her forehead with wrinkles. "Going away?" she echoed. "I should say not. My dear Maurice, what ismore, it turns out she hadn't an idea he was going either. What do yousay to that?" She flushed with sincere indignation. "Not an idea--untilyesterday. My lord had the intention of sneaking off without a word, and of leaving her to find it out for herself. Oh, it's an abominableaffair altogether!--and has been from beginning to end. There's muchabout Louise, as you know, that I don't approve of, and I think she hasbehaved weakly--not to call it by a harder name--all through. But now, she has my entire sympathy. The poor girl is in a pitiable state. "

"Is she . .. Dangerously ill?"

"Well, I don't think she'll die of it, exactly--though it might bebetter for her if she did. NA!. .. Let me fill up your cup. And eatsomething more. Oh, he is . .. No words are bad enough for him; thoughhonestly speaking, I think we might have been prepared for something ofthis kind, all along. It seems he made his arrangements for going onthe quiet. Frau Schaefele advanced him the money; for of course he hasnothing of his own. But what condition do you think the old wretchmade? That he should break with Louise. Furst has told me all about it. I went to him at once this morning. She was always jealous ofLouise--though to him she only talked of the holiness of art and theartist's calling, and the danger of letting domestic ties entangle you, and rubbish of that kind. I believe she was at the bottom of it that hedidn't marry Louise long ago. Well, however that may be, he now lethimself be persuaded easily enough. He was hearing on all sides that hehad been here too long; and candidly, I think he was beginning to feelLouise a drag on him. I know of late they were not getting on welltogether. But to be such a coward and a weakling! To slink off in thisfashion! Of course, when it came to the last, he was simply afraid ofher, and of the scene she would make him. Bravery has as little room inhis soul as honesty or manliness. He would always prefer a back-doorexit. Such things excite a man, don't you know?--and ruffle thenecessary artistic composure. " She laughed scornfully. "However, I'mglad to say, he didn't escape scot-free after all. Everything went welltill yesterday afternoon, when Louise, who was as unsuspecting as achild, heard of it from some one--they say it was Krafft. Withoutthinking twice--you know her . .. Or rather you don't--she went straightto Schilsky and confronted him. I can't tell you what took placebetween them, but I can imagine something of it, for when Louise letsherself go, she knows no bounds, and this was a matter of life anddeath to her. "

Madeleine rose, blew out the flame of the spirit-lamp, and refilled theteapot. 

"Fraulein Grunhut, her landlady, heard her go out yesterday afternoon, but didn't hear her come in, so it must have been late in the evening. Louise hates to be pried on, and the old woman is lazy, so she didn'tgo to her room till about half-past eight this morning, when she tookin the hot water. Then she found Louise stretched on the floor, just asshe had come in last night, her hat lying beside her. She wasconscious, and her eyes were open, but she was stiff and cold, andwouldn't speak or move. Grunhut couldn't do anything with her, and wasmortally afraid. She sent for me; and between us we got her to bed, andI went for a doctor. That was at nine, and I have been on my feet eversince. "

"It's awfully good of you. "

"No, she won't die, " continued Madeleine meditatively, stirring hertea. "She's too robust a nature for that. But I shouldn't wonder if itaffected her mind. As I say, she knows no bounds, and has never learntself-restraint. It has always been all or nothing with her. And this Imust say: however foolish and wrong the whole thing was, she wasdevoted to Schilsky, and sacrificed everything--work, money andfriends--to her infatuation. She lived only for him, and this is amoral judgment on her. Excess of any kind brings its own punishmentwith it. "

She rose and smoothed her hair before the mirror. 

"And now I really must get to work, and make up for the lost morning. Ihaven't touched a note to-day. As for you, Maurice, if you take myadvice, you'll go home and go to bed. A good sleep is what you'reneeding. Come to-morrow, if you like, for further news. I shall go backafter supper, and hear what the doctor says. Good-bye. "

"Good-bye, Madeleine. You're a brick. "

Having returned to his room, he lay face downwards on the sofa. He wassick at heart. Viewed in the light of the story he had heard fromMadeleine, life seemed too unjust to be endured. It propounded riddlesno one could answer; the vast output of energy that composed it, wasmisdirected; on every side was cruelty and suffering. Only theheartless and selfish--those who deserved to suffer--went free. 

He pressed the back of his hand to his tired eyes; and, despite hergood deeds, he felt a sudden antipathy to Madeleine, who, on a day likethis, could take up her ordinary occupation. 

In the morning, on awakening from a heavy sleep, he was seized by afear lest Louise should have died in the night. Through brooding on it, the fear became a certainty, and he went early to Madeleine, making adetour through the BRUDERSTRASSE, where his suspicions were confirmedby the lowered blinds. He had almost two hours to wait; it was eleveno'clock before Madeleine returned. Her face was so grave that his heartseemed to stop beating. But there was no change in the sick girl'scondition; the doctor was perplexed, and spoke of a consultation. Madeleine was returning at two o'clock to relieve the nurse. 

"You are foolishly letting it upset you altogether, " she reprovedMaurice. "And it won't mend matters in the least. Go home and settledown to work, like a sensible fellow. "

He tried to follow Madeleine's advice. But it was of no use; when hehad struggled on for half an hour, he sprang up, realising howmonstrous it was that he should be sitting there, drilling his fingers, getting the right notes of a turn, the specific shade of a crescendo, when, not very far away, Louise perhaps lay dying. Again he felt keenlythe contrariness of life; and all the labour which those around himwere expending on the cult of hand and voice and car, seemed of aludicrous vanity compared with the grim little tragedy that touched himso nearly; and in this mood he remained, throughout the days ofsuspense that now ensued. 

He went regularly every afternoon to Madeleine, and, if she were not athome, waited till she returned, an hour, two hours, as the case mightbe. This was the vital moment of the day--when he read her tidings fromher face. 

At first they were always the same: there was no change. Fever did notset in, but, day and night, Louise lay with wide, strained eyes; sherefused nourishment, and the strongest sleeping-draught had no effect. Then, early one morning, for some trifling cause which, afterwards, noone could recall, she broke into a convulsive fit of weeping, went ontill she was exhausted, and subsequently fell asleep. 

On the day Maurice learnt that she was out of danger, he walked deepinto the woods. The news had lifted such a load from his mind that hefelt almost happy. But before he reached home again, his brain hadbegun to work at matters which, during the period of anxiety, it hadleft untouched. At first, in desperation, he had been selfless enoughto hope that Schilsky would return, on learning what had happened. Now, however, that he had not done so, and Louise had passed safely throughthe ordeal, Maurice was ready to tremble lest anything should occur tosoil the robe of saintly suffering, in which he draped her. 

He began to take up the steady routine of his life again. Furstreceived him with open arms, and no allusion was made to the night inthe BRUHL. With the cessation of his anxiety, a feeling of benevolencetowards other people awakened in him, and when, one afternoon, Schwarzasked the assembled class if no one knew what had become of Krafft, whether he was ill, or anything of the kind, it was Maurice whovolunteered to find out. He remembered now that he had not seen Krafftat the Conservatorium for a week or more. 

Frau Schulz looked astonished to see him, and, holding the door in herhand, made no mien to let him enter. Herr Krafft was away, she saidgruffly, had been gone for about a week, she did not know where or why. He had left suddenly one morning, without her knowledge, and thefollowing day a postcard had come from him, stating that all his thingswere to lie untouched till his return. 

"He was so queer lately that I'd be just as pleased if he stayed awayaltogether, " she said. "That's all I can tell you. Maybe you'd getsomething more out of her. She knows more than she says, anyhow, " andshe pointed with her thumb at the door of the adjoining PENSION. 

Maurice rang there, and a dirty maid-servant showed him Avery's room. At his knock, she opened the door herself, and first looked surprised, then alarmed at seeing him. 

"What's the matter? Has anything happened?" she stammered, like one onthe look-out for bad news. 

"Then what do you want?" she asked in her short, unpleasant way, whenhe had reassured her. 

"I came up to see Heinz. And they tell me he is not here; and FrauSchulz sent me to you. Schwarz was asking for him. Is it true that hehas gone away?"

"Yes, it's true. "

"Where to? Will he be away long?"

"How should I know?" she cried rudely. "Am I his keeper? Find out foryourself, if you must know, " and the door slammed to in his face. 

He mentioned the incident to Madeleine that evening. She lookedstrangely at him, he thought, and abruptly changed the subject. A dayor two later, on the strength of a rumour that reached his ears, hetackled Furst, and the latter, who, up to this time, had been of apraiseworthy reticence, let fall a hint which made Maurice look blankwith amazement. Nevertheless, he could not now avoid seeing certainincidents in his friendship with Krafft, under a different aspect. 

About a fortnight had elapsed since the beginning of Louise's illness;she was still obliged to keep her bed. More than once, of late, Madeleine had returned from her daily visit, decidedly out of temper. 

"Louise rubs me up the wrong way, " she complained to Maurice. "And sheisn't in the least grateful for all I've done for her. I really thinkshe prefers having the nurse about her to me. "

"Sick people often have such fancies, " he consoled her. 

"Louise shows hers a little too plainly. Besides, we have never got onwell for long together. "

But one afternoon, on coming in, she unpinned her hat and threw it onthe piano, with a decisive haste that was characteristic of her inanger. 

"That's the end; I don't go back again. I'm not paid for my services, and am under no obligation to listen to such things as Louise said tome to-day. Enough is enough. She is well on the mend, and must get onnow as best she can. I wash my hands of the whole affair. "

"But you're surely not going to take what a sick person saysseriously?" Maurice exclaimed in dismay. "How can she possibly get onwith only those strangers about her?"

"She's not so ill now. She'll be all right, " answered Madeleine; shehad opened a letter that was on the table, and did not look up as shespoke. "There's a limit to everything--even to my patience with herrudeness. "

And on returning the following day, he found, sure enough, that, trueto her word, Madeleine had not gone back. She maintained an obstinatesilence about what had happened, and requested that he would now letthe matter drop. 

The truth was that Madeleine's conscience was by no means easy. 

She had gone to see Louise on that particular afternoon, with even moreinconvenience to herself than usual. On admitting her, Fraulein Grunhuthad endeavoured to detain her in the passage, mumbling andgesticulating in the mystery-mongering way with which Madeleine had nopatience. It incited her to answer the old woman in a loud, clearvoice; then, brusquely putting her aside, she opened the door of thesick girl's room. 

As she did so, she uttered an exclamation of surprise. Louise, in aflannel dressing-gown, was standing at the high tiled stove behind thedoor. Both her arms were upraised and held to it, and she leant herforehead against the tiles. 

"Good Heavens, what are you doing out of bed?" cried Madeleine; and, asshe looked round the room: "And where is Sister Martha?"

Louise moved her head, so that another spot of forehead came in contactwith the tiles, and looked up at Madeleine from under her heavy lids, without replying. 

Madeleine laid one by one on the table some small purchases she hadmade on the way there. 

"Well, are you not going to speak to me to-day?" she said in a pleasantvoice, as she unbuttoned her jacket. "Or tell me what I ask about theSister?" There was not a shade of umbrage in her tone. 

Louise moved her head again, and looked away from Madeleine to the wallof the room. "I have got up, " she answered, in such a low voice thatMadeleine had to pause in what she was doing, to hear her; "because Icould not bear to lie in bed any longer. And I've sent the Sisteraway--because . .. Oh, because I couldn't endure having her about me. "

"You have sent Sister Martha away?" echoed Madeleine. "On your ownresponsibility? Louise!--how absurd! Well, I suppose I must put on myhat again and fetch her back. How can you get on alone, I should liketo know? Really, I have no time to come oftener than I do. "

"I'm quite well now. I don't need anyone. "

"Come, get back into bed, like a good girl, and I will make you sometea, " said Madeleine, in the gently superior tone that one uses to asick person, to a young child, to anyone with whom it is not fitting todispute. 

Instead, Louise left the stove, and sat down in a low Americanrocking-chair, where she crouched despondently. 

"I wish I had died, " she said in a toneless voice. 

Madeleine smiled with exaggerated cheerfulness, and rattled thetea-cups. "Nonsense! You mustn't talk about dying--now that you arenearly well again. Besides, you know, such things are easily said. Onedoesn't mean them. "

"I wish I had died. Why didn't you let me die?" repeated Louise in thesame apathetic way. 

Madeleine did not reply; she was cogitating whether it would be moreconvenient to go after the nurse at once, and what she ought to do ifshe could not get her to come back. For Louise would certainly havedespatched her in tragedy-fashion. 

Meanwhile the latter had laid her arms along the low arms of the chair, and now sat gazing from one to the other of her hands. In their way, these hands of hers had acquired a kind of fame, which she had oncebeen vain of. They had been photographed; a sculptor had modelled themfor a statue of Antigone--long, slim and strong, with closely knitfingers, and pale, deep-set nails: hands like those of an adoringVirgin; hands which had an eloquent language all their own, but littleor no agility, and which were out of place on the keys of a piano. Louise sat looking at them, and her face was so changed--the hollowsetting of the eyes reminded perpetually of the bones beneath; thelines were hammered black below the eyes; nostrils and lips werepinched and thinned--that Madeleine, secretly observing her, remarkedto herself that Louise looked at least ten years older than before. Heryouth, and, with it, such freshness as she had once had, were gone fromher. 

"Here is your tea. "

The girl drank it slowly, as if swallowing were an effort, whileMadeleine went round the room, touching and ordering, and opening awindow. This done, she looked at her watch. 

"I will go now, " she said, "and see if I can persuade Sister Martha tocome back. If you haven't mortally offended her, that is. "

Louise started up from her chair, and put her cup, only half emptied, on the table. 

"Madeleine!--please--please, don't! I can't have her back again. I amquite well now. There was nothing more she could do for me. I shallsleep a thousand times better at night if she is not here. Oh, don'tbring her back again! Her voice cut like a knife, and her hands were sohard. "

She trembled with excitement, and was on the brink of tears. 

"Hush!--don't excite yourself like that, " said Madeleine, and tried tosoothe her. "There's no need for it. If you are really determined notto have her, then she shall not come and that's the end of it. Not butwhat I think it foolish of you all the same, " she could not refrainfrom adding. "You are still weak. However, if you prefer it, I'll do mybest to run up this evening to see that you have everything for thenight. "

"I don't want you either. "

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders, and her pity became tinged withimpatience. 

"The doctor says you must go away somewhere, for a change, " she said asshe beat up the pillows and smoothed out the crumpled sheets, preparatory to coaxing her patient back to bed. 

Louise shook her head, but did not speak. 

"A few weeks' change of air is what you need to set you up again. "

"I cannot go away. "

"Nonsense! Of course you can. You don't want to be ill all the winter?"

"I don't want to be well. "

Madeleine sniffed audibly. "There's no reasoning with you. When youhear on all sides that it's for your own good----"

"Oh, stop tormenting me!" cried Louise, raising a drawn face withdisordered hair. "I won't go away! Nothing will make me. I shall stayhere--though I never get well again. "

"But why? Give me one sensible reason for not going. --You can't!"

"Yes . .. If . .. If Eugen should come back. "

The words could only just be caught. Madeleine stood, holding a sheetwith both hands, as though she could not believe her ears. 

"Louise!" she said at last, in a tone which meant many things. 

Louise began to cry, and was shaken by hard, dry sobs. Madeleine didnot look at her again, but went severely on with her bedmaking. Whenshe had finished, she crossed to the washstand, and poured out a glassof water. 

Louise took it, humbled and submissive, and gradually her sobs abated. But now Madeleine, in place of getting ready to leave, as she hadintended, sat down at the centre table, and revolved what she felt itto be her duty to say. When all sound of crying had ceased, she beganto speak, persuasively, in a quiet voice. 

"You have brought the matter up yourself, Louise, " she said, "and, nowthe ice is broken, there are one or two things I should like to say toyou. First then, you have been very ill, far worse than you know--theimmediate danger is over now, so I can speak of it. But who can tellwhat may happen if you persist in remaining on here by yourself, in thestate you are in?"

Louise did not stir; her face was hidden. 

"The reason you give for staying is not a serious one, I hope, "Madeleine proceeded cautiously choosing her words. "After all the . .. The precautions that were taken to ensure the . .. Break, it is not alllikely . .. He would think of returning. And Louise, " she added withwarmth, "even though he did--suppose he did--after the way he hasbehaved, and his disgraceful treatment of you----"

Louise looked up for an instant. "That is not true, " she said. 

"Not true?" echoed Madeleine. "Well, if you are able to admire hisbehaviour--if you don't consider it disgraceful--no, more thanthat--infamous----" She stopped, not being able to find a strongerepithet. 

"It is not true, " said Louise in the same expressionless voice. But nowshe lifted her head, and pressed the palms of her hands together. 

Madeleine pushed back her chair, as if she were about to rise. "Then Ihave nothing more to say, " she said; and went on: "If you are ready todefend a man who has acted towards you as he has--in a way that makes arespectable person's blood boil--there is indeed nothing more to besaid. " She reddened with indignation. "As if it were not bad enough forhim to go, after all you have done for him, but that he must do it insuch a mean, underhand way--it's enough to make one sick. The onlything to compare with it is his conduct on the night before he left. Doyou know, pray, that on the last evening, at a KNEIPE in the GOLDENEHIRSCH, he boasted of what you had done for him--boasted abouteverything that had happened between you--to a rowdy, tipsy crew? Morethan that, he gave shameless details, about you going to his room thatafternoon----"

"It's not true, it's not true, " repeated Louise, as if she had gotthese few words by heart. She rose from her chair, and leaned on it, half turning her back to Madeleine, and holding her handkerchief to herlips. 

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders. "Do you think I should say it, if itweren't?" she asked. "I don't invent scandal. And you are bound to hearit when you go out again. He did this, and worse than I choose to tellyou, and if you felt as you ought to about it, you would never give himanother thought. He's not worth it. He's not worth any respectableperson's----"

"Respectable!" burst in Louise, and raised two blazing eyes to hercompanion's face. "That's the second time. Why do you come here, Madeleine, and talk like that to me? He did what he was obligedto--that's all: for I should never have let him go. Can't you see howpreposterous it is to think that by talking of respectability, andunworthiness, you can make me leave off caring for him?--when formonths I have lived for nothing else? Do you think one can change one'sfeelings so easily? Don't you understand that to love a person once isto love him always and altogether?--his faults as well--everything hedoes, good or bad, no matter what other people think of it? Oh, youhave never really cared for anyone yourself, or you would know it. "

"It's not preposterous at all, " retorted Madeleine. "Yes--if he haddeserved all the affection you wasted on him, or if unhappycircumstances had separated you. But that's not the case. He hasbehaved scandalously, without the least attempt at shielding you. Hehas made you the talk of the place. And you may consider me narrow andprejudiced, but this I must say--I am boundlessly astonished at you. When he has shown you as plainly as he can that he's tired of you, thatyou should still be ready to defend him, and have so little properpride that you even say you would take him back!----"

Louise turned on her. "You would never do that, Madeleine, wouldyou?--never so far forget yourself as to crawl to a man's feet andask--ask?--no, implore forgiveness, for faults you were not consciousof having committed. You would never beg him to go on loving you, afterhe had ceased to care, or think nothing on earth worth having if hewould not--or could not. As I would; as I have done. " But chancing tolook at Madeleine, she grew quieter. "You would never do that, wouldyou?" she repeated. "And do you know why?" Her words came quicklyagain; her voice shook with excitement. "Because you will never carefor anyone more than yourself--it isn't in you to do it. You will gothrough life, tight on to the end, without knowing what it is to carefor some one--oh, but I mean absolutely, unthinkingly----"

She broke down, and hid her face again. Madeleine had carried the cupsand saucers to a side-table, and now put on her hat. 

"And I hope I never shall, " she said, forcing herself to speak calmly. "If I thought it likely, I should never look at a man again. "

But Louise had not finished. Coming round to the front of therocking-chair, and leaning on the table, she gazed at Madeleine withwild eyes, while her pale lips poured forth a kind of revenge for thesuffering, real and imaginary, that she had undergone at the hands ofthis cooler nature. 

"And I'll tell you why. You are doubly safe; for you will never be ableto make a man care so much that--that you are forced to love him likethis in return. It isn't in you to do it. I don't mean because you'replain. There are plenty of plainer women than you, who can make menfollow them. No, it's your nature--your cold, narrow, egotisticnature--which only lets you care for things outside yourself in a cold, narrow way. You will never know what it is to be taken out of yourself, taken and shaken, till everything you are familiar with falls away. "

She laughed; but tears were near at hand. Madeleine had turned her backon her, and stood buttoning her jacket, with a red, exasperated face. 

"I shall not answer you, " she said. "You have worked yourself into sucha state that you don't know what you're saying. All the same, I thinkyou might try to curb your tongue. I have done nothing to you--but bekind to you. "

"Kind to me? Do you call it kind to come here and try to set me againstthe man I love best in the world? And who loves me best, too. Yes; hedoes. He would never have gone, if he hadn't been forced to--if Ihadn't been a hindrance to him--a drag on him. "

"It makes me ashamed of my sex to hear you say such things. That awoman can so far lose her pride as to----"

"Oh, other women do it in other ways. Do you think I haven't seen howyou have been trying to make some one here like you?--doing yourutmost, without any thoughts of pride or self-respect. --And how youhave failed? Yes, failed. And if you don't believe me, ask himyourself--ask him who it is that could bring him to her, just byraising her finger. It's to me he would come, not to you--to me whohave never given him look or thought. "

Madeleine paled, then went scarlet. "That's a direct untruth. You!--andnot to egg a man on, if you see he admires you! You know every time apasser-by looks at you in the street. You feed on such looks--yes, andreturn them, too. I have seen you, my lady, looking and being lookedat, by a stranger, in a way no decent woman allows. --For the rest, I'lltrouble you to mind your own business. Whatever I do or don't do, trustme, I shall at least take care not to make myself the laughing-stock ofthe place. Yes, you have only succeeded in making yourself ridiculous. For while you were cringing before him, and aspiring to die for hissake, he was making love behind your back to another girl. For the lastsix months. Every one knew it, it seems, but you. "

She had spoken with unconcealed anger, and now turned to leave theroom. But Louise was at the door before her, and spread herself acrossit. 

"That's a lie, Madeleine! Of your own making. You shall prove it to mebefore you go out of this room. How dare you say such a thing!--howdare you!"

Madeleine looked at her with cold aversion, and drew back to avoidtouching her. 

"Prove it?" she echoed. "Are his own words not proof enough! He toldthe whole story that night, just as he had first told all about you. Ithad been going on for months. Sometimes, you were hardly out of hisroom, before the other was in. And if you don't believe me, ask theperson you're so proud of having attracted, without raising yourfinger. "

Louise moved away from the door, and went back to the table, on whichshe leaned heavily. All the blood had left her face and the dark ringsbelow her eyes stood out with alarming distinctness. Madeleine felt asudden compunction at what she had done. 

"It's entirely your own fault that I told you anything whatever aboutit, " she said, heartily annoyed with herself. "You had no right toprovoke me by saying what you did. I declare, Louise, to be with youmakes one just like you. If it's any consolation to you to know it, hewas drunk at the time, and there's a possibility it may not be true. "

"Go away--go out of my room!" cried Louise. And Madeleine went, withoutdelay, having almost a physical sensation about her throat of theslender hands stretched so threateningly towards her. --And thisunpleasant feeling remained with her until she turned the corner of thestreet. 

II. 

On the afternoon when Maurice found that Madeleine had kept her word hewent home and paced his room in perplexity. He pictured Louise lyinghelpless, too weak to raise her hand. His brain went stupidly over thefew people to whom he might turn for aid. Avery Hill?--Johanna Cayhill?But Avery was occupied with her own troubles; and Johanna'srelationship to Ephie put her out of the question. He was thinkingfantastic thoughts of somehow offering his own services, or of eventhrowing himself on the goodness of a person like Miss Jensen, whosemotherly form must surely imply a corresponding motherliness of heart, when Frau. Krause entered the room, bearing a letter which she said hadbeen left for him an hour or two previously. She carried a lamp in herhand, and eyed her restless lodger with suspicion. 

"Why, in the name of goodness, didn't you bring this in when it came?"he demanded. He held the unopened letter at arm's length, as if he wereafraid of it. 

Frau Krause bridled instantly. Did he think she had nothing else to dothan to carry things in and out of his room? The letter had lain on thechest of drawers in the passage; he could have seen it for himself, hadhe troubled to look. 

Maurice waved her away. He was staring at the envelope; he believed heknew the handwriting. His heart beat with precise hammerings. He laidthe letter on the table, and took a few turns in the room before hepicked it up again. On examining it anew, it seemed to him that thelightly gummed envelope had been tampered with, and he made athreatening movement towards the door, then checked himself, remembering that if the letter were what he believed, it would bewritten in English. He tore it open, destroying the envelope in hisnervousness. There was no heading, and it was only a few lines long. 

I MUST SPEAK TO YOU. WILL YOU COME TO ME THIS EVENING? LOUISE DUFRAYER. 

His heart was thumping now. He was to go to her, she said so herself;to go this moment, for it was evening already. As it was, she wasperhaps waiting for him, wondering why he did not come. He had notshaved that day, and his first impulse was to call for hot water. Inthe same breath he gave up the idea: it was out of the question by thepoor light of the lamp, and the extraordinary position of thelooking-glass. He made, however, a hasty toilet in his best, only tocolour at himself when finished. Was there ever such a fool as he? Hisact contained the germ of an insult: and he rapidly changed back to hisworkaday wear. 

All this took time, and it was eight o'clock before he rang thedoor-bell in the BRUDERSTRASSE. Now, the landlady did not mistake himfor a possible thief. But she looked at him in an unfriendly way, andsaid grumblingly that Fraulein had been expecting him for an hour ormore. Then she pointed to the door of the room, and left him to makehis way in alone. 

He knocked gently, but no one answered. The old woman, who stoodwatching his movements, signed to him to enter, and he turned thehandle. The large room was dark, except for the light shed by a smalllamp, which stood on the table before the sofa. From somewhere out ofthe dusk that lay beyond, a white figure rose and came towards him. 

Louise was in a crumpled dressing-gown, and her hair was loosened fromits coil on her neck. Maurice saw so much, before she was close besidehim, her eyes searching his face. 

"Oh, you have come, " she said with a sigh, as if a load had been liftedfrom her mind. "I thought you were not coming. "

"I only got your note a few minutes ago. I . .. I came at once, " hesaid, and stammered, as he saw how greatly illness had changed her. 

"I knew you would. "

She did not give him her hand, but stood gazing at him; and her lookwas so helpless and forlorn that he grew uncomfortable. 

"You have been ill?" he said, to render the pause that followed lessembarrassing. 

"Yes; but I'm better now. " She supported herself on the table; herindecision seemed to increase, and several seconds passed before shesaid: "Won't you sit down?"

He took one of the stuffed arm-chairs she indicated; and she went backto the sofa. Again there was silence. With her elbows on her knees, herchin on her two hands, Louise stared hard at the pattern of thetablecloth. Maurice sat stiff and erect, waiting for her to tell himwhy she had summoned him. 

"You will think it strange that I should send for you like this . .. When I know you so slightly, " she began at length. "But . .. Since I sawyou last . .. I have been in trouble, "--her voice broke, but her eyesremained fixed on the cloth. "And I am quite alone. I have no one tohelp me. Then I thought of you; you were kind to me once; you offeredto help me. " She paused, and wound her handkerchief to a ball. 

"Anything!--anything that lies in my power, " said Maurice fervently. Hefidgeted his hands round the brim of his hat, which he was holding tohim. 

"Won't you tell me what it is?" he asked, after another long break. "Ishould be so glad, and grateful--yes, indeed, grateful--if there wereanything I could do for you. "

She met his eyes, and tried to say something, but no sound came overher lips. She was trying to fasten her thoughts on what she had to say, but, in spite of her efforts, they eluded her. For more thantwenty-four hours she had brooded over one idea; the strain had beentoo great; and, now that the moment had come, her strength desertedher. She would have liked to lay her head on her arms and sleep; italmost seemed to her now, in the indifference of sheer fatigue, that itdid not matter whether she spoke or not. But as she looked at the youngman, she became conscious of an expression in his face, which made herown grow hard. 

"I won't be pitied. "

Maurice turned very red. His heart had gone out to her in her distress;and his feelings were painted on his face. His discomfiture at herdiscovery was so palpable that it gave her courage to go on. 

"You were one of those, were you not, who were present at a certaincafe in the BRUHL, one evening, three weeks ago. " It was more of astatement than a question. Her eyes held him fast. His retreatingcolour rose again; he had a presentiment of what was coming. 

"Then you must have heard----" she began quickly, but left the sentenceunended. 

His suspicions took shape, and he made a large, vague gesture ofdissent. "You heard all that was said, " she continued, without payingany heed to him. "You heard how . .. How some one--no, how the man Iloved and trusted . .. How he boasted about my caring for him; and notonly that, but how, before that drunken crowd, he told how I had beento him . .. To his room . .. That afternoon----" She could not finish, and pressed her knotted handkerchief to her lips. 

Maurice looked round him for assistance. "You are mistaken, " hedeclared. "I heard nothing of the kind. Remember, I, too, was amongthose . .. In the state you mention, " he added as an afterthought, lowering his voice. 

"That is not it. " Leaning forward, she opened her eyes so wide that hesaw a rim of white round the brown of the pupils. "You must also haveheard . .. How, all this time, behind my back, there was some one else. .. Someone he cared for . .. When I thought it was only me. "

The young man coloured, with her and for her. "It is not true; you havebeen misled, " he said with vehemence. And, again, a flash of intuitionsuggested an afterthought to him. "Can you really believe it? Don't youthink better of him than that?"

For the first time since she had known him, Louise gave him a personallook, a look that belonged to him alone, and held a warm ray ofgratitude. Then, however, she went on unsparingly: "I want you to tellme who it was. "

He laid his hat on a chair, and used his hands. "But if I assure you itis not true? If I give you my word that you have been misinformed?"

"Who was it? What is her name?"

He rose, and went away from the table. 

"I knew him better than you, " she said slowly, as he did not speak:"you or anyone else--a hundred thousand times better--and I KNOW it istrue. "

Still he did not answer. "Then you won't tell me?"

"Tell you? How can I? There's nothing to tell. "

"I was wrong then. You have no pity for me?"

"Pity!--I no pity?" he cried, forgetting how, a minute ago, she hadresented his feeling it. "But all the same I can't tell you what youask me. You don't realise what it means: putting a slur on a younggirl's name . .. Which has never been touched. "

Directly he had said this, he was aware of his foolishness; but she letthe admission contained in the words pass unnoticed. 

"Then she is not with him?" she cried, springing to her feet, and therewas a jubilation in her voice, which she did not attempt to suppress. Maurice made no answer, but in his face was such a mixture of surpriseand disconcertion that it was answer enough. 

She remained standing, with her head bowed; and Maurice, who, in hisnervousness, had gripped the back of his chair, held it so tightly thatit left a furrow in his hand. He was looking into the lamp, and did notat first see that Louise had raised her head again and wascontemplating him. When she had succeeded in making him look at her, she sat down on the sofa and drew the folds of her dressing-gown to her. 

"Come and sit here. I want to speak to you. "

But Maurice only shot a quick glance at her, and did not move. 

She leaned forward, in her old position. She had pushed the heavy wingsof hair up from her forehead, and this, together with her extremepallor, gave her face a look of febrile intensity. 

"Maurice Guest, " she said slowly, "do you remember a night last summer, when, by chance, you happened to walk with me, coming home from thetheatre?--Or have you perhaps forgotten?"

He shook his head. 

"Then do you remember, too, what you said to me? How, since the firsttime you had seen me--you even knew where that was, I believe--you hadthought about me . .. Thought too much, or words to that effect. Do youremember?"

"Do you think when a man says a thing like that he forgets it?" askedMaurice in a gruff voice. He turned, as he spoke, and looked down onher with a kind of pitying wisdom. "If you knew how often I havereproached myself for it!" he added. 

"There was no need for that, " she answered, and even smiled a little. "We women never resent having such things said to us--never--though itis supposed we do, and though we must pretend to. But I remember, too, I was in a bad mood that night, and was angry with you, after all. Everything seemed to have gone against me. In the theatre--in . .. Oh, no, no!" she cried, as she remembrance of that past night, with itsalternations of pain and pleasure, broke over her. "My God!"

Maurice hardly breathed, for fear he should remind her of his presence. When the paroxysm had passed, she crossed to the window; the blinds hadnot been drawn, and leaning her forehead on the glass, she looked outinto the darkness. In spite of his trouble of mind, the young man couldnot but comment on the ironic fashion in which fate was treating him:not once, in all the hours he had spent on the pavement below, hadLouise come, like this, to the window; now that she did so, he was inthe room beside her, wishing himself away. 

Then, with a swift movement, she came back to him, and stood at hisside. 

"Then it was not true?--what you said that night. "

"True?" echoed Maurice. He instinctively moved a step away from her, and threw a quick glance at the pale face so near his own. "If I wereto tell you how much more than that is true, you wouldn't have anythingmore to do with me. "

For the second time, she seemed to see him and consider him. But hekept his head turned stubbornly away. 

"You feel like that, " she began in slow surprise, to continuehurriedly: "You care for me like that, and yet, when I ask the firstand only thing I shall ever ask of you, you won't do it? It is a lessonto me, I suppose, not to come to you for help again. --Oh, I can'tunderstand you men! You are all--all alike. "

"I would do anything in the world for you. Anything but this. "

She repeated his last words after him. "But I want nothing else. "

"This I can't tell you. "

"Then you don't really care. You only think you do. If you can't dothis one small thing for me! Oh, there is no one else I can turn to, orI would. Oh, please tell me!--you who make-believe to care for me. Youwon't? When it comes to the point, a man will do nothing--nothing atall. "

"I would cut off my hands for you. But you are asking me to dosomething I think wrong. "

"Wrong! What is wrong?--and what is right? They are only words. Is itright that I should be left like this?--thrown away like a brokenplate? Oh, I shall not rest till I know who it was that took him fromme. And you are the only person who can help me. Are you not a littlesorry for me? Is there nothing I can do to make you sorry?"

"You won't realise what you are asking me to do. "

He spoke in a constrained voice, for he felt the impossibility ofstanding out much longer against her. Louise caught the note ofyielding, and taking his hand in hers, laid it against her forehead. 

"Feel that! Feel how it throbs and burns! And so it has gone on forhours now, for days. I can't think or feel--with that fever in me. Imust know who it was, or I shall go mad. Don't torture me then--you, too! You are good. Be kind to me now. Be my friend, Maurice Guest. "

Maurice was vanquished; in a low voice he told her what she wished tohear. She read the syllables from his lips, repeated the name slowlyafter him, then shook her head; she did not know it. Letting his handdrop, she went back to the sofa. 

"Tell me everything you know about her, " she said imperiously. "What isshe like?--what is she like? What is the colour of her hair?"

Maurice was a poor hand at description. Questioned thus, he was noteven sure whether to call Ephie pretty or not; he knew that she wassmall, and very young, but of her hair he could say little, except thatit was not black. 

Louise caught at the detail. "Not black, no, not black!" she cried. "Hehad black enough here, " and she ran her hands through her own unrulyhair. 

There was nothing she did not want to know, did not try to force fromhis lips; and a relentless impatience seized her at his powerlessness. 

"I must see her for myself, " she said at length, when he had stammeredinto silence. "You must bring her to me. "

"No, that you really can't ask me to do. "

She came over to him again, and took his hands. "You will bring herhere to-morrow--to-morrow afternoon. Do you think I shall hurt her? Isshe any better than I am? Oh, don't be afraid! We are not so easilysoiled. "

Maurice demurred no more. 

"For until I see her, I shall not know--I shall not know, " she said toherself, when he had pledged his word. 

The tense expression of her face relaxed; her mouth drooped; she layback in the sofa-corner and shut her eyes. For what seemed a long time, there was no sound in the room. Maurice thought she had fallen asleep. But at his first light movement she opened her eyes. 

"Now go, " she said. "Please, go!" And he obeyed. 

The night was cold, but, as he stood irresolute in the street, he wipedthe perspiration from his forehead. He felt very perplexed. Only onething was clear to him: he had promised to bring Ephie to see her thenext day, and, however wrong it might be, the promise was given andmust be kept. But what he now asked himself was: did not the bringingof the child, under these circumstances, imply a tacit acknowledgmentthat she was seriously involved?--a fact which, all along, he hadstriven against admitting. For, after his one encounter with Ephie andSchilsky, in the woods that summer, and the first firing of hissuspicions, he had seen nothing else to render him uneasy; a few weekslater, Ephie had gone to Switzerland, and, on her return in September, or almost directly afterwards--three or four days at most--Schilsky hadtaken his departure. There had been, of course, his drunken boasts totake into account, but firstly, Maurice had only retained a hazy ideaof their nature, and, in the next place, the events which had followedthat evening had been of so much greater importance to him that he hadhad no thoughts to spare for Ephie--more especially as he then knewthat Schilsky was out of the way. But now the whole affair rose vividlybefore his mind again, and in his heart he knew that he had alwaysbelieved--just as Louise believed--in Ephie's guilt. No: guilt was toostrong a word. Yet however harmless the flirtation might have been initself, it had been carried on in secret, in an underhand way: therehad been nothing straightforward or above-board about it; and thisalone was enough to compromise a young girl. 

The Cayhills had been in Leipzig again for three weeks, but so occupiedhad Maurice been during this time, that he had only paid them one hastycall. Now he felt that he must see Ephie at once, not only to secureher word that she would come out with him, the following day, but alsoto read from her frank eyes and childish lips the assurance of herinnocence, or, at least, the impossibility of her guilt. 

But as he walked to the LESSINGSTRASSE, he remembered, without beingable to help it, all the trifles which, at one time or another, haddisturbed his relations with Ephie. He recalled each of the thin, superficial untruths, by means of which she had defended herself, theday he had met her with Schilsky: it seemed incredible to him now thathe had not seen through them instantly. He called up her pretty, insincere behaviour with the circle of young men that gathered roundher; the language of signs by which she had conversed with Schilsky inthe theatre. He remembered the astounding ease with which he had madeher acquaintance in the first case, or rather, with which she had madehis. Even the innocent kiss she had once openly incited him to, and onthe score of which she had been so exaggeratedly angry--this, too, wassummoned to bear witness against her. Each of these incidents nowseemed to point to a fatal frivolity, to a levity of character which, put to a real test, would offer no resistance. 

Supper was over in the PENSION, but only Mrs. Cayhill sat in heraccustomed corner. Ephie was with the rest of the boarders in thegeneral sitting-room, where Johanna conducted Maurice. Boehmer waspaying an evening visit, as well as a very young American, who laughed:"Heh, heh!" at everything that was said, thereby displaying twoprominently gold teeth. Mrs. Tully sat on a small sofa, with her armround Ephie's waist: they were the centre of the group, and it did notappear likely that Maurice would get an opportunity of speaking toEphie in private. She was in high spirits, and had only a saucygreeting for him. He sat down beside Johanna, and waited, ill at ease. Soon his patience was exhausted; rising, he went over to the sofa, andasked Ephie if he might come to take her for a walk, the nextafternoon. But she would not give him an express promise; she pouted:after all these weeks, it suddenly occurred to him to come and seethem, and then, the first thing he did, was to ask a favour of her. Didhe really expect her to grant it?

"Don't, Ephie, love, don't!" cried Mrs. Tully in her sprightly way. "Men are really shocking creatures, and it is our duty, love, to keepthem in their place. If we don't, they grow presumptuous, " and she shotan arch look at Boehmer, who returned it, fingered his beard, andmurmured: "Cruel--cruel!"

"And even if I wanted to go when the time came, how do you expect me toknow so long beforehand? Ever so many things may happen beforeto-morrow, " said Ephie brilliantly; at which Mrs. Tully laughed verymuch indeed, and still more at Boehmer's remark that it was an ancientprivilege of the ladies, never to be obliged to know their own minds. 

"It's a libel--take that, you naughty boy!" she cried, and slapped himplayfully on the hand. "Ephie, love, how shall we punish him?"

"He is not to come again for a week, " answered Ephie slily; and atBoehmer's protestations of penitence and despair, both she and Mrs. Tully laughed till the tears stood in their eyes, Ephie all the moreextravagantly because Maurice stood unsmiling before her. 

"I ask this as a direct favour, Ephie. There's something I want to sayto you--something important, " he added in a low voice, so that only shecould hear it. 

Ephie changed colour at once, and tried to read his face. 

"Then I may come at five? You will be ready? Good night. "

Johanna followed him into the passage, and stood by while he put on hiscoat. They had used up all their small talk in the sitting-room, andhad nothing more to say to each other. When however they shook hands, she observed impulsively: "Sometimes I wish we were safe back homeagain. " But Maurice only said: "Indeed?" and displayed no curiosity toknow the reason why. 

After he had gone, Ephie was livelier than before, as long as she wasbeing teased about her pale, importunate admirer. Then, suddenly, shepleaded a headache, and went to her own room. 

Johanna, listening outside the door, concluded from the stillness thather sister was asleep. But Ephie heard Johanna come and go. She couldnot sleep, nor could she get Maurice's words out of her mind. He hadsomething important to say to her. What could it be? There was only oneimportant subject in the world for her now; and she longed for the hourof his visit--longed, hoped, and was more than half afraid. 

III. 

Since her return to Leipzig, Ephie's spirits had gone up and down likea barometer in spring. In this short time, she passed through morechanges of mood than in all her previous life. She learned whatuncertainty meant, and suspense, and helplessness; she caught at anystraw of hope, and, for a day on end, would be almost comforted; sheinvented numberless excuses for Schilsky, and rejected them, one andall. For she was quite in the dark about his movements; she had notseen him since her return, and could hear nothing of him. Only thefirst of the letters she had written to him from Switzerland hadelicited a reply, and he had left all the notes she had sent him, sincegetting back, unanswered. 

Her fellow-boarder, Mrs. Tully, was her only confidant; and that, onlyin so far as this lady, knowing that what she called "a little romance"was going on, had undertaken to enclose any letters that might arriveduring Ephie's absence. Johanna had no suspicions, or rather she hadhitherto had none. In the course of the past week, however, it hadbecome plain even to her blind, sisterly eyes that something was thematter with Ephie. She could still be lively when she liked, almostunnaturally lively, and especially in the company of Mrs. Tully and hercircle; but with these high spirits alternated fits of depression, andonce Johanna had come upon her in tears. Driven into a corner, Ephiedeclared that Herr Becker had scolded her at her lesson; but Johannawas not satisfied with this explanation; for formerly, the master'sblame or praise had left no impression on her little sister's mind. Even worse than this, Ephie could now, on slight provocation, bethoroughly peevish--a thing so new in her that it worried Johanna mostof all. The long walks of the summer had been given up; but Ephie hadadopted a way of going in and out of the house, just as it pleased her, without a word to her sister. Johanna scrutinised her keenly, and theresult was so disturbing that she resolved to broach the subject to hermother. 

On the morning after Maurice's visit, therefore, she appeared in thesitting-room, with a heap of undarned stockings in one hand, herwork-basket in the other, and with a very determined expression on herface. But the moment was not a happy one: Mrs. Cayhill was deep in WHYPAUL FERROL KILLED HIS WIFE; and would be lost to her surroundingsuntil the end of the book was reached. Had Johanna been of an observantturn of mind, she would have waited a little; for, finding theintermediate portion of the novel dry reading, Mrs. Cayhill was gettingover the pages at the rate of three or four a minute, and would soonhave been finished. 

But Johanna sat down at the table and opened fire. 

"I wish to speak to you, mother, " she said firmly. 

Mrs. Cayhill did not even blink. Johanna drew several threads across ahole she was darning, before she repeated, in the same decided tone:"Do you hear me, mother? There is something I wish to speak to youabout. "

"Hm, " said Mrs. Cayhill, without raising her eyes from the page. Sheheard Johanna, and was even vaguely distracted by her from the web ofcircumstance that was enveloping her hero; but she believed, fromexperience, that if she took no notice of her, Johanna would notpersist. What the latter had to say would only be a reminder that itwas mail-day, and no letters were ready; or that if she did not put onher bonnet and go out for a walk, she would be obliged to take anotherof her nerve-powders that night: and Mrs. Cayhill hated moralpersuasion with all her heart. 

"Put down your book, mother, please, and listen to me, " continuedJohanna, without any outward sign of impatience, and as she spoke, shedrew another stocking over her hand. 

"What IS the matter, Joan? I wish you would let me be, " answered Mrs. Cayhill querulously, still without looking up. 

"It's about Ephie, mother. But you can't hear me if you go on reading. "

"I can hear well enough, " said Mrs. Cayhill, and turning a page, shelost herself, to all appearance, in the next one. Johanna did notreply, and for some minutes there was silence, broken only by theturning of the leaves. Then, compelled by something that was strongerthan herself, Mrs. Cayhill laid her book on her knee, gave a loud sigh, and glanced at Johanna's grave face. 

"You are a nuisance, Joan. Well, make haste now--what is it?"

"It's Ephie, mother. I am not easy about her lately. I don't think shecan be well. She is so unlike herself. "

"Really, Joan, " said Mrs. Cayhill, laughing with an exaggeratedcarelessness. "I think I should be the first to notice if she weresick. But you like to make yourself important, that's what it is, andto have a finger in every pie. There is nothing whatever the matterwith the child. "

"She's not well, I'm sure, " persisted Johanna, without haste. "I havenoticed it for some time now. I think the air here is not agreeing withher. I constantly hear it said that this is an enervating place. Ibelieve it would be better for her if we went somewhere else for thewinter--even if we returned home. Nothing binds us, and health is thefirst and chief----"

"Go home?" cried Mrs. Cayhill, and turned her book over on its face. "Really, Joan, you are absurd! Because Ephie finds it hard to settledown again, after such a long vacation--and that's all it is--you wantto rush off to a fresh place, when . .. When we are just so comfortablyfixed here for the winter, and where we have at last gotten us a fewfriends. As for going home, why, every one would suppose we'd gonecrazy. We haven't been away six months yet--and when Mr. Cayhill iscoming over to fetch us back--and . .. And everything. "

She spoke with heat; for she knew from experience that what her elderdaughter resolved on, was likely to be carried through. 

"That is all very well, mother, " continued Johanna unmoved. "But Idon't think your arguments are sound if we find that Ephie is reallysick, and needs a change. "

"Arguments not sound! What big words you love to use, Joan! You letEphie be. She grows prettier every day, and she's a favourite wherevershe goes. "

"That's another thing. Her head is being turned, and she will soon bequite spoilt. She begins to like the fuss and attention so wellthat----"

"You had your chances too, Joan. You needn't be jealous. "

Johanna had heard this remark too often to be sensitive to it. 

"When it comes to serious 'chances, ' as you call them, no one will bemore pleased for Ephie or more interested than I. But this is somethingdifferent. You see that yourself, mother, I am sure. These young menwho come about the house are so foolish, and immature, and they havesuch different ideas of things from ourselves. They think so. .. So"--Johanna hesitated for a word--"so laxly on earnest subjects. Andit is telling on Ephie--Look, for instance, at Mr. Dove! I don't wantto say anything against him, in particular. He is really more seriousthan the rest. But for some time now, he has been making himselfridiculous, "--Johanna had blushed for Dove on the occasion of his lastvisit. "No one could be more in earnest than he is; but Ephie onlymakes fun of him, in a heartless way. She won't see what a grave matterit is to him. "

Mrs. Cayhill laughed, not at all displeased. "Young people will beyoung people. You can't put old heads on young shoulders, Joan, or shutthem up in separate houses. Ephie is an extremely pretty girl, and itwill be the same wherever we go. --As for young Dove, he knows wellenough that nothing can come of it, and if he chooses to continue hisattentions, why, he must take the consequences--that's all. Absurd!--aboy and girl flirtation, and to make so much of it! A mountain of amolehill, as usual. And half the time, you only imagine things, anddon't see what is going on under your very nose. Anyone but you, I'msure, would find more to object to in the way young Guest behaves thanDove. "

"Maurice Guest?" said Johanna, and laid her hands with stocking andneedle on the table. 

"Yes, Maurice Guest, " repeated Mrs. Cayhill, with complacent mockery. "Do you think no one has eyes but yourself?--No, Joan, you're not sharpenough. Just look at the way he went on last night! Every one but youcould see what was the matter with him. Mrs. Tully told me about itafterwards. Why, he never took his eyes off her. "

"Oh, I'm sure you are mistaken, " said Johanna earnestly, and was silentfrom sheer surprise. "He has been here so seldom of late, " she addedafter a pause, thinking aloud. 

"Just for that very reason, " replied Mrs. Cayhill, with the same air ofwisdom. "A nice-minded young man stays away, if he sees that hisfeelings are not returned, or if he has no position to offer. --Andanother thing I'll tell you, Joan, though you do think yourself soclever. You don't need to worry if Ephie is odd and fidgety sometimesjust now. At her age, it's only to be expected. You know very well whatI mean. All girls go through the same thing. You did yourself. "

After this, she took up her book again, having, she knew, successfullysilenced her daughter, who, on matters of this nature, was extremelysensitive. 

Johanna went methodically on with her darning; but the new idea whichher mother had dropped into her mind, took root and grew. Strange thatit had not occurred to her before! Dove's state of mind had been patentfrom the first; but she had had no suspicions of Maurice Guest. Hismanner with Ephie had hitherto been that of a brother: he had neverbehaved like the rest. Yet, when she looked back on his visit of theprevious evening, she could not but be struck by the strangeness of hisdemeanour: his distracted silence, his efforts to speak to Ephie alone, and the expression with which he had watched her. And Ephie?--what ofher? Now that Johanna thought of it, a change had also come overEphie's mode of treating Maurice; the gay insouciance of the early dayshad given place to the pert flippancy which, only the night before, hadso pained her sister. What had brought about this change? Was it pique?Was Ephie chafing, in secret, at his prolonged absences, and was she, girl-like, anxious to conceal it from him?

Johanna gathered up her work to go to her own room and think the matterout in private. In the passage, she ran into the arms of Mrs. Tully, whom she disliked; for, ever since coming to the PENSION, this lady hadcarried on a kind of cult with Ephie, which was distasteful in theextreme to Johanna. 

"Oh, Miss Cayhill!" she now exclaimed. "I was just groping my way--itis indeed groping, is it not?--to your sitting-room. WHERE is yoursister? I want SO much to ask her if she will have tea with me thisafternoon. I am expecting a few friends, and should be so glad if shewould join us. "

"Ephie is practising, Mrs. Tully, " said Johanna in her coolest tone. "And I cannot have her disturbed. "

"She is so very, very diligent, " said Mrs. Tully with enthusiasm. "Ialways remark to myself on hearing her, how very idle a life like mineis in comparison. I am able to do SO little; just a mere trifle hereand there, a little atom of good, one might say. I have notalents. --And you, too, dear Miss Cayhill. So studious, so clever! Ihear of you on every side, " and, letting her eyes rest on Johanna'shead, she wondered why the girl wore her hair so unbecomingly. 

Johanna did not respond. 

"If only you would let your hair grow, it would make such a differenceto your appearance, " said Mrs. Tully suddenly, with disconcertingoutspokenness. 

Johanna drew herself up. 

"Thanks, " she said. "I have always worn my hair like this, and at myage, have no intention of altering it, " and leaving Mrs. Tullyprotesting vehemently at such false modesty, she went past her, intoher own room, and shut the door. 

She sat down by the window to sew. But her hands soon fell to her lap, and with her eyes on the backs of the neighbouring houses, shecontinued her interrupted reflections. First, though, she threw aquick, sarcastic side-glance on her mother and herself. As so oftenbefore, when she had wanted to pin her mother's attention to a subject, the centre of interest had shifted in spite of her efforts, and theyhad ended far from where they had begun: further, she, Johanna, had away, when it came to the point, not of asking advice or of faithfullydiscussing a question, but of emphatically giving her opinion, or ofstating what she considered to be the facts of the case. 

From an odd mixture of experience and self-distrust, Johanna had, however, acquired a certain faith in her mother's opinions--theseblind, instinctive hits and guesses, which often proved right whereJohanna's carefully drawn conclusions failed. Here, once more, hermother's idea had broken in upon her like a flash of light, even thoughshe could not immediately bring herself to accept it. Maurice andEphie! She could not reconcile the one with the other. Yet what if thechild were fretting? What if he did not care? A pang shot through herat the thought that any outsider should have the power to make Ephiesuffer. Oh, she would make him care!--she would talk to him as he hadnever been talked to in his life before. 

The sisters' rooms were connected by a door; and, gradually, in spiteof her preoccupation, Johanna could not but become aware how brokenlyEphie was practising. Coaxing, encouragement, and sometimes evenseverity, were all, it is true, necessary to pilot Ephie through thetwo hours that were her daily task; but as idle as to-day, she hadnever been. What could she be doing? Johanna listened intently, but nota sound came from the room; and impelled by a curiosity to observe hersister in a new light, she rose and opened the door. 

Ephie was standing with her back to it, staring out of the window, andsupporting herself on the table by her violin, which she held by theneck. At Johanna's entrance, she started, grew very red, and hastilyraised the instrument to her shoulder. 

"What are you doing, Ephie? You are wasting a great deal of time, " saidJohanna in the tone of mild reproof that came natural to her, inspeaking to her little sister. "Is anything the matter to-day? If youdon't practice better than this, you won't have the ETUDE ready byFriday, and Herr Becker will make you take it again--for the thirdtime. "

"He can if he likes. I guess I don't care, " said Ephie nonchalantly, and, seizing the opportunity offered for a break, she sat down, andlaid bow and fiddle on the table. 

"Have you remembered everything he pointed out to you at your lastlesson?" asked Johanna, going over to the music-stand, and peering atthe pages with her shortsighted eyes. "Let me see--what was it now?Something about this double-stopping here, and the fingering in thisposition. "

Ephie laughed. "Old Joan, what do you know about it?"

"Not much, dear, I admit, " said Johanna pleasantly. "But try and masterit, like a good girl. So you can get rid of it, and go on to somethingelse. "

Ephie sat back, clasped her hands behind her head, and gave a longsigh. "Yes, to the next one, " she said. "Oh, if you only knew how sickI am of them, Joan! The next won't be a bit better than this. They areall alike--a whole book of them. "

Johanna looked down at the little figure with the plump, white arms, and discontented expression; and she tried to find in the childish facesomething she had previously not seen there. 

"Are you tired of studying, Ephie?" she asked. "Would you like to leaveoff and go away?"

"Go away from Leipzig? Where to?" Ephie did not unclasp her hands, buther eyes grew vigilant. 

"Oh, there are plenty of other places, child. Dresden--or Weimar--orStuttgart--where you could take lessons just as well. Or if you aretired of studying altogether, there is no need for you to go on withit. We can return home, any day. Sometimes, I think it would be betterif we did. You have not been yourself lately, dear. I don't think youare very well. "

"I not myself?--not well? What rubbish you talk, Joan! I am quite well, and wish you wouldn't tease me. I guess you want to go away yourself. You are tired of being here. But nothing shall induce me to go. I loveold Leipzig. And I still have heaps to learn before I leave offstudying. --I don't even know whether I shall be ready by spring. It alldepends. And now, Joan, go away. " She took up her violin and put it onher shoulder. "Now it's you who are wasting time. How can I practisewhen you stand there talking?"

Johanna was silent. But after this, she did not venture to mentionMaurice's name; and she had turned to leave the room when sheremembered her meeting with Mrs. Tully. 

"I would rather you did not go to tea, Ephie, " she ended, and thenregretted having said it. 

"That's another of your silly prejudices, Joan. I want to know why youfeel so about Mrs. Tully. I think she's lovely. Not that I'd have goneanyway. I promised Maurice to go for a walk with him at five. I knowwhat her 'few friends' means, too--just Boehmer, and she asks me alongso people will think he comes to see me, and not her. He sits there, and twirls his moustache, and makes eyes at her, and she makes themback. I'm only for show. No, I shouldn't have gone. I can't bearBoehmer. He's such a goat. "

"You didn't think that as long as he came to see us, " expostulatedJohanna. 

"No, of course not. But so he only comes to see her, I do. --Andsometimes, Joan, why it's just embarrassing. The last afternoon, why, he had a headache or something, and she made him lie on the sofa, witha rug over him, so she could bathe his head with eau-de-cologne. Iguess she's going to marry him. And I'm not the only one. The other dayI heard Frau Walter and Frau von Baerle talking in the dining-roomafter dinner, and they said the little English widow was veryHEIRATSLUSTIG. "

"Ephie, I don't like to hear you repeat such foolish gossip, " saidJohanna in real distress. "And if you can understand and remember aword like that, you might really take more pains with your German. Itis not impossible for you to learn, you see. "

"Joan the preacher, and Joan the teacher, and Joan the wise old bird, "sang Ephie, and laughed. "I think Mrs. Tully is real kind. She's goingto show me a new way to do my hair. This style is quite out in London, she says. "

"Don't let her touch your hair. It couldn't be better than it is, " saidJohanna quickly. But Ephie turned her head this way and that, andconsidered herself in the looking-glass. 

Now that she knew Maurice was expected that afternoon, Johanna awaitedhis arrival with impatience. Meanwhile, she believed she was not wrongin thinking Ephie unusually excited. At dinner, where, as always, theelderly boarders made a great fuss over her, her laughter was so loudas to grate on Johanna's ear; but afterwards, in their ownsitting-room, a trifle sufficed to put her out of temper. A new hat hadbeen sent home, a hat which Johanna had not yet seen. Now that it hadcome, Ephie was not sure whether she liked it or not; and all the criesof admiration her mother and Mrs. Tully uttered, when she put it on, were necessary to reassure her. Johanna was silent, and this unspokendisapproval irritated Ephie. 

"Why don't you say something, Joan?" she cried crossly. "I suppose youthink it's homely?"

"Frankly, I don't care for it much, dear. To my mind, it's overtrimmed. "

This was so precisely Ephie's own feeling that she was more annoyedthan ever; she taunted Johanna with old-fashioned, countrified tastes;and, in spite of her mother's comforting assurances, retired in a petto her own room. 

That afternoon, as they sat together at tea, Mrs. Cayhill, who for sometime had considered Ephie fondly, said: "I can't understand youthinking she isn't well, Joan. I never saw her look better. "

Ephie went crimson. "Now what has Joan been saying about me?" she askedangrily. 

Johanna had left the table, and was reading on the sofa. 

"I only said what I repeated to yourself, Ephie. That I didn't thinkyou were looking well. "

"Just fancy, " said Mrs. Cayhill, laughing good-humouredly, "she wassaying we ought to leave Leipzig and go to some strange place. Evenback home to America. You don't want to go away, darling, do you?"

"No, really, Joan is too bad, " cried Ephie, with a voice in which tearsand exasperation struggled for the mastery. "She always has some newfad in her head. She can't leave us alone--never! Let her go away, soshe wants to. I won't. I'm happy here. I love being here. Even if youboth go away, I shall stop. "

She got up from the table, and went to a window, where she stood bitingher lips, and paying small attention to her mother's elaborate proteststhat she, too, had no intention of being moved. 

Johanna did not raise her eyes from her book. She could have wept: notonly at the spirit of rebellious dislike, which was beginning to showmore and more clearly in everything Ephie said. But was no one butherself awake to the change that was taking place in the child, day byday? She would write to her father, without delay, and make him insiston their returning to America. 

From the moment Maurice entered the room, she did not take her eyes offhim; and, under her scrutiny, the young man soon grew nervous. He satand fidgeted, and found nothing to say. 

Ephie was wayward: she did not think she wanted to go out; it lookedlike rain. Johanna refrained from interfering; but Maurice was mostpersistent: he begged Ephie not to disappoint him, and, when thisfailed, said angrily that she had no business to bring him there forsuch capricious whims. This treatment cowed Ephie; and she went at onceto put on her hat and jacket. 

"He wants to speak to her; and she knows it; and is trying to avoidit, " said Johanna to herself; and her heart beat fast for both of them. But she was alone with Maurice; she must not lose the chance ofsounding him a little. 

"Where do you think of going for a walk?" she asked, and her voice hadan odd tone to her ears. 

"Where? Oh, to the ROSENTAL--or the SCHEIBENHOLZ--or along the river. Anywhere. I don't know. "

She coughed. "Have you noticed anything strange about Ephie lately? Sheis not herself. I'm afraid she is not well. "

He had noticed nothing. But he did not face Johanna; and he held thephotograph he was looking at upside down. 

She leaned out of the window to watch them walk along the street. Atthis moment, she was fully convinced of the correctness of her mother'sassumption; and by the thought of what might take place within the nexthour, she was much disturbed. During the rest of the afternoon, shefound it impossible to settle to anything; and she wandered from oneroom to another, unable even to read. But it struck six, seven, eighto'clock; it was supper-time; and still Ephie had not come home. Mrs. Cayhill grew anxious, too, and Johanna strained her eyes, watching thedark street. At nine and at ten, she was pacing the room, and ateleven, after a messenger had been sent to Maurice's lodging and hadfound no one there she buttoned on her rain-cloak, to accompany one ofthe servants to the police-station. 

"Why did I let her go?--Oh, why did I let her go!"

IV. 

Maurice and Ephie walked along the LESSINGSTRASSE without speaking--itwas a dull, mild day, threatening to rain, as it had rained the wholeof the preceding night. But Ephie was not accustomed to be silent; shefound the stillness disconcerting, and before they had gone far, shot afurtive look at her companion. She did not intend him to see it; but hedid, and turned to her. He cleared his throat, and seemed about tospeak, then changed his mind. Something in his face, as she observed itmore nearly, made Ephie change colour and give an awkward laugh. 

"I asked you before how you liked my hat, " she said, with anotherattempt at the airiness which, to-day, she could not command. "And youdidn't say. I guess you haven't looked at it. You're in such a hurry. "

Maurice turned his head; but he did not see the hat. Instead, hementally answered a question Louise had put to him the day before, andwhich he had then not known how to meet. Yes, Ephie was pretty, radiantly pretty, with the fresh, unsullied charm of a flower justblown. 

"Joan was so stupid about it, " she went on at random; her face stillwore its uncertain smile. "She said it was overtrimmed, and top-heavy, and didn't become me. As if she ever wore anything that suited her! ButJoan is an old maid. She hasn't a scrap of taste. And as for you, Maurice, why I just don't believe you know one hat from another. Menare so stupid. "

Again they went forward in silence. 

"You are tiresome to-day, " she said at length, and looked at him with atouch of defiance, as a schoolgirl looks at the master with whom sheventures to remonstrate. 

"Yes, I'm a dull companion. "

"Knowing it doesn't make it any better. "

But she was not really cross; all other feelings were swallowed up bythe uneasiness she felt at his manner of treating her. 

"Where are we going?" she suddenly demanded of him, with a little quickupward note in her voice. "This is not the way to the SCHEIBENHOLZ. "

"No. " He had been waiting for the question. "Ephie, "--he cleared histhroat anew. "I am taking you to see a friend--of mine. "

"Is that what you brought me out for? Then you didn't want to speak tome, as you said? Then we're not going for a walk?"

"Afterwards, perhaps. It's like this. Some one I know has been veryill. Now that she is getting better, she needs rousing and cheering up, and that kind of thing; and I said I would bring you to call on her. She knows you by sight--and would like to know you personally, " headded, with a lame effort at explanation. 

"Is that so?" said Ephie with sudden indifference; and her heart, whichhad begun to thump at the mention of a friend, quieted down at once. Infancy, she saw an elderly lady with shawls and a footstool, who hadbeen attracted by her fresh young face; the same thing had happened toher before. 

Now, however, that she knew the object of their walk, she was greatlyrelieved, as if a near danger had been averted; but she had not takenmany steps forward before she was telling herself that another hope wasgone. The only thing to do was to take the matter into her own hands;it was now or never; and simply a question of courage. 

"Maurice, say, do many people go away from here in the fall?--leave theCon. , I would say?" she asked abruptly. "I mean is this a time morepeople leave than in spring?"

Maurice started; he had been lost in his own thoughts, which allcentred round this meeting he had weakly agreed to arrange. Again andagain he had tried to imagine how it would fall out. But he did notknow Louise well enough to foresee how she would act; and the nearerthe time came, the stronger grew his presentiment of trouble. His chiefremaining hope was that there would be no open speaking, thatSchilsky's name would not be mentioned; and plump into the midst ofthis hope fell Ephie's question. He turned on her; she colouredfuriously, and walked into a pool of water; and, at this moment, everything was as clear to Maurice as though she had said: "Where isbe? Why has he gone?"

"Why do you ask?" he queried with unconscious sharpness. "No, Easter isthe general time for leaving. But people who play in the PRUFUNGENthen, sometimes stay for the summer term. Why do you ask?"

"Gracious, Maurice, how tiresome you are! Must one always say why? Ionly wanted to know. I missed people I used to see about, that's all. "

"Yes, a number have not come back. "

He was so occupied with what they were saying that he, in his turn, stepped into a puddle, splashing the water up over her shoe. Ephie wasextremely annoyed. 

"Look!--look what you've done!" she cried, showing him her spikeylittle shoe. "Why don't you look where you're going? How clumsy youare!" and, in a sudden burst of illhumour: "I don't know why you'rebringing me here. It's a horrid part of the city anyway. I didn't haveany desire to come. I guess I'll turn back and go home. "

"We're almost there now. "

"I don't care. I don't want to go. "

"But you shall, all the same. What's the matter with you to-day thatyou don't know your own mind for two minutes together?"

"You didn't inquire if I wanted to come. You're just horrid, Maurice. "

"And you're a capricious child. "

He quickened his pace, afraid she might still escape him; and Ephie hadhard work to keep up with him. As she trotted along, a few stepsbehind, there arose in her a strong feeling of resentment againstMaurice, which was all the stronger because she suspected that she wason the brink of hearing her worst suspicions confirmed. But she couldnot afford to yield to the feeling, when the last chance she had ofgetting definite information was passing from her. Knitting both handsfirmly inside her muff, she asked, with an earnestness which, to onewho knew, was fatally tale-telling: "Did anyone you were acquaintedwith leave, Maurice?"

"Yes, " said the young man at her side, with brusque determination. Heremained untouched by the tone of appeal in which Ephie put thequestion; for he himself suffered under her continued hedging. "Yes, "he said, "some one did, and that was a man called Schilsky--a tall, red-haired fellow, a violinist. But he has only just gone. He came backafter the vacation to settle his affairs, and say good-bye to hisfriends. Is there anything else you want to know?"

He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. Afterall, Ephie was such a child. He could not see her face, which washidden by the brim of the big hat, but there was something pathetic inthe line of her chin, and the droop of her arms and shoulders. Sheseemed to shrink under his words--to grow smaller. As he stood aside tolet her pass before him, through the house-door in the BRUDERSTRASSE, he had a quick revulsion of feeling. Instead of being rough and cruelto her, he should have tried to win her confidence with brotherlykindness. But he had had room in his mind for nothing but the meetingwith Louise, and now there was no more time; they were going up thestairs. All he could do was to say gently: "I ought to tell you, Ephie, that the person we are going to see has been very, very ill--and needstreating with the utmost consideration. I rely on your tact andgood-feeling. "

But Ephie did not reply; the colour had left her face, and for once, the short upper-lip closed firmly on the lower one. For some minutesamazed anger with Maurice was all she felt. Then, however, came theknowledge of what his words meant: he knew--Maurice knew; he had seenthrough her fictions; he would tell on her; there would be dreadfulscenes with Joan; there would be reproaches and recriminations; shewould be locked up, or taken away. As for what lay beyond, hisassertion that Schilsky had been there--had been and gone, without aword to her--that was a sickening possibility, which, at present, hermind could not grasp. She grew dizzy under these blows that rained downon her, one after the other. And meanwhile, she had to keep upappearances, to go on as though nothing had happened, when it seemedimpossible even to drag herself to the top of the winding flight ofstairs. She held her head down; there was a peculiar clicking in herthroat, which she could not master; she felt at every step as if shewould have to burst out crying. 

At the glass of the door, and at the wizened old face that appearedbehind it, she looked with unseeing eyes; and she followed Mauricemechanically along the passage to a door at the end. 

In his agitation the young man forgot to knock; and as they entered, afigure sprang up from the sofa-corner, and made a few impulsive stepstowards them. 

Maurice went over to Louise and took her hand. 

"I've brought her, " he said in a low tone, and with a kind of appeal invoice and eyes, which he was not himself aware of. Louise answered thelook, and went on looking at him, as if she were fearful of letting hereyes stray. Both turned at an exclamation from Ephie. She was stillstanding where Maurice had left her, close beside the door; but herface was flaming, and her right hand fumbled with the doorhandle. 

"Ephie!" said Maurice warningly. He was afraid she would turn thehandle, and, going over to her, took her by the arm. 

"Say, Maurice, I'm going home, " she said under her breath. "I can'tstop here. Oh, why did you bring me?"

"Ssh!--be a good girl, Ephie, " he replied as though speaking to achild. "Come with me. "

An inborn politeness struggled with Ephie's dread. "I can't. I don'tknow her name, " she whispered. But she let him draw her forward towhere Louise was standing; and she held out her hand. 

"Miss--?" she said in a small voice, and waited for the name to befilled in. 

Louise had watched them whispering, with a stony fare, but, at Ephie'sgesture, life came into it. Her eyes opened wide; and drawing back fromthe girl's outstretched hand, yet without seeming to see it, she turnedwith a hasty movement, and went over to the window, where she stoodwith her back to them. 

This was the last straw; Ephie dropped on a chair, and hiding her facein her hands, burst into the tears she had hitherto restrained. Herprevious trouble was increased a hundredfold. For she had recognisedLouise at once; she felt that she was in a trap; and the person who hadentrapped her was Maurice. Holding a tiny lace handkerchief to hereyes, she sobbed as though her heart would break. 

"Don't cry, dear, don't cry, " said the young man. "It's all right. " Buthis thoughts were with Louise. He was apprehensive of what she might donext. 

As if in answer to his fear, she crossed the room. 

"Ask her to take her hands down. I want to see her face. "

Maurice bent over Ephie, and touched her shoulder. 

"Ephie, dear, do you hear? Look up, like a good girl, and speak to MissDufrayer. "

But Ephie shook off his hand. 

Over her bowed head, their eyes met; and the look Louise gave the youngman was cold and questioning. He shrugged his shoulders: he could donothing; and retreating behind the writing-table, he left the two girlsto themselves. 

"Stand up, please, " said Louise in an unfriendly voice; and as Ephiedid not obey, she made a movement to take her by the wrists. 

"No, no!--don't touch me, " cried Ephie, and rose in spite of herself. "What right have you to speak to me like this?"

She could say no more, for, with a quick, unforeseen movement, Louisetook the young girl's face in both hands, and turned it up. And afterher first instinctive effort to draw back, Ephie kept still, like afascinated rabbit, her eyes fixed on the dark face that looked down ather. 

Seconds passed into minutes; and the minutes seemed hours. Mauricewatched, on the alert to intervene, if necessary. 

At the entrance of her visitors, Louise had been unable to seedistinctly, so stupefied was she by the thought that the person on whomher thoughts had run, with a kind of madness, for more than forty-eighthours, was actually in the room beside her--it was just as though anightmare phantom had taken bodily form. And then, too, though she hadspent each of these hours in picturing to herself what this girl wouldbe like, the reality was so opposed to her imagining that, at first, she could not reconcile the differences. 

Now she forced herself to see every line of the face. Nothing escapedher. She saw how loosened tendrils of hair on neck and forehead becamelittle curls; saw the finely marked brows, and the dark blue veins atthe temples; the pink and white colouring of the cheeks; the smallnose, modelled as if in wax; the fascinating baby mouth, with its shortupper-lip. Like most dark, sallow women, whose own brief freshness ispast, the elder girl passionately admired such may-blossom beauty, assomething belonging to a different race from herself. And this was notall: as she continued to look into Ephie's face, she ceased to beherself; she became the man whose tastes she knew better than her own;she saw with his eyes, felt with his senses. She pictured Ephie's face, arch and smiling, lifted to his; and she understood and excused hisweakness. He had not been able to help what had happened: this was theprettiness that drew him in, the kind he had invariably turned to lookback at, in the street--something fair and round, adorably small andyoung, something to be petted and protected, that clung, and waschildishly subordinate. For her dark sallowness, for her wilfulmastery, he had only had a passing fancy. She was not his type, and sheknew it. But to have known it vaguely, when it did not matter, and toknow it at a moment like the present, were two different things. 

In a burst of despair she let her arms fall to her sides; but herinsatiable eyes gazed on; and Ephie, though she was now free, did notstir, but remained standing, with her face raised, in a sillyfascination. And the eyes, having taken in the curves of cheeks andchin, and the soft white throat, passed to the rounded, droopingshoulders, to the plumpness of the girlish figure, embracing the wholebody in their devouring gaze. Ephie went hot and cold beneath them; shefelt as if her clothes were being stripped from her, and she leftstanding naked. Louise saw the changing colour, and interpreted it inher own way. His--all his! He was not the mortal--she knew it only toowell--to have this flower within his reach, and not clutch at it, instinctively, as a child clutches at sunbeams. It would riot have beenin nature for him to do otherwise than take, greedily, withoutreflection. At the thought of it, a spasm of jealousy caught her by thethroat; her hanging hands trembled to hurt this infantile prettiness, to spoil these lips that had been kissed by his. 

Maurice was at her side. "Don't hurt her, " he said, and did not knowhow the words came to his lips. 

The spell was broken. The unnatural expression died out of her face;she was tired and apathetic. 

"Hurt her?" she repeated faintly. "No, don't be afraid. I shall nothurt her. But if I beat her with ropes till all my strength was gone, Icouldn't hurt her as she has hurt me. "

"Hush! Don't say such things. "

"I? I hurt you?" said Ephie, and began to cry afresh. "How could I? Idon't even know you. "

"No, you don't know me; and yet you have done me the cruellest wrong. "

"Oh, no, no, " sobbed Ephic. "No, indeed!"

"He was all I had--all I cared for. And you plotted, and planned, andstole him from me--with your silly baby face. "

"It's not true, " wept Ephie. "How could I? I didn't know anything aboutyou. He . .. He never spoke of you. "

Louise laughed. "Oh, I can believe that! And you thought, didn't you, you poor little fool, that he only cared for you? That was why my namewas never mentioned. He didn't need to scheme, and contrive, and lie, lie abominably, for fear I should come to hear what he was doing!"

"No, indeed, " sobbed Ephie. "Never! And you've no right to say suchthings of him. "

"I no right?" Louise drew herself up. "No right to say what I like ofhim? Are you going to tell me what I shall say and what I shan't of theman I loved?--yes, and who loved me, too, but in a way you couldn'tunderstand you who think all you have to do is to smile your sillysmile, and spoil another person's life. You didn't know, no, of coursenot!--didn't know this was his room as well as mine. Look, his music isstill lying on the piano; that's the chair he sat in, not many daysago; here, " she took Ephie by the shoulder and drew her behind thescreen, where a small door, papered like the wall, gave, direct fromthe stair-head, a second entrance to the room--"here's the door he camein at. --For he came as he liked, whenever he chose. "

"It's not true; it can't be true, " said Ephie, and raised hertear-stained face defiantly. "We are engaged--since the summer. He'scoming back to marry me soon. "

"He's coming back to marry you!" echoed Louise in a blank voice. "He'scoming back to marry you!"

She moved a few steps away, and stood by the writing-table, lookingdazed, as if she did not understand. Then she laughed. 

Ephie cried with renewed bitterness. "I want to go home. "

But Maurice did not pay any attention to her. He was watching Louise, with a growing dismay. For she continued to laugh, in a breathless way, with a catch in the throat, which made the laughter sound like sobbing. On his approaching her, she tried to check herself, but withoutsuccess. She wiped her lips, and pressed her handkerchief to them, thentook the handkerchief between her teeth and bit it. She crossed to thewindow, and stood with her back to the others; but she could not stoplaughing. She went behind the low, broad screen that divided the room, and sat down on the edge of the bed; but still she had to laugh on. Shecame out again into the other part of the room, and saw Maurice paleand concerned, and Ephie's tears dried through pure fear; but the sightof these two made her laugh more violently than before. She held herface in her hands, and pressed her jaws together as though she wouldbreak them; for they shook with a nervous convulsion. Her whole bodybegan to shake, with the efforts she made at repression. 

Ephie cowered in her seat. "Oh, Maurice, let us go. I'm so afraid, " sheimplored him. 

"Don't be frightened! It's all right. " But he was following Louiseabout the room, entreating her to regain the mastery of herself. Whenhe did happen to notice Ephie more closely, he said: "Go downstairs, and wait for me there. I'll come soon. "

Ephie did not need twice telling: she turned and fled. He heard thehall-door bang behind her. 

"Do try to control yourself. Miss Dufrayer--Louise! Every one in thehouse will hear you. "

But she only laughed the more. And now the merest trifles helped toincrease the paroxysm--the way Maurice worked his hands, Ephie's mufflying forgotten on a chair, the landlady's inquisitive face peering inat the door. The laugh continued, though it had become a kind ofcackle--a sound without tone. Maurice could bear it no longer. He wentup to her and tried to take her hands. She repulsed him, but he was toostrong for her. He took both her hands in his, and pressed her down ona chair. He was not clear himself what to do next; but, the moment hetouched her, the laughter ceased. She gasped for breath; he thought shewould choke, and let her hands go again. She pressed them to herthroat; her breath came more and more quickly; her eyes closed; andfalling forward on her knees, she hid her face in the cushioned seat ofthe sofa. 

Then the tears came, and what tears! In all his life, Maurice had neverheard crying like this. He moved as far away from her as he could, stood at the window, staring out and biting his lips, while she sobbed, regardless of his presence, with the utter abandon of a child. Like achild, too, she wept rebelliously, unchastenedly, as he could not havebelieved it possible for a grown person to cry. Such grief as this, soabsolute a despair, had nothing to do with reason or the reasoningfaculties; and the words were not invented that would be able to sootheit. 

But, little by little, a change came over her crying. The rebelliondied out of it; it grew duller, and more blunted, hopeless, withoutlife. Her strength was almost gone. Now, however, there was anothernote of childishness in it, that of complete exhaustion, which it is sohard to hear. The tears rose to his own eyes; he would have liked to goto her, to lay his hand on her head, and treat her tenderly, to makeher cease and be happy once more; but he did not dare. Had he done so, she might not have repelled him; for, in all intensely passionategrief, there comes a moment of subsidence, when the grief and itsorigin are forgotten, and the one overruling desire is the desire to becomforted, no matter who the comforter and what his means, so long asthey are masterful and strong. 

She grew calmer; and soon she was only shaken at widening intervals bya sob. Then these, too, ceased, and Maurice held his breath. But as, after a considerable time had elapsed, she still lay without makingsound or movement, he crossed the room to look at her. She was fastasleep, half sitting, half lying, with her head on the cushions, andthe tears wet on her cheeks. He hesitated between a wish to see her ina more comfortable position, and an unwillingness to disturb her. Finally, he took an eider-down quilt from the bed, and wrapped it roundher; then slipped noiselessly from the room. 

It was past eight o'clock. 

* * * * *

Ephie ran down the stairs as if a spectre were at her heels, and evenwhen in the street, did not venture to slacken her speed. Although thedusk was rapidly passing into dark, a good deal of notice was attractedby the sight of a well-dressed young girl running along, holding ahandkerchief to her face, and every now and then emitting a loud sob. People stood and stared after her, and some little boys ran with her. Instead of dropping her pace when she saw this, Ephie grew confused, and ran more quickly than before. She had turned at random, on comingout of the house; and she was in a part of the town she did not know. In her eagerness to get away from people, she took any turn thatoffered; and after a time she found that she had crossed the river, andwas on what was almost a country road. A little further off, she knew, lay the woods; if once she were in their shelter, she would be safe;and, without stopping to consider that night was falling, she rantowards them at full speed. On the first seat she came to she sankbreathless and exhausted. 

Her first sensation was one of relief at being alone. She unpinned andtook off the big, heavy hat, and laid it on the seat beside her, inorder to be more at her case; and then she cried, heartily, and withoutprecautions, enjoying to the full the luxury of being unwatched andunheard. Since teatime, she seemed to have been fighting her tears, exercising a self-restraint that was new to her and very hard; and notto-day alone--oh, no, for weeks past, she had been obliged to act apart. Not even in her bed at night had she been free to indulge hergrief; for, if she cried then, it made her pale and heavy-eyed nextday, and exposed her to Joan's comments. And there were so many thingsto cry about: all the emotional excitement of the summer, with its upsand downs of hope and fear; the never-ceasing need of dissimulation;the gnawing uncertainty caused by Schilsky's silence; the growing senseof blankness and disappointment; Joan's suspicions; Maurice'sdiscovery; the knowledge that Schilsky had gone away without a word toher; and, worst of all, and most inexplicable, the terrible visit ofthe afternoon--at the remembrance of the madwoman she had escaped from, Ephie's tears flowed with renewed vigour. Her handkerchief was soakedand useless; she held her fur tippet across her eyes to receive thetears as they fell; and when this grew too wet, she raised the skirt ofher dress to her face. Not a sound was to be heard but her sobbing; shewas absolutely alone; and she wept on till those who cared for her, whose chief wish was to keep grief from her, would hardly haverecognized in her the child they loved. 

How long she had been there she did not know, when she was startled toher feet by a loud rustling in the bushes behind her. Then, of asudden, she became aware that it was pitch-dark, and that she was allby herself in the woods. She took to her heels, in a panic of fear, anddid not stop running till the street-lamps came into sight. When shewas under their friendly shine, and could see people walking on theother side of the river, she remembered that she had left her hat lyingon the seat. At this fresh misfortune, she began to cry anew. But notfor anything in the world would she have ventured back to fetch it. 

She crossed the Pleisse and came to a dark, quiet street, where fewpeople were; and here she wandered up and down. It was late; at homethey would be sitting at supper now, exhausting themselves inconjectures where she could be. Ephie was very hungry, and at thethought of the warmth and light of the supper-table, a lump rose in herthroat. If it had been only her mother, she might have faced her--butJoan! Home in this plight, at this hour, hatless, and with swollenface, to meet Joan's eyes and questions!--she shivered at the idea. Moreover, the whole PENSION would get to know what had happened to her;she would need to bear inquisitive looks and words; she would have toexplain, or, still worse, to invent and tell stories again; and of whatuse were they now, when all was over? A feeling of lassitude overcameher--an inability to begin fresh. All over: he would never put his armround her again, never come towards her, careless and smiling, and callher his "little, little girl. "

She sobbed to herself as she walked. Everything was bleak, and black, and cheerless. She would perhaps die of the cold, and then all of them, Joan in particular, would be filled with remorse. She stood and lookedat the inky water of the river between its stone walls. She had read ofpeople drowning themselves; what if she went down the steps and threwherself in?--and she feebly fingered at the gate. But it was locked andchained; and at the idea of her warm, soft body touching the icy water;at the picture of herself lying drowned, with dank hair, or, like theChristian Martyr, floating away on the surface; at the thought of theirgrief, of HIM wringing his hands over her corpse, she was so moved thatshe wept aloud again, and almost ran to be out of temptation's way. 

It had begun to drizzle. Oh, how tired she was! And she was obligedconstantly to dodge impertinently staring men. In a long, wide street, she entered a door-way that was not quite so dark as the others, andsat down on the bottom step of the stairs. Here she must have dozed, for she was roused by angry voices on the floor above. It sounded likesome one who was drunk; and she fled trembling back to the street. 

A neighbouring clock struck ten. At this time of night, she could notgo home, even though she wished to. She was wandering the streets likeany outcast, late at night, without a hat--and her condition ofhatlessness she felt to be the chief stigma. But she was starving withhunger, and so tired that she could scarcely drag one foot after theother. Oh, what would they say if they knew what their poor littleEphie was enduring! Her mother--Joan---Maurice!

Maurice! The thought of him came to her like a ray of light. It was toMaurice she would turn. He would be good to her, and help her; he hadalways been kind to her, till this afternoon. And he knew what hadhappened; it would not be necessary to explain. --Oh, Maurice, Maurice!

She knew his address, if she could but find the street. A droschkepassed, and she tried to hail it; but she did not like to advance toofar out of the shadow, on account of her bare head. Finally, pluckingup courage, she inquired the way of a feather-hatted woman, who hadeyed her with an inquisitive stare. 

It turned out that the BRAUSTRASSE was just round the corner; she hadperhaps been in the street already, without knowing it; and now shefound it, and the house, without difficulty. The street-door was stillopen; or she would never have been bold enough to ring. 

The stair was poorly lighted, and full of unsavoury smells. In heragitation, Ephie rang on a wrong floor, and a strange man answered hertimid inquiry. She climbed a flight higher, and rang again. There was along and ominous pause, in which her heart beat fast; if Maurice didnot live here either, she would drop where she stood. She was about toring a second time, when felt slippers and an oil lamp moved along thepassage, the glass window was opened, and a woman's face peered out ather. Yes, Herr Guest lived there, certainly, said Frau Krause, dividedbetween curiosity and indignation at having to rise from bed; and sheheld the lamp above her head, in order to see Ephie better. But he wasnot at home, and, even if he were, at this hour of night . .. The heavywords shuffled along, giving the voracious eyes time to devour. 

At the thought that her request might be denied her, Ephie's couragetook its last leap. 

"Why, I must see him. I have something important to tell him. Could Inot wait?" she urged in her broken German, feeling unspeakably smalland forlorn. And yielding to a desire to examine more nearly the bare, damp head and costly furs, Frau Krause allowed the girl to pass beforeher into Maurice's room. 

She loitered as long as she could over lighting the lamp that stood onthe table; and meanwhile threw repeated glances at Ephie, who, havinggiven one look round the shabby room, sank into a corner of the sofaand hid her face: the coarse browed woman, in petticoat andnight-jacket, seemed to her capable of robbery or murder. And so FrauKrause unwillingly withdrew, to await further developments outside: theholy, smooth-faced Herr Guest was a deep one, after all. 

When Maurice entered, shortly before eleven, Ephie started up from abroken sleep. He came in pale and disturbed, for Frau Krause had methim in the passage with angry mutterings about a FRAUENZIMMER in hisroom; and his thoughts had at once leaped fearfully to Louise. When hesaw Ephie, he uttered a loud exclamation of surprise. 

"Good Lord, Ephie! What on earth are you doing here?"

She sprang at his hands, and caught her breath hysterically. 

"Oh, Morry, you've come at last. Oh, I thought you would never come. Where have you been? Oh, Morry, help me--help me, or I shall die!"

"Whatever is the matter? What are you doing here?"

At his perturbed amazement, she burst into tears, still clinging fastto his hands. He led her back to the sofa, from which she had sprung. 

"Hush, hush! Don't cry like that. What's the matter, child? Tell mewhat it is--at once--and let me help you. "

"Oh, yes, Morry, help me, help me! There's no one else. I didn't knowwhere to go. Oh, what shall I do!"

Her own words sounded so pathetic that she sobbed piteously. Mauricestroked her hand, and waited for her to grow quieter. But now that shehad laid the responsibility of herself on other shoulders, Ephie wasquite unnerved: after the dark and fearful wanderings of the evening, to be beside some one who knew, who would take care of her, who wouldtell her what to do!

She sobbed and sobbed. Only with perseverance did Maurice draw fromher, word by word, an account of where she had been that evening, broken by such cries as: "Oh, what shall I do! I can't ever go homeagain--ever! . .. And I lost my hat. Oh, Morry, Morry! And I didn't knowhe had gone away--and it wasn't true what I said, that he was comingback to marry me soon. . I only said it to spite her, because she saidsuch dreadful things to me. But we were engaged, all the same; he saidhe would come to New York to marry me. And now . .. Oh, dear, oh, Morry!. .. "

"Then he really promised to marry you, did he?"

"Yes, oh, yes. Everything was fixed. The last day I was there, " shewept. "But I didn't know he was going away; he never said a word aboutit. Oh, what shall I do! Go after him, and bring him back, Morry. Hemust come back. He can't leave me like this, he can't--oh, no, indeed!"

"You don't mean to say you went to see him, Ephie?--alone?--at hisroom?" queried Maurice slowly, and he did not know how sternly. "When?How often? Tell me everything. This is no time for fibbing. "

But he could make little of Ephie's sobbed and hazy version of thestory; she herself could not remember clearly now; the impressions ofthe last few hours had been so intense as to obliterate much of whathad gone before. "I thought I would drown myself . .. But the water wasso black. Oh, why did you take me to that dreadful woman? Did you hearwhat she said? It wasn't true, was it? Oh, it can't be!"

"It was quite true, Ephie. What he told YOU wasn't true. He neverreally cared for anyone but her. They were--were engaged for years. "

At this, she wept so heart-rendingly that he was afraid Frau Krausewould come in and interfere. 

"You MUST control yourself. Crying won't alter things now. If you hadbeen frank and candid with us, it would never have happened. " This wasthe only reproach he could make her; what came after was Johanna'sbusiness, not his. "And now I'm going to take you home. It's nearlytwelve o'clock. Think of the state your mother and sister will be inabout you. "

But at the mention of Johanna, Ephie flung herself on the sofa againand beat the cushions with her hands. 

"Not Joan, not Joan!" she wailed. "No, I won't go home. What will shesay to me? Oh, I am so frightened! She'll kill me, I know she will. "And at Maurice's confident assurance that Johanna would have nothingbut love and sympathy for her, she shook her head. "I know Joan. She'llnever forgive me. Morry, let me stay with you. You've always been kindto me. Oh, don't send me away!"

"Don't be a silly child, Ephie. You know yourself you can't stay here. "

But he gave up urging her, coaxed her to lie down, and sat beside her, stroking her hair. As he said no more, she gradually ceased to sob, andin what seemed to the young man an incredibly short time, he heard fromher breathing that she was asleep. He covered her up, and stood a sheetof music before the lamp, to shade her eyes. In the passage he ran upagainst Frau Krause, whom he charged to prevent Ephie in the event ofher attempting to leave the house. 

Buttoning up his coat-collar, he hastened through the mistlike rain tofetch Johanna. 

There was a light in every window of the PENSION in the LESSINGSTRASSE;the street-door and both doors of the flat stood open. As he mountedthe stairs a confused sound of voices struck his car; and when heentered the passage, he heard Mrs. Cayhill crying noisily. Johanna cameout to him at once; she was in hat and cloak. She listened stonily tohis statement that Ephie was safe at his lodgings, and put noquestions; but, on her returning to the sitting-room, Mrs. Cayhill'ssobs stopped abruptly, and several women spoke at once. 

Johanna preserved her uncompromising attitude as they walked themidnight streets. But as Maurice made no mien to explain mattersfurther, she so far conquered her aversion as to ask: "What have youdone to her?"

The young man's consternation at this view of the case was so evidentthat even she felt the need of wording her question differently. 

"Answer me. What is Ephie doing at your rooms?"

Maurice cleared his throat. "It's a long and unpleasant story, MissCayhill. And I'm afraid I must tell it from the beginning. --You didn'tsuspect, I fear, that . .. Well, that Ephie had a fancy for some onehere?"

At these words, which were very different from those she had expected, Johanna eyed him in astonishment. 

"A fancy!" she repeated incredulously. "What do you mean?"

"Even more--an infatuation, " said Maurice with deliberation. "And forsome one I daresay you have never even heard of--a. .. A man here, aviolinist, called Schilsky. "

The elaborate fabric she had that day reared, fell together aboutJohanna's ears. She stared at Maurice as if she doubted his sanity; andshe continued to listen, with the same icy air of disbelief, to hisstammered and ineffectual narrative, until he said that he believed"it" had been "going on since summer. "

At this Johanna laughed aloud. "That is quite impossible, " she said. "Iknew everything Ephie did, and everywhere she went. "

"She met him nearly every day. They exchanged letters, and-----"

"It is impossible, " repeated Johanna with vehemence, but less surely. 

"----and a sort of engagement seems to have existed between them. "

"And you knew this and never said a word to me?"

"I didn't know--not till to-night. I only suspected something--once . .. Long ago. And I couldn't--I mean--one can't say a thing like thatwithout being quite sure----"

But here he broke down, conscious, as never before, of the negligencehe had been guilty of towards Ephie. And Johanna was not likely tospare him: there was, indeed, a bitter antagonism to his half-heartedconduct in the tone in which she said: "I stood to Ephie in a mother'splace. You might have warned me--oh, you might, indeed!"

They walked on in silence--a hard, resentful silence. Then Johanna putthe question he was expecting to hear. 

"And what has all this to do with to-night?"

Maurice took up the thread of his narrative again, telling how Ephiehad waited vainly for news since returning from Switzerland, and howshe had only learnt that afternoon that Schilsky had been in Leipzig, and had gone away again, without seeing her, or letting her know thathe did not intend to return. 

"And how did she hear it?"

"At a friend's house. "

"What friend?"

"A friend of mine, a--No; I had better be frank with you: the girl thisfellow was engaged to for a year or more. "

"And Ephie did not know that?"

He shook his head. 

"But you knew, and yet took her there?"

It was a hopeless job to try to exonerate himself. "Yes, there werereasons--I couldn't help it, in fact. But I'm afraid I should not beable to make you understand. "

"No, never!" retorted Johanna, and squared her shoulders. 

But there was more to be said--she had worse to learn before Ephie washanded over to her care. 

"And Ephie has been very foolish, " he began anew, without looking ather. "It seems--from what she has told me tonight--that she has been tosee this man . .. Been at his rooms . .. More than once. "

At first, he was certain, Johanna did not grasp the meaning of what hesaid; she turned a blank face curiously to him. But, a moment later, she gave a low cry, and hardly able to form the words for excitement, asked: "Who . .. What . .. What kind of a man was he--this . .. Schilsky?"

"Rotten, " said Maurice; and she did not press him further. He heard herbreath coming quickly, and saw the kind of stiffening that went throughher body; but she kept silence, and did not speak again till they werealmost at his house-door. Then she said, in a voice that was hoarsewith feeling: "It has been all my fault. I did not take proper care ofher. I was blind and foolish. And I shall never be able to forgivemyself for it--never. But that Ephic--my little Ephie--the childI--that Ephie could . .. Could do a thing like this . .. " Her voicetailed off in a sob. 

Maurice struck matches, to light her up the dark staircase; and thecondition of the stairs, the disagreeable smells, the poverty of walland door revealed, made Johanna's heart sink still further: tosurroundings such as these had Ephie accustomed herself. They enteredwithout noise; everything was just as Maurice had left it, except thatthe lamp had burned too high and filled the room with its fumes. AsJohanna paused, undecided what to do, Ephie started up, and, at thesight of her sister, burst into loud cries of fear. Hiding her face, she sobbed so alarmingly that Johanna did not venture to approach her. She remained standing beside the table, one thin, ungloved hand restingon it, while Maurice bent over Ephie and tried to soothe her. 

"Please fetch a droschke, " Johanna said grimly, as Ephie's sobs showedno signs of abating; and when, after a lengthy search in the night, Maurice returned, she was standing in the same position, staring withdrawn, unblinking eyes at the smoky lamp, which no one had thought oflowering. Ephie was still crying, and only Maurice might go near her. He coaxed her to rise, wrapped his rug round her, and carried her, morethan he led her, down the stairs. 

"Be good enough to drive home with us, " said Johanna. And so he satwith his arm round Ephie, who pressed her face against his shoulder, while the droschke jolted over the cobbled streets, and Johanna heldherself pale and erect on the opposite seat. She mounted the stairs infront of them. Ephie was limp and heavy going up; but no sooner did shecatch sight of Mrs. Cayhill than, with a cry, she rushed from the youngman's side, and threw herself into her mother's arms. 

"Oh, mummy, mummy!"

Downstairs, in the rain-soaked street, Maurice found thedroschke-driver waiting for his fare. It only amounted to a couple ofmarks, and it was no doubt a just retribution for what had happenedthat he should be obliged to lay it out; but, none the less, it seemedlike the last straw--the last dismal touch--in a day of forlorndiscomfort. 

V. 

A few weeks later, a great variety of cabin-trunks and saratogasblocked the corridor of the PENSION. The addresses they bore were inJohanna's small, pointed handwriting. 

On this, the last afternoon of the Cayhills' stay in Leipzig, Mauricesaw Johanna again for the first time. She had had her hands full. Inthe woods, on that damp October night, and on her subsequentwanderings, Ephie had caught a severe cold; and the doctor had fearedan inflammation of the lungs. This had been staved off; but there wasalso, it seemed, a latent weakness of the chest, hitherto unsuspected, which kept them anxious. Ephie still had a dry, grating cough, whichwas troublesome at night, and left her tired and fretful by day. Theywere travelling direct to the South of France, where they intended toremain until she had quite recovered her strength. 

Maurice sat beside Johanna on the deep sofa where he and Ephie hadworked at harmony together. But the windows of the room were shut now, and the room itself looked unfamiliar; for it had been stripped of allthe trifles and fancy things that had given it such a comfortable, home-like air, and was only the bare, lodging-house room once more. Johanna was as self-possessed as of old, a trifle paler, a triflethinner of lip. 

She told him that they intended leaving quietly the next morning, without partings or farewells. Ephie was still weak and the lessexcitement she had to undergo, the better it would be for her. 

"Then I shall not see Ephie again?" queried Maurice in surprise. 

Johanna thought not: it would only recall the unhappy night to hermemory; besides, she had not asked to see him, as she no doubt wouldhave done, had she wished it. --At this, the eleventh hour, Johanna didnot think it worth while to tell Maurice that Ephie bore him anunalterable grudge. 

"I never want to see him again. "

That was all she said to Johanna; but, during her illness, she hadbrooded long over his treachery. And even if things had come all rightin the end, she would never have been able to forgive his speaking toher of Schilsky in the way he had done. No, she was finished withMaurice Guest; he was too double-faced, too deceitful for her. --And shecried bitterly, with her face turned to the wall. 

The young man could not but somewhat lamely agree with Johanna that itwas better to let the matter end thus: for he felt that towards theCayhills he had been guilty of a breach of trust such as it isdifficult to forgive. At the same time, he was humanly hurt that Ephiewould not even say good-bye to him. 

He asked their further plans, and learnt that as soon as Ephie was wellagain, they would sail for New York. 

"My father has cabled twice for us. "

Johanna's manner was uncompromisingly dry and short. After her lastwords, there was a long pause, and Maurice made a movement to rise. Butshe put out her hand and detained him. 

"There is something I should like to say to you. " And thereupon, withthe abruptness of a nervous person: "When I have seen my sister andmother safe back, I intend leaving home myself. I am going to Harvard. "

Maurice realised that the girl was telling him a fact of considerableimportance to herself, and did his best to look interested. 

"Really? That's always been a wish of yours, hasn't it?"

"Yes. " Johanna coloured, hesitated as he had never known her to do, then burst out: "And now there is nothing in the way of it. " She drewher thumb across the leaf-corners of a book that was lying on thetable. "Oh, I know what you will say: how, now that Ephie has turnedout to be weak and untrustworthy, there is all the more reason for meto remain with her, to look after her. But that is not possible. " Shefaced him sharply, as though he had contradicted her. "I am incapableof pretending to be the same when my feelings have changed; and, as Itold you--as I knew that night--I shall never be able to feel for Ephieas I did before. I am ready, as I said, to take all the blame for whathas happened; I was blind and careless. But if the care and affectionof years count for nothing; if I have been so little able to win herconfidence; if, indeed, I have only succeeded in making her dislike me, by my care of her, so that when she is in trouble, she turns from me, instead of to me--why, then I have failed lamentably in what I had madethe chief duty of my life. "

"Besides, " she continued more quietly, "there is another reason: Ephieis going to fall a victim to her nerves. I see that; and my poor, foolish mother is doing her best to foster it. --You smile? Only becauseyou do not understand what it means. It is no laughing matter. If anAmerican woman once becomes conscious of her nerves, then Heaven helpher!--Now I am not of a disinterested enough nature to devote myself tosick-nursing where there is no real sickness. And then, too, my motherintends taking a French maid back with her, and a person of that classwill perform such duties much more competently than I. "

She spoke with bitterness. Maurice mumbled some words of sympathy, wondering why she should choose to say these things to him. 

"Even at home my place is filled, " continued Johanna. "The housekeeperwho was appointed during our absence has been found so satisfactorythat she will continue in the post after our return. Everywhere, yousee, I have proved superfluous. There, as here. "

"I'm sure you're mistaken, " said Maurice with more warmth. "And, MissJoan, there's something I should like to say, if I may. Don't you thinkyou take what has happened here a little too seriously? No doubt Ephiebehaved foolishly. But was it after all any more than a girlishescapade?"

"Too seriously?"

Johanna turned her shortsighted eyes on the young man, and gazed at himalmost pityingly. How little, oh, how little, she said to herself, onemortal knew and could know of another, in spite of the medium ofspeech, in spite of common experiences! Some of the nights at thebeginning of Ephie's illness returned vividly to her mind, nights, whenshe, Johanna, had paced her room by the hour, filled with a terribledread, a numbing uncertainty, which she would sooner have died thanhave let cross her lips. She had borne it quite alone, this horriblefear; her mother had been told of the whole affair only what it wasabsolutely necessary for her to know. And, naturally enough, the youngman who now sat at her side, being a man, could not be expected tounderstand. But the consciousness of her isolation made Johanna speakwith renewed harshness. 

"Too seriously?" she repeated. "Oh, I think not. The girlish escapade, as you call it, was the least of it. If that had been all, if it hadonly been her infatuation for some one who was unworthy of her, I couldhave forgiven Ephie till seventy times seven. But, after all theseyears, after the way I have loved her--no, idolised her!--for her totreat me as she did--do you think it possible to take that tooseriously? There was no reason she should not have had her littlesecrets. If she had let me see that something was going on, which shedid not want to tell me about, do you think I should have forcedher?"--and Johanna spoke in all good faith, forgetful of how she hadbeen used to clip and doctor Ephie's sentiments. "But that she coulddeceive me wilfully, and lie so lightly, with a smile, when, all thetime, she was living a double life, one to my face and one behind myback--that I cannot forgive. Something has died in me that I used tofeel for her. I could never trust her again, and where there is notrust there can be no real love. "

"She didn't understand what she was doing. She is so young. "

"Just for that reason. So young, and so skilled in deceit. That ishardest of all, even to think of: that she could wear her dear innocentface, while behind it, in her brain, were cold, calculating thoughtshow she could best deceive me! If there had been but a single sign towaken my suspicions, then, yes, then I could have forgiven her, " saidJohanna, and again forgot how often of late she had been puzzled by thesubtle change in Ephie. "If I could just know that, in spite of herefforts, she had been too candid to succeed!"

She had unburdened herself and it had been a relief to her, but nothingcould be helped or mended. Both knew this, and after a few politequestions about her future plans and studies, Maurice rose to take hisleave. 

"Say good-bye to them both for me, and give Ephie my love. "

"I will. I think she will be sorry afterwards that she did not see you. She has always liked you. "

"Good-bye then. Or perhaps it is only AUF WIEDERSEHEN?"

"I hardly think so. " Johanna had returned to her usual sedate manner. "If I do visit Europe again, it will not be for five or six years atleast. "

"And that's a long time. Who knows where I may be, by then!"

He held Johanna's hand in his, and saw her gauntly slim figure outlinedagainst the bare sitting-room. It was not likely that they would evermeet again. But he could not summon up any very lively feelings ofregret. Johanna had not touched him deeply; she had left him as cool ashe had no doubt left her; neither had found the key to the other. Herchief attraction for him had been her devotion to Ephie; and now, having been put to the test, this was found wanting. She had beenwounded in her own pride and self-love, and could not forgive. At heartshe was no more generous and unselfish than the rest. 

He repeated farewell messages as he stood in the passage. Johanna heldthe front door open for him, and, as he went down the stairs, he heardit close behind him, with that extreme noiselessness that wascharacteristic of Johanna's treatment of it. 

The following morning, shortly after ten o'clock, a train steamed outof the THURINGER BAHNHOF, carrying the Cayhills with it. The day wasmisty and cheerless, and none of the three travellers turned her headto give the town a parting glance. They left unattended, withoutflowers or other souvenirs, without any of the demonstratively patheticfarewells, the waving of hats, and crowding about the carriage-door, which one of the family, at least, had connected inseverably with theirdeparture. And thus Ephie's musical studies came to an abrupt anduntimely end. 

* * * * *

"My faith in women is shattered. I shall never believe in a womanagain. "

Dove paced the floor of Maurice's room with long and steady strides, beneath which a particular board creaked at intervals. His voice washusky, and the ruddiness of his cheeks had paled. 

At the outset of Ephie's illness, Dove had called every morning at thePENSION, to make inquiries and to leave his regards. But when the storyleaked out, as it soon did, in an exaggerated and distorted form, hestraightway ceased his visits. Thus he was wholly unprepared for thefamily's hurried departure, the news of which was broken to him byMaurice. Dove was dumbfounded. Not a single sententious phrase crossedhis lips; and he remained unashamed of the moisture that dimmed hiseyes. But he maintained his bearing commendably; and it was impossiblenot to admire the upright, manly air with which he walked down thestreet. 

The next day, however, he returned, and was silent no longer. He madeno secret of having been hard hit; just as previously he had let hisfriends into his hopes and intentions, so now every one heard of hisreverses. He felt a tremendous need of unbosoming himself; he had beenso sure of success, or, at least, so unthinking of failure, and theblow to his selfesteem was a rude one. 

Maurice sat with his hands in his pockets, and tried to urge reason. But Dove would not admit even the possibility of his having beenmistaken. He had received innumerable proofs of Ephie's regard for him. 

"Remember how young she was! Girls of that age never know their ownminds, " said Maurice. But Dove was inclined to take Johanna's sternerview, and to cry: "So young and so untender!" for which he, too, substituted "untrue"; and, just on this score, to deduce unfavourableinferences for Ephie's whole moral character. As Maurice listened tohim, he could not help thinking that Johanna's affection had been ofthe same nature as Dove's, in other words, had had a touch of themasculine about it: it had existed only as long as it could guide andsubordinate; it denied to its object any midget attempt at individuallife; it set up lofty moral standards, and was implacable when asmaller, frailer being found it impossible to live up to them. 

At the same time, he was sorry for Dove, who, in his blindness, hadlaid himself open to receive this snubbing; and he listened patiently, even a thought flattered by his confidence, until he learnt fromMadeleine that Dove was making the round of his acquaintances, andbehaving in the same way to anyone who would let him. Then he foundthat the openness with which Dove related his past hopes, and the marksof affection Ephie had given him, bordered on indecency. He said so, with a wrathful frankness; but Dove could not see it in that light, andwas not offended. 

As the personal smart weakened, the more serious question that Dove hadto face was, what he was going to tell his relatives at home. For itnow came out that he had represented the affair to them as settled; inhis perfectly sincere optimism, he had regarded himself as an all butengaged man. And the point that disturbed him was, how to back out withdignity, yet without violating the truth, on which he set great store. 

"I'm sure he needn't let that trouble him, " said Madeleine, on hearingof his dilemma. "He has only to say that HE has changed his mind, whichis true enough. "

This was the conclusion Dove eventually came to himself--though notwith such unseemly haste as Madeleine. Having approached the matterfrom all sides, he argued that it would be more considerate to Ephie toput it in this light than to tell the story in detail. Andconsequently, two elderly people in Peterborough nodded to each otherone morning over the breakfast-table, and agreed that Edward had donewell. They had not been much in favour of the American match, but theyhad trusted implicitly in their son's good sense, and now, as ever, hehad acted in the most becoming way. He had never given them an hour'suneasiness since his birth. 

Dove wrote:

CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE ARISEN, MY DEAR PARENTS, WHICH MAKE ITINCONTROVERTIBLY CLEAR TO ME THAT THE YOUNG LADY TO WHOM I WAS PAYINGMY ADDRESSES WHEN I CONSULTED YOU IN SUMMER AND MYSELF WOULD NOT HAVEKNOWN TRUE HAPPINESS IN OUR UNION. ON MORE INTIMATE ACQUAINTANCE ITTRANSPIRED THAT OUR CHARACTERS WERE TOTALLY UNSUITED. I HAVE THEREFOREFOUND IT ADVISABLE TO BANISH THE AFFAIR FROM MY MIND AND TO DEVOTEMYSELF WHOLLY TO MY STUDIES. 

As time passed, and Dove was able to view what had happened moreobjectively, he began to feel and even to hint that, all thingsconsidered, he had had a rather lucky escape; and from this, it was notvery far to believing that if he had not just seen through the wholeaffair from the beginning, he had at any rate had some inkling of it;and now, instead of giving proofs of Ephie's affection, he narrated thegradual growth of his suspicions, and how these had ultimately beenverified. In conclusion, he congratulated himself on having drawn back, with open eyes, while there was still time. 

"Like his cheek!" said Madeleine. "But he could imagine himself intobeing the Shah of Persia, if he sat down and gave his mind to it. Idon't believe the snub is going to do him a bit of good. He bobs upagain like a cork, irrepressible. HAVE you heard him quote: 'Frailtythy name is woman!' or: 'If women could be fair and yet notfond'?--It's as good as a play. "

But altogether, Madeleine was very sharp of tongue since she learnt thepart Maurice had played in what, for a day, was the scandal of theEnglish-speaking colony. She had taken him to task at once, for his"lamentable interference. "

"Haven't I warned you, Maurice, not to mix yourself up in Louise'saffairs? No good can come of it. She breeds mischief. And if thatabsurd child had really drowned herself"--in the version of the storythat had reached Madeleine's ears, Maurice was represented fishingEphie bodily from the river--"you would have had to bear the wholebrunt of the blame. It ought to teach you a lesson. For you're just thekind of boy women will always take advantage of, a mean advantage, youknow. Consider how you were treated in this case--by both of them! Theywere not a scrap grateful to you for what you did--women never are. They only look down on you for letting them have their own way. Kindness and complaisance don't move them. A well-developed biceps anda cruel mouth--that's what they want, and that's all!" she wound upwith a flourish, in an extreme bad temper. 

She sat, one dull November afternoon, at her piano, and continued torun her fingers over the keys. Maurice leant on the lid, and listenedto her. But they had barely exchanged a word, when there was a lighttap at the door, and Krafft entered. Both started at his unexpectedappearance, and Madeleine cried: "You come in like a ghost, to frightenpeople out of their wits. "

Krafft was buttoned to the chin in a travelling-ulster, and looked paleand thin. 

"What news from St. Petersburg?" queried Madeleine with a certainasperity. 

But Maurice recalled an errand he had to do in town; and, on hearingthis, Krafft, who was lolling aimlessly, declared that he wouldaccompany him. 

"But you've only just come!" expostulated Madeleine. "What in the nameof goodness did you climb the stairs for?"

He patted her cheek, without replying. 

The young men went away together, Maurice puffing somewhatostentatiously at a cigarette. The wind was cold, and Krafft seemed toshrink into his ulster before it, keeping his hands deep in hispockets. But from time to time, he threw a side-glance at his friend, and at length asked, in the tone of appeal which Maurice found it hardto withstand: "What's the matter, LIEBSTER? Why are you sodifferent?--so changed?"

"The matter? Nothing--that I'm aware of, " said Maurice, and consideredthe tip of his cigarette. 

"Oh, yes, there is, " and Krafft laid a caressing hand on hiscompanion's arm. "You are changed. You're not frank with me. I feelsuch things at once. "

"Well, how on earth am I to know when to be frank with you, and whennot? Before you . .. Not very long ago, you behaved as if you didn'twant to have anything more to do with me. "

"You are changed, and, if I'm not mistaken, I know why, " said Krafft, ignoring his answer. "You have been listening to gossip--to what myenemies say of me. "

"I don't listen to gossip. And I didn't know you had enemies, as youcall them. "

"I?--and not have enemies?" He flared up as though Maurice hadaffronted him. "My good fellow, did you ever bear of a man worth hissalt, who didn't have enemies? It's the penalty one pays: only thedolts and the 'all-too-many' are friends with the whole world. No onewho has work to do that's worth doing, can avoid making enemies. Andwho knows what a friend is, who hasn't an enemy to match him? It's aquestion of light and shade, theme and counter-theme, of artisticproportion. " He laughed, in his superior way. But directly afterwards, he dropped back into his former humble tone. "But that you, my friend, are so ready to let yourself be influenced--I should not have believedit of you. "

"What I heard, I heard from Furst; and I have no reason to suspect himof falsehood. --Of course, if you assure me it was not true, that's adifferent thing. " He turned so sharply that he sent a beautiful flushover Krafft's face. "Come, give me your word, Heirtz, and things willbe straight again. "

But Krafft merely shrugged his shoulders, and his colour subsided asrapidly as it had risen. 

"Are you still such an outsider, " he asked, "after all this time--in mysociety--as to attach importance to a word? What is 'giving a word'? Doyou really think it is of any value? May I not give it tonight, andtake it back to-morrow, according to the mood I am in, according towhether I believe it myself or not, at the moment?--You think a thingmust either be true or not true? You are wrong. Do you believe, whenyou answer a question in the affirmative or the negative, that you areactually telling the truth? No, my friend, to be perfectly truthful onewould need to lose oneself in a maze of explanation, such as noquestioner would have the patience to listen to. One would need to takeinto account the innumerable threads that have gone to making thestatement what it is. Do you think, for instance, if I answered yes orno, in the present case, it would be true? If I deny what youheard--does that tell you that I have longed with all my heart for itto come to pass? Or say I admit it--I should need to unroll my lifebefore you to make you understand. No, there's no such thing asabsolute truth. If there were, the finest subtleties of existence wouldbe lost. There is neither positive truth nor positive untruth; life isnot so coarse-fibred as that. And only the grossest natures can besatisfied with a blunt yes or no. Truth?--it is one of the manymiserable conventions the human brain has tortured itself with, and itsfirst principle is an utter lack of the imaginative faculties. --A DIEU!"

VI. 

In the days that followed, Maurice threw himself heart and soul intohis work. He had lost ground of late, he saw it plainly now: after hisvigorous start, he had quickly grown slack. He was not, to-day, at thestage he ought to be, and there was not a doubt but that Schwarz sawit, too. Now that he, came to think of it, he had more than once beenaware of a studied coolness in the master's manner, of a ratherostentatious indifference to the quality of the work he brought to theclass: and this he knew by hearsay to be Schwarz's attitude towardsthose of his pupils in whom his interest was waning. If he, Maurice, wished to regain his place in the little Pasha's favour, he must worklike a coal-heaver. But the fact was, the strenuous industry to whichhe now condemned himself, was something of a relaxation after themental anxiety he had recently undergone; this striking of a black andwhite keyboard was a pleasant, thought-deadening employment, and couldbe got through, no matter what one's mood. --And so he rose early again, and did not leave the house till he had five hours' practice behind him. 

WER SICH DER EINSAMKEIT ERGIEBT, ACH, DER IST BALD ALLEIN: at the endof a fortnight, Maurice smiled to find the words of Goethe's songproved on himself. If he did not go to see his friends, none of themcame to him. Dove, who was at the stage of: "I told you so, " in theaffair of the Cayhills, had found fresh listeners, who were moresympathetic than Maurice could be expected to be: and Madeleine was upto her ears in work, as she phrased it, with the "C minor Beethoven. "

"Agility of finger equals softening of the brain" was a frequent gibeof Krafft's; and now and then, at the close of a hard day's work, Maurice believed that the saying contained a grain of truth. Openingboth halves of his window, he would lean out on the sill, too tired forconnected thought. But when dusk fell, he lay on the sofa, with hisarms clasped under his head, his knees crossed in the air. 

At first, in his new buoyancy of spirit, he was able to keep foolishideas behind him, as well as to put away all recollection of thedisagreeable events he had been mixed up in of late: after having, forweeks, borne a load that was too heavy for him, he breathed freely oncemore. The responsibility of taking care of Ephie had been removed fromhim--and this by far outweighed the little that he missed her. Thematter had wound up, too, in a fairly peaceable way; all beingconsidered, things might have been worse. So, at first, he throve underhis light-heartedness; and only now became aware how great the strainof the past few weeks had been. His chief sensation was relief, andalso of relief at being able to feel relieved--indeed, the moment evencame when he thought it would be possible calmly to accept the fact ofLouise having left the town, and of his never being likely to see heragain. 

Gradually, however, he began to be astonished at himself, and in thebackground of his mind, there arose a somewhat morbid curiosity, even aslight alarm, at his own indifference. He found it hard to understandhimself. Could his feelings, those feelings which, a week or two ago, he had believed unalterable, have changed in so short a time? Was hisnature one of so little stability? He began to consider himself withsomething approaching dismay, and though, all this time, he had beengoing about on a kind of mental tiptoe, for fear of rousing somethingthat might be dormant in him, he now could not help probing himself, inorder to see if the change he observed were genuine or not. And thiswith a steadily increasing frequency. Instead of continuing thankfulfor the respite, he ultimately grew uneasy under it. Am I a person ofthis weak, straw-like consistency, to be tossed about by every windthat blows? Is there something beneath it all that I cannot fathom?

He had not seen Louise since the night he had left her asleep, besidethe sofa; and he was resolved not to see her--not, at least, until shewished to see him. It was much better for him that the uncertainties ofthe bygone months did not begin anew; then, too, she had called him toher when she was in trouble, and not for anything in the world would hepresume on her appeal. Besides, his presence would recall to her theunpleasant details connected with Ephie's visit, which he hoped she hadby this time begun to forget. Thus he argued with himself, givingseveral reasons where one would have served; and the upshot of it was, that his own state of mind occupied him considerably. 

His friends noticed the improvement in him; the careworn expressionthat had settled down on him of late gave way to his old air ofanimation; and on all the small topics of the day, he brought asympathetic interest to bear, such as people had ceased to expect fromhim. Madeleine, in particular, was satisfied with her "boy, " as shetook to calling him. She noted and checked off, in wise silence, eachinch of his progress along the road of healthy endeavour; and therelations between them became almost as hearty as at the commencementof their friendship. Privately, she believed that the events of thepast month had taught him a lesson, which he would not soon forget. Itwas sufficient, however, if they had inspired him with a distrust ofLouise, which would keep him from her for the present; for Madeleinehad grounds for believing that before many weeks had passed, Louisewould have left Leipzig. 

So she kept Maurice as close to her as work permitted; and as thewinter's flood of concerts set in, in full force, he accompanied her, almost nightly, to the Old Gewandhaus or the ALBERTHALLE; for Madeleinewas an indefatigable concert-goer, and never missed a performer ofnote, rarely even a first appearance at the HOTEL DE PRUSSE or aBLUTHNER MATINEE. On the night she herself played in anAIBENDUNTERHALTUNG, with the easily gained success that attended allshe did, Maurice went with her to the green-room, and was the firstafterwards to tell her how her performance had "gone. " That sameevening she took him with her to the house of friends of hers, theHensels. There he met some of the best musical society of the place, made a pleasant impression, and was invited to return. 

Meanwhile, winter had set in, with extreme severity. Piercing northwinds drove down the narrow streets, and raged round the corners of theGewandhaus square: on emerging from the PROBE on a Wednesday morning, one's breath was cut clean off, and the tears raced down one's cheeks. When the wind dropped, there were hard black frosts--a deadly, stagnantkind of cold, which seemed to penetrate every pore of the skin andevery cranny of the house. Then came the snow, which fell for threedays and nights on end, and for several nights after, so that the townwas lost under a white pall: house-entrances were with difficulty keptfree, and the swept streets were banked with walls of snow, four andfive feet high. The night-frosts redoubled their keenness; the snowunderfoot crackled like electric sparks; the sleighs crunched theroads. But except for this, and for the tinkling of the sleigh-bells, the streets were as noiseless as though laid with straw, and especiallywhile fresh snow still formed a soft coating on the crisp layer below. All dripping water hung as icicles; water froze in ewers and pitchers;milk froze in cans and jugs; and this though the great stoves in thedwelling-rooms were heated to bursting-point. Red-nosed, red-eared men, on whose beards and moustaches the breath had turned to ice-drops, cried to one another at street-corners that such a winter had not beenknown for thirty years; and, as they spoke, they stamped their feet, and clapped their hands, to keep the chilly blood agoing. Women muffledand veiled themselves like Orientals, hardly showing the tips of theirnoses; and all manner of strange, antiquated fur-garments saw the day. At night, if one opened a window, and peered out at the housescrouching beneath their thick white load, and at the deserted, snow-bound streets, over which the street-lamps threw a pale, uncertainlight--at night, familiar things took on an unfamiliar aspect, and thewell-known streets might have been the untrodden ways that led to a newworld. 

Early in November, all ponds and pools were bearing, and forthwith manyhundreds of people forgot the severity of the weather, and thronged outwith their skates. 

Maurice was among the first. He was a passionate skater; and it was theone form of sport in which he excelled. As four o'clock came round, hecould contain himself no longer; he would rather have gone without hisdinner, than have missed, on the JOHANNATEICH, the two hours thatelapsed before the sweepers, crying: "FEIERABEND!" drove the skatersbefore them, with their brooms. In a tightly buttoned square jacket, the collar of which was turned up as far as it would go, with the flapsof his astrachan cap drawn over his cars, his hands in coarse woollengloves, Maurice defied the cold, flying round the two ponds that formedthe JOHANNATEICH, or practising intricate figures with a Canadianacquaintance in a corner. 

Madeleine watched him approvingly from one of the wooden bridges thatspanned the neck connecting the ponds. She rejoiced at his glowing faceand vigorous, boyish pleasure, also at the skill that marked him out asone of the best skaters present. For some time, Maurice tried in vainto persuade her to join him. Madeleine, usually so confident, was herediffident and timid. She had never in her life attempted to skate, andwas sure she would fall. And what should she do if she broke a thumb orstrained a finger?--with her PRUFUNG just before the door. She wouldnever have the courage to confess to Schwarz how it had happened; forhe was against "sport" in any form. But Maurice laughed at her fears. 

"There is not the least chance of your falling, " he cried up to her. "Do come down, Madeleine. Before you've gone round twice, you'll beable to throw off all those mufflings. "

Finally, she let herself be persuaded, and according to his promise, Maurice remained at her side from the moment of her first, hesitatingsteps, each of which was accompanied by a faint scream, to the timewhen, with the aid of only one of his hands, she made uncertain effortsat striking out. She did not learn quickly; but she was soon asenthusiastic a skater as Maurice himself; and he fell into the habit ofcalling for her, every afternoon, on his way to the ponds. 

Dove was also of assistance in the beginning, and, as usual, was wellup in the theory of the thing, though he did not shine in practice. 

"Oh, bother, never mind how you go at first. That'll come afterwards, "said Maurice impatiently. But Dove thought the rules should be observedfrom the beginning, and gave Madeleine minute instructions how to placeher feet. 

Towards five o'clock, the ice grew more crowded, and especially wasthis the case on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when the schools hadhalf-holidays. On one of these latter days, Maurice did not findMadeleine at home; and he had been on the ponds for nearly an hour, before he espied her on a bench beside the GARDEROBE, having her skatesput on by a blue-smocked attendant. He waved his cap to her, and skatedover. 

"Why are you so late?"

"Oh, thank goodness, there you are. I should never have dared to standup alone in this crowd. Aren't these children awful? Get away, youlittle brutes! If you touch me, I'll fall. --Here, give me change, " shesaid to the ice-man, holding out a twenty-pfennig piece. 

Maurice saw that she was unusually excited, and as soon as he had drawnher out of reach of the children, asked her the reason. 

"I've something interesting to tell you, Maurice. "

But here Dove, coming up behind, took possession of her left hand, withno other greeting than the military salute, which, on the ice, headopted for all his friends, male and female, alike; and Madeleinehastily swallowed the rest of her sentence. 

They skated round the larger of the ponds several times withoutstopping. The cold evening air stung their faces; the sun had gone downin a lurid haze; Madeleine's skirts swayed behind her and lent her afictitious grace. 

But presently she cried a halt, and while she rested in a quiet corner, they watched Maurice doing a complicated figure, which he and hisCanadian friend had invented the day before. Dove was explaining how itwas done--"It is really not so hard as it looks"--when, with a cry of"ACHTUNG!" some one whizzed in among them, scattered the group, and, revolving on himself, ended with a jump in the air. It was James. Hetook out his handkerchief and blew his nose, in the most unconcernedmanner possible. 

"I don't think such acrobatic tricks should be allowed, " said Madeleinedisapprovingly; she had been forced to grab Dove's arm to keep herbalance. 

"Say, do you boys know the river has six inches and will be opento-morrow, if it isn't to-day?" asked James, stooping to tighten astrap. 

"Is that so? Oh gee, that's fine!" cried Miss Martin, who had skatedleisurely up in his rear. "Say, you people, why don't we fix up a partyan' go up it nights? A lady in my boarding-house done that with somefolks she was acquainted with last year. Seems to me we oughtn't to bebehind. "

Miss Martin was a skilled and graceful skater, and looked her best in adark fur hat and jacket, which set off her abundance of pale flaxenhair. Others had followed her, and it was resolved to form a party forthe following evening, provided Dove had previously ascertained if theriver actually was "free, " in order that they ran no risk of beingignominiously turned off. 

"The ice may be a bit rough, but it's a fine run to Connewitz. "

"An' by moonlight, too--but say, is there a moon? Why, I presume thereought to be, " said Miss Martin. 

"'Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?'" quoted Dove, examining a tiny pocket-calendar. 

"Oh gee, that's fine!" repeated Miss Martin, on hearing his answer. "Say, we must dance a FRANCAISE. Mr. Guest, you an' I'll be partners, Isurmise, " and ceasing to waltz and pirouette with James, she took along sweep, then stood steady, and let her skates bear her out to themiddle of the pond. Her skirts clung close in front, and swept outbehind her lithe figure, until it was lost in the crowd. 

"Don't you wish YOU could skate like that?" asked the sharp-tonguedlittle student, called Dickensey, who was standing beside Madeleine. Madeleine, who held him in contempt because his trousers were baggy atthe knees, and because he had once appeared at a ball in white cottongloves, answered with asperity that there were other things in lifebesides skating. She had no further chance of speaking to Maurice inprivate, so postponed telling her news till the following evening. 

Shortly after eight o'clock, the next night, a noisy party whistled andhallooed in the street below Maurice's window. He was the last to join, and then some ten or eleven of them picked their steps along thehard-frozen ruts of the SCHLEUSSIGER WEG, a road that followed theriver to the outskirts of the town. Just above the GERMANIABAD, a roughscat had been erected on the ice, for the convenience of skaters. Theywere the first to make use of it; the snow before it was untrodden; andthe Pleisse wound white and solitary between its banks of snow. 

They set off in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, each striking out forhimself. When, however, they had passed the narrower windings, goneunder the iron bridge which was low enough to catch the unwary by theforehead, and when the full breadth of the river was before them, theytook hands, and, forming a long line, skated in time to the songs someone struck up, and in which all joined: THE ROSE OF SHARON, JINGLEBELLS, THERE IS A TAVERN IN OUR TOWN. As they advanced to the cornerswhere the big trees trailed their naked branches on the ice, just as insummer they sank their leaves in the water, Miss Jensen, who, despiteher proportions, was a surprisingly good skater, sent her big voiceover the snow-bound stillness in an aria from the PROPHET; and afterthis, Miss Martin, no; to be done, struck up the popular ALLERSEELEN. This was the song of the hour; they all knew it, and up and down andacross the ice rang out their voices in unison: WIE EINST IM MAI, WIEEINST IM MAI. 

Inside Wagner's WALDCAFE at Connewitz, they sat closely packed roundone of the wooden tables, and drank beer and coffee, and ate BERLINERPFANNKUCHEN. The great iron stove was almost red-hot; the ladies threwoff their wrappings; cold faces glowed and burnt, and frozen handstingled. One and all were in high spirits, and the jollity reached aclimax when, having exchanged hats, James and Miss Jensen cleared aspace in the middle of the floor and danced a nigger-dance, the ladywith her skirts tucked up above her ankles. In the adjoining room, someone began to play a concertina, and then two or three couples stood upand danced, with much laughter and many outcries at the narrowness ofthe space. Even Dove joined in, his partner being a very prettyAmerican, whom Miss Martin had brought with her, and whose side Dovehad not left for a moment. Only Madeleine and Dickensey sat aloof, andfor once were agreed: Americans were really "very bad form. " There wasno livelier pair than Maurice and Miss Martin; the latter's voice couldbe heard above all others, as she taught Maurice new steps in a cornerof the room. Her flaxen hair had partly come loose, and she did notstop to put it up. They were the first to run through the dark garden, past the snow-laden benches and arbours, which, in summer, were buriedin greenery; and, from the low wooden landing place, they jumped handin hand on to the ice, and had shot a long way down the river beforeany of the rest could follow them. 

But this did not please Madeleine. As it was, she was vexed at nothaving had the opportunity of a quiet word with Maurice; and when shehad laboriously skated up, with Dickensey, to the spot where, in abright splash of moonlight, Maurice and Miss Martin were cuttingingenious capers, she cried to the former in a peremptory tone:"There's something wrong with my skate, Maurice. Will you look at it, please?" and as sharply declined Dickensey's proffered aid. 

Maurice came to her side at once, and in this way she detained him. ButDickensey hovered not far off, and Miss Martin was still in sight. Madeleine caught her skate in a crack, fell on her knee, and said shehad now loosened the strap altogether. She sat down on a heap of snow, and Dickensey's shade vanished good-naturedly round a corner. 

"Well, YOU seem to be enjoying yourself, " she said as Maurice drew offhis gloves and knelt down. 

"Why, yes, aren't you?" he replied so frankly that she did not continuethe subject. 

"I've been trying all the evening to get a word with you. I told youyesterday, you remember, that I wanted to speak to you. Sit down here, for a moment, so that we can talk in peace, " and she spread part of herskirt over the snow-heap. 

Maurice complied, and she could not discover any trace of reluctance inhis manner. 

"I want your advice, " she continued. "I was taken quite by surprisemyself. Schwarz sent for me, you know, after counterpoint. It was aboutmy PRUFUNG at Easter. If I play then, it's a case of the C minorBeethoven. Well, now he says it's a thousand pities for me to break offjust at the stage I'm at, and he wants me to stay for another year. IfI do, he'll give me the G major--that's a temptation, isn't it? On theother hand, I shall have been here my full time--three years--atEaster. That's a year longer than I originally intended, and I feel I'mgetting too old to be a pupil. But this talk with Schwarz has upset myplans. I'm naturally flattered at his interesting himself in me. Hewouldn't do it for every one. And I do feel I could gain an immensedeal in another year. --Now, what do you think?"

"Why, stay, of course, Madeleine. If you can afford it, that is. Ican't imagine anyone wanting to leave. "

"Oh, my capital will last so long, and it's a good enough investment. "

"But wasn't a place being kept open for you in a school?"

"Yes; but I don't think a year more or less will make much differenceto them. I must sound them, of course, though, " said Madeleine, and didnot mention that she had written and posted the letter the nightbefore. "Then you advise me to stay?"

"Why, of course, " he repeated, and was mildly astonished at her. "Ifeverything is as smooth as you say. "

"You would miss me, if I left?"

"Why, of course I should, " he said again, and wondered what in theworld she was driving at. 

"Well, all the better, " replied Madeleine. "For when one has really gotto like a person, one would rather it made a difference than not. "

She was silent after this, and sat looking down the stretch of ice theyhad travelled: the moon was behind a cloud, and the woods on eitherside were masses of dense black shadow. Not a soul was in sight; theriver was like a deserted highway. Madeleine stared down it, and didnot feel exactly satisfied with the result of her investigation. Shehad not expected anything extraordinary--Heaven forbid!--but she hadbeen uncomfortably conscious of Maurice's surprise. To her last remark, he had made no answer: he was occupied with the screw of one of hisskates. 

She drew his attention to the fact that, if she remained in Leipzig foranother twelvemonth, they would finish at the same time; and thereuponshe sketched out a plan of them going somewhere together, and startinga music-school of their own. Maurice, who thought she was jesting, laughingly assented. But Madeleine was in earnest: "Other people havedone it--why shouldn't we? We could take a 'cellist with us, and go toAmerica, or Australia, or Canada--there are hundreds of places. Andthere's a great deal of money in it, I'm sure. A little capital wouldbe needed to begin with, but not much, and I could supply that. You'vealways said you dreaded going back to the English provinces todecay--here's your chance!"

She saw the whole scheme cut and dried before her. As they, skatedafter the rest, she continued to enlarge upon it, in a detailed waythat astonished Maurice. He confessed that, with a head like hers toconduct it, such a plan stood a fair chance of success; and thusencouraged, Madeleine undertook to make a kind of beginning at once, bysounding some of the numerous friends she had, scattered throughAmerica. Her idea was that they should go over together, and travel tovarious places, giving concerts, and acquainting themselves, as theydid so, with the musical conditions of the towns they visited. 

"And the 'cellist shall be an American--that will draw. "

According to the pace at which they were skating, the others shouldhave remained well out of reach. But on turning a corner, they cameupon the whole party dancing a FRANCAISE--which two memberswhistled--on a patch of ice that was smoother than the rest. 

"Here, Guest, come along, we want you, " was the cry as soon as Mauriceappeared; and, to Madeleine's deep displeasure, she was thrown on Dove, whose skill had not sufficed. When the dancing was over, Maurice oncemore found himself with Miss Martin, whom, for some distance, he pushedbefore him, she standing steady on her skates, and talking to him overher shoulder. 

"That wasn't a bit pretty of you, Mr. Guest, " she asserted, with herlong, slow, twanged speech. "It was fixed up yesterday, I recollect, that you were to dance the FRANCAISE with me. Yes, indeed. An' then Ihad to take up with Mr. Dove. Now Mr. Dove is just a lovely gentleman, but he don't skate elegantly, an' he nearly tumbled me twice. Yes, indeed. But I presume when Miss Wade says come, then you're mostobliged to go. "

"How is it one don't ever see you now?" she queried a moment later. "Itisn't anyhow so pleasurable at dinner as it used to be. But I hearyou're working most hard--it's to' bad. "

"It's what one comes to here. "

"I guess it is. But I do like to see my friends once in a while. Say, now, Mr. Guest, won't you drink coffee with me one afternoon? I'll makeyou some real American coffee if you do, sir. What they call coffeehere don't count. "

She turned, offered him her hand, and they began to skate in long, outward curving lines. 

"I think one has just a fine time here, don't you?" she continued. "Momma, she came right with me, an' stopped a bit, till I was fixed upin a boarding-house. But she didn't find it agreeable, no sir. Shemissed America, an' presumed I would, too. When she was leaving, shesaid to me: 'EI'nor Martin, if you find you can't endure it among theseDutch, just you cable, and poppa he'll come along an' fetch you righthome, ' But I'm sure I haven't desired to quit, no, not once. I thinkit's just fine. But then I've gotten me so many friends I don't everneed to feel lonesome. Why, my friend Susie Fay, she says: 'Why, EI'nor, I guess you're acquainted with most every one in the place. 'An' I reckon she's not far out. Anyways there ain't more than twoAmericans in the city I don't know. An' I see most all strangers thatcome. Say, are you acquainted with Miss Moses? She's from Chicago, an'resides in a boarding-house way down by the COLONNADEN. I gotacquainted with her yesterday. She's a lovely lady, an', why, she'sjust as smart as she can be. Say, if you like, I'll invite her along, so you can get acquainted with her too. "

Maurice expressed pleasure at the prospect; and Miss Martin continuedto rattle on, with easy frankness, of herself, her family, and herfriends. He listened vaguely, with half an ear, since it was onlyrequired of him to throw in an occasional word of assent. But suddenlyhis attention was arrested, and brought headlong back to what she wassaying: in the string of names that fell from her tongue, he believedhe had caught one he knew. 

"Miss Dufrayer?" he queried. 

"That's it, " replied his companion. "Louise Dufrayer. Well, sir, as Iwas going on to remark, when first I was acquainted with her, she wasjust as sweet as she could be; yes, indeed; why, she was just dandy. But she hasn't behaved a bit pretty--I presume you heard tell of whattook place here this fall?"

"Then you know Miss Dufrayer?"

"Yes, indeed. But I don't see her any more, an' I guess I don't wantto. Not but what I've heard she feels pretty mean about it now--begpardon?--how I know? Why, indeed, the other day, Schwarz come in an'told us how she's moping what she can--moping herself to death--if Irecollect, those were his very words. Yes, indeed. She don't takelessons no more, I presume. I think she should go right away from thiscity. It ain't possible to be acquainted with her any more, for allshe's so lonesome, an' one feels sort of bad about it, yes, indeed. Butmomma, the last thing she said to me was: 'Now EI'nor Martin, just keepyour eyes open, an' don't get acquainted with people you might feel badabout afterwards. ' An' I presume momma was right. I don't-- Oh, say, dolook at her, isn't she a peach?"--this, as her pretty friend, with Dovein tow, came gliding up to them. "Say, Susie Fay, are you acquaintedwith Mr. Guest?"

"MR. Guest. Pleased to know you, " said Susie cordially; and Miss Martinwas good-natured enough to skate off with Dove, leaving Maurice to herfriend. 

But afterwards, at the bench, as he was undoing Madeleine's skates, heoverheard pretty Susie remark, without much care to moderate her voice:"Say, EI'nor Martin, that's the quietest sort of young man I've evershown round a district. Why, seems to me, he couldn't say 'shoh. ' Guessyou shouldn't have left us, EI'nor. "

And Miss Martin guessed so, too. 

VII. 

When he had seen Madeleine home, Maurice returned to his room, and notfeeling inclined to sleep, sat down to read. But his thoughts strayed;he forgot to turn the page; and sat staring over the book at thepattern of the tablecloth. Incidents of the evening flashed before him:Miss Jensen, in James's hat, with her skirts pinned up; Madeleineearnest and decisive on the bank of snow; the maze and laughter of theFRANCAISE; Miss Martin's slim, straight figure as he pushed her beforehim. He did not try to control these details, nor was he conscious of amental effort; they stood out for an instant, as vivid sensations, thenglided by, to make room for others. But, as he let them pass, he becameaware that below them, in depths of his mind he had believedundisturbed, there was present a feeling of strange unhappiness, whichhe did not know the cause of: these sharp pictures resembled an attempton the part of his mind, to deceive him as to what was really going onin him. But he did not want to know, and he allowed his thoughts totake wider flights: recalling the scheme Madeleine had proposed, heconsidered it with a clearness of view, which, at the time, had beenimpossible. From this, he turned to America itself, and reflected onthe opportunities the country offered. He saw the two of them sweepingthrough vast tracts of uncultivated land, in a train that outdid allreal trains in swiftness; saw unknown tropical places, where the yellowfruit hung low and heavy, and people walked shadeless, sandy roads, inwhite hats, under white umbrellas. He saw Madeleine and himself on theawning-spanned deck of an ocean steamer, anchoring in a harbour wherethe sea was the colour of turquoise, touched to sapphire where themountains came down to the shore. 

"Moping herself to death": the phrase crystallised in his brain withsuch suddenness that he said it aloud. Now he knew what it was that wastroubling him. He had not consciously recalled the words, nor had theyeven made a very incisive impression on him at the time; but they hadevidently lain dormant, now to return and to strike him, as if noothers had been said. He explained to himself what they meant. It wasthis: outside, in the crisp, stinging air, people lived and moved, busywith many matters, or sported, as he and his companions had done thatevening: inside, she sat alone, mournful, forsaken. He saw her in thedark sofacorner, with her head on her hands. Day passed and nightpassed, but she was always in the same place; and her head was bowed solow that her white fingers were lost in the waves of her hair. He sawher thus with the distinctness of a vision, and except in this waycould not see her at all. 

He felt it little short of shameful that he should have carelesslyamused himself; and, as always where she was concerned, a deep, unreasoning sense of his own unworthiness, filled him. He demanded ofhimself, with a new energy, what he could do to help her. Fantasticplans rose as usual in his mind, and as usual were dismissed. For theone thing he was determined not to do, was to thrust himself on heruncalled. Her solitude was of her own choosing, and no one had theright to break in upon it. It was perhaps her way of doing penance;and, at this thought, he felt a thrill of satisfaction. 

At night, he consoled himself that things would seem different in themorning; but when he wakened from a restless sleep, crowded with dreamsone more grotesque than another, he was still prone to be gloomy. Hecould think more clearly by daylight--that was all: his pityingsympathy for her had only increased. It interfered with everything hedid; just as it had formerly done--just in the old way. And he had beenon the brink of believing himself grown indifferent, and stronger incommon sense. Fool that he was! Only a word was needed to bring hiscard-house down. The placidity of the past weeks had been a merecoating of thin ice, which had given way beneath the first test. Adistrust of himself took him, a distrust so deep that it amounted toaversion; for in his present state of mind he discerned only adespicable weakness. But though he was thus bewildered at his owninconsistency, he was still assured that he would not approachLouise--not, that is, unless she sent for him. So much control he stillhad over his actions: and he went so far as to make his staying away atouchstone of his stability. This, too, although reason told him theend of it all would be, that Louise would actually leave Leipzig, without sending for him, or even remembering his existence. 

He worked steadily enough. A skilled observer might have remarked aslight contraction of the corners of his mouth; none of his friends, however, noticed anything, with the exception of Madeleine, and all shesaid was: "You look so cross sometimes. Is anything the matter?"

Late one afternoon, they were on the ice as usual. While Madeleinetalked to Dickensey, Maurice practised beside them. In making aparticularly complicated gyration, he all but overbalanced himself, andhis cap fell on the ice. As he was brushing the snow off it, he chancedto raise his eyes. A number of people were standing on the woodenbridge, watching the skaters; to the front, some children climbed andpushed on the wooden railing. His eye was ranging carelessly over them, when he started so violently that he again let his cap drop. He pickedit up, threw another hasty look at the bridge, then turned and skatedsome distance away, where he could see without being seen. Yes, he hadnot been mistaken; it was Louise; he recognised her although a fur hatalmost covered her hair. She was gazing down, with an intentness heknew in her; one hand rested on the parapet. And then, as he looked, his blood seemed to congeal: she was not alone; he saw her turn andspeak to some one behind her. For a moment things swam before him. Then, a blind curiosity drove him forward to find out whom she spoketo. People moved on the bridge, obstructing his view, then several wentaway, and there was no further hindrance to his seeing: her companionwas the shabby little Englishman, of doubtful reputation, with whom hehad met her once or twice that summer. He felt himself grow cold. Butnow that he had certainty, his chief idea was to prevent the othersfrom knowing, too; he grew sick at the thought of Madeleine's sharpcomments, and Dickensey's cynicism. Rejoining them, he insisted--soimperiously that Madeleine showed surprise--on their skating with himon the further pond; and he kept them going round and round without apause. 

When the bridge was empty, and he had made sure that Louise was notstanding anywhere about the edge of the ice, he left his companions, and, without explanation, crossed to the benches and took off hisskates. He did not, however, go home; he went into the SCHEIBENHOLZ, and from there along outlying roads till he reached the river; andthen, screwing on his skates again, he struck out with his face to thewind. Dusk was falling; at first he met some skaters making for home;but these were few, and he soon left them behind. When the state of theice did not allow of his skating further, he plunged into the woodsagain, beyond Connewitz, tumbling in his haste, tripping oversnow-bound roots, sinking kneedeep in the soft snow. His endeavour wasto exhaust himself. If he sat at home now, before this fever was out ofhim, he might be tempted to knock his head against the wall of hisroom. Movement, space, air--plenty of air!--that was what he needed. 

Hitherto, he had been surprised at his own conduct; now he was aghast:the hot rush of jealousy that had swept through him at the sight of thecouple on the bridge, was a revelation even to himself. His previousfeelings had been those of a child compared with this--a mere weakrevolt against the inevitable. But what had now happened was notinevitable; that was the sting of it: it was a violent chance-effect. And his distress was so keen that, for the first time, she, too, had tobear her share of blame. He said jeeringly to himself, that, quixoticas ever, he had held aloof from her, leaving her in solitude to anatonement of his own imagining; and meanwhile, some one who was nottroubled by foolish ideals stepped in and took his place. For it WAShis place; he could not rid himself of that belief. If anyone had aright to be at her side it was he, unless, indeed, all that he hadundergone on her behalf during the past months counted for nothing. 

Of course this Eggis was an unscrupulous fellow; but it was just suchmen as this--he might note that for future use--who won where otherslost. At the same time, he shrank from the idea of imitating him; andeven had he been bold enough, not a single errand could he devise toserve him as an excuse. He could not go to her and say: I come becauseI have seen you with some one else. And yet that would be the truth;and it would lurk beneath all he said. 

The days of anxiety that followed were hard to bear. He dreaded everystreet-corner, for fear Louise and the other should turn it; dreadedraising his eyes to the bridges over the ice; and was so irritable intemper that Madeleine suggested he should go to Dresden in theChristmas holidays, for change of air. 

For, over all this, Christmas had come down--the season of gift-making, and glittering Christmas trees, of BOWLE, STOLLEN, and HONIGKUCHEN. Fora fortnight beforehand, the open squares and places were set out withfir-trees of all sizes--their pungent fragrance met one at every turn:the shops were ablaze till late evening, crowded with eagerly seekingpurchasers; the streets were impassible for the masses of countrypeople that thronged them. Every one carried brown paper parcels, andwas in a hurry. As the time drew near, subordinates and officials grewnoticeably polite; the very houseporter touched his cap at yourapproach. Bakers' shops were piled high with WEIHNACHTSSTOLLEN, whichwere a special mark of the festival: cakes shaped like torpedoes, whosesugared, almonded coats brisked brown and tempting. But the spicy scentof the firs was the motive that recurred most persistently: it clungeven to the stairways of the houses. 

Maurice had assisted Madeleine with her circumstantial shopping; and, at dusk on Christmas Eve, he helped her to carry her parcels to thehouse of some German friends. He himself was invited to Miss Jensen's, where a party of English and Americans would celebrate the evening intheir own fashion; but not till eight o'clock. When he had picked outat a confectioner's, a TORTE for the Fursts, he did not know how tokill time. He was in an unsettled mood, and the atmosphere ofexcitement, which had penetrated the familiar details of life, jarredon him. It seemed absurdly childish, the way in which even the grown-uppart of the population surrendered itself to the sentimental pleasuresof the season. But foreigners were only big children; or, at least, they could lay aside age and dignity at will. He felt misanthropic, andwent for a long walk; and when he had passed the last tree-market, where poor buyers were bargaining for the poor trees that were left, hemet only isolated stragglers. In some houses, the trees were alreadylighted. 

On his return, he went to a flower-shop in the KONIGSPLATZ, and chosean azalea to take to Miss Jensen. While he was waiting for the pot tobe swathed in crimped paper, his eye was caught by a large bunch of redand yellow roses, which stood in a vase at the back of the counter. Heregarded them for a moment, without conscious thought; then, suddenlycolouring, he stretched out his hand. 

"I'll take those roses, too. What do they cost?"

The girl who served him--a very pretty girl, with plaits ofstraw-coloured hair, wound Madonna-like round her head--named a sumthat seemed exorbitant to his inexperience, and told a wordy story ofhow they had been ordered, and then countermanded at the last moment. 

"A pity. Such fine flowers!"

Her interest was awakened in the rather shabby young man who paid theprice without flinching; and she threw inquisitive looks at him as shewrapped the roses in tissue-paper. 

A moment later, Maurice was in the street with the flowers in his hand. He had acted so spontaneously that he now believed his mind to havebeen made up before he entered the shop; no, more, as if all that hadhappened during the past week had led straight up to his impulsiveaction. Or was it only that, at the sight of the flowers, a kind ofrefrain had begun to run through his head: she loves roses, loves roses?

But he did not give himself time for reflection; he hurried through thecold night air, sheltering the flowers under his coat. Soon he was oncemore in the BRUDERSTRASSE, on the stair, every step of which, though hehad only climbed it some three or four times, he seemed to know byheart. As, however, he waited for the door to be opened, his heartmisgave him; he was not sure how she would regard his gift, and, in aburst of cowardice, he resolved just to hand in the roses, without evenleaving his name. But his first ring remained unanswered, and before herang again, he had time to be afraid she would not be at home--asimple, but disappointing solution. 

There was another pause. Then he heard sounds, steps came along thepassage, and the door was opened by Louise herself. 

He was so unprepared for this that he could not collect his wits; hethrust the flowers into her hand, with a few stammered words, and hisfoot was on the stair before she could make a movement to stop him. 

Louise had peered out from the darkness of the passage to the dusk ofthe landing, with the air of one roused from sleep. She looked from himto the roses in her hand, and back at him. He tried to say somethingelse, raised his hat, and was about to go. But, when she saw this, sheimpulsively stepped towards him. 

"Are they for me?" she asked. And added: "Will you not come in? Please, come in. "

At the sound of her voice, Maurice came back from the stair-head. Butit was not possible for him to stay: friends--engaged--a promise oflong standing. 

"Ah then . .. Of course. " She retreated into the shadow of the doorway. "But I am quite alone. There is no one in but me. "

"Why, however does that happen?" Maurice asked quickly, and was readyat once to be wrath with all the world. He paused irresolute, with hishand on the banisters. 

"I said I didn't mind. But it is lonely. "

"I should think it was. --On this night of all others, too. "

He followed her down the passage. In the room there was no light exceptwhat played on the walls from the streetlamps, the blinds being stillundrawn. She had been sitting in the dark. Now, she took the globe offthe lamp, and would have lighted it, but she could not find matches. 

"Let me do it, " said Maurice, taking out his own; and, over the head ofthis trifling service, he had a feeling of intense satisfaction. By thelight that was cast on the table, he watched her free the roses fromtheir paper, and raise them to her face. She did not mention themagain, but it was ample thanks to see her touch several of them singly, as she put them in a jug of water. 

But this done, they sat on opposite sides of the table, and had nothingto say to each other. After each banal observation he made came aheart-rending pause; she let a subject drop as soon as it was broached. It was over two months now since Maurice had seen her, and he wasstartled by the change that had taken place in her. Her face seemed tohave grown longer; and there were hollows in the fine oval of thecheeks, in consequence of which the nose looked larger, and morepinched. The chin-lines were sharpened, the eyes more sunken, while theshadows beneath them were as dark as though they were plastered on withbistre. But it was chiefly the expression of the face that had altered:the lifelessness of the eyes was new to it, and the firm compression ofthe mouth: now, when she smiled, no thin line of white appeared, suchas he had been used to watch for. 

Even more marked than this, though, was the change that had taken placein her manner. He had known her as passionately self-assertive; and hecould not now accustom himself to the condition of apathy in which hefound her. "Moping to death" had been no exaggeration; help was neededhere, and at once, if she were not to be irretrievably injured. 

As he thought these things, he talked at random. There were not manytopics, however, that could be touched on with impunity, and hereturned more than once to the ice and the skating, as offering a kindof neutral ground, on which he was safe. And Louise listened, andsometimes assented; but her look was that of one who listens to theaffairs of another world. Could she not be persuaded to join them onthe JOHANNATEICH, he was asking her. What matter though she did notskate! It was easily learned. Madeleine had been a beginner thatwinter, and now seldom missed an afternoon. 

"Oh, if Madeleine is there, I should not go, " she said with a touch ofthe old arrogance. 

Then he told her of the frozen river, with its long, lonely, grey-whitereaches. Her eyes kindled at this, he fancied, and in her answer wasmore of herself. "I have never trodden on ice in my life. Oh, I shouldbe afraid--horribly afraid!"

For those who did not skate there were chairs, he urged--big, green-painted, sledge-like chairs, which ran smoothly. The ice was manyinches thick; there was not the least need to be afraid. 

But she only smiled, and did not answer. 

"Then I can't persuade you?" he asked, and was annoyed at his ownpowerlessness. She can go with Eggis, he told himself, andsimultaneously spoke out the thought. "I saw you on the bridge theother day. "

But if he had imagined this would rouse her, he was wrong. 

"Yes?" she said indifferently, and with that laming want of curiositywhich prevents a subject from being followed up. 

They sat in silence for some seconds. With her fingers, she pulled atthe fringe of the tablecloth. Then, all of a sudden rising from herchair, she went over to the jug of roses, which she had placed on thewriting-table, bent over the flowers with a kind of perceptiblehesitation, and as suddenly came back to her seat. 

"Suppose we went to-night. " she said, and for the first time lookedhard at Maurice. 

"To-night?" he had echoed, before he could check himself. 

"Ah yes--I forgot. You are going out. "

"That's the least of it, " he answered, and stood up, fearful lest sheshould sink back into her former listlessness. "But it's Christmas Eve. There wouldn't be a soul on the river but ourselves. Are you sure youwould like it?"

"Just for that reason, " she replied, and wound her handkerchief in andout of her hands, so afraid was she now that he would refuse. "I couldbe ready in five minutes. "

With his brain in a whirl, Maurice went back to the flowershop, and, having written a few words of apology on a card, ordered this to besent with his purchase to Miss Jensen. When he returned, Louise wasready. But he was not satisfied: she did not know how cold it would be:and he made her put on a heavy jacket under her fur cape, and take asilk shawl, in which, if necessary, she could muffle up her head. Hehimself carried a travelling-rug for her knees. 

"As if we were going on a journey!" she said, as she obeyed him. Hereyes shone with a spark of their old light, in approval of theadventurous nature of their undertaking. 

The hard-frozen streets, over which a cutting wind drove, weredeserted. In many windows, the golden glory of the CHRISTBAUM wasvisible; the steep blackness of the houses was splashed with patches oflight. At intervals, a belated holidaymaker was still to be met withhurrying townwards: only they two were leaving the town, and itsinnocent revels, behind them. Maurice had a somewhat guilty feelingabout the whole affair: they also belonged by rights to the townto-night. He was aware, too, of a vague anxiety, which he could notrepress; and these feelings successfully prevented him taking an unduepleasure in what was happening to him. He had swung his skates, fetchedin passing, over his shoulder; and they walked as quickly as theslippery snow permitted. Louise had not spoken since leaving the house;she also stood mutely by, while the astonished boatman, knocked out inthe middle of his festivities, unlocked the boat-shed where theice-chairs were kept. The Christmas punch had made him merry; hemultiplied words, and was even a little facetious at their expense. According to him, a snow-storm was imminent, and he warned them not tobe late in returning. 

Maurice helped Louise into the chair, and wrapped the rug round her. Ifshe were really afraid, as she had asserted, she did not show it. Evenafter they had started, she remained as silent as before; indeed, onlooking back, Maurice thought they had not exchanged a word all the wayto Connewitz. He pushed in a kind of dream; the wind was with them, andit was comparatively easy work; but the ice was rough, and too hard, and there were seamy cracks to be avoided. The snow had drifted intohuge piles at the sides; and, as they advanced, it lay unswept on theirtrack. It was a hazily bright night, but rapid clouds were passing. Nota creature was to be seen: had a rift opened in the ice, and had theytwo gone through it, the mystery of their disappearance would neverhave been solved. 

Slight, upright, unfathomable as the night, Louise sat before him. Whather thoughts were on this fantastic journey, he never knew, nor justwhat secret nerve in her was satisfied by it. By leaning sideways, hecould see that her eyes were fixed on the grey-white stretch to betravelled: her warm breath came back to him; and the coil of her hair, with its piquant odour, was so close that, by bending, he could havetouched it with his lips. But he was still in too detached a mood to behappy; he felt, throughout, as if all this were happening to some oneelse, not to him. 

At their journey's end, he helped her, cold and stiff, along the snowypath to the WALDCAFE. In a corner of the big room, which was empty, they sat beside the stove, before cups of steaming coffee. The landladyserved them herself, and looked with the same curious interest as theboatman at the forlorn pair. 

Louise had laid her fur cap aside with her other wraps, and had drawnoff her gloves; and now she sat with her hand propping her chin. Shewas still disinclined to speak; from the expression of her eyes, Maurice judged that her thought were very far away. Sitting oppositeher, he shaded his own eyes with his hand, and scrutinised her closely. In the stronger light of this room, he could see more plainly thanbefore the havoc trouble had made of her face. And yet, in spite of theshadows that had descended on it, it was still to him the most adorableface in the world. He could not analyse his feelings any better nowthan in the beginning; but this face had exactly the same effect uponhim now as then. It seemed to be a matter of the nerves. Nor was it theface alone: it was also the lines of throat and chin, when she turnedher head; it was the gesture with which she fingered the knot of hairon her neck; above all, her hands, whose every movement was full ofmeaning: yes, these things sent answering ripples through him, as sounddoes through air. 

He had stared too openly: she felt his eyes, and raised her own. For afew seconds, they looked at each other. Then she held out her hand. 

"You are my friend. "

He pressed it, without replying; he could not think of anythingsuitable to say; what rose to his lips was too emotional, tootell-tale. But he made a vow that, from this day on, she should neverdoubt the truth of what she said. 

"You are my friend. "

He would take care of her as no one had ever yet tried to do. She mightsafely give herself into his charge. The unobtrusive aid that wasmingled tenderness and respect, should always be hers. 

"Are you warmer now?"

He could not altogether suppress the new note that had got into hisvoice. All strangeness seemed to have been swept away between them; hewas wide-awake to the fact that he was sitting alone with her, apartfrom the rest of the world. 

He looked at his watch: it was time to go; but she begged for a littlelonger, and so they sat on for another half-hour, in the warm anddrowsy stillness. 

Outside, they found a leaden sky; and they had not gone far before snowbegan to fall: great flakes came flying to them, smiting their faces, stinging their eyes, melting on their lips. The wind was against them;they were exposed to the full force of the blizzard. Maurice pushedtill he panted; but their progress was slow. At intervals, he stopped, to shake the snow off the rug, and to enwrap Louise afresh; and eachviolent gust that met him when he turned a corner, smote him doubly;for he pictured to himself the fury with which it must hurl itselfagainst her, sitting motionless before it. 

It took them twice as long to return; and when Louise tried to get outof the chair, she found herself so paralysed with cold that she couldhardly stand. Blinded by the snow, she clung to Maurice's arm; he heardher teeth chatter, as they toiled their way along the ARNDTSTRASSE, through the thick, new snow-layer. Not a droschke was to be seen; andthey were half-way home before they met one. The driver was drunk orasleep, and had first to be roused. Louise sank limply into a corner. 

The cab slithered and slipped over the dangerous roads, jolting themfrom side to side. Maurice had laid the rug across her knees, and shehad ceased to shiver. But, by the light of a street-lamp which theypassed, he was dismayed to see that tears were running down her cheeks. 

"What is it? Are you so cold?--Just a little patience. We shall soon bethere. "

He took her hand, and chafed it. At this, she began to cry. He did notknow how to comfort her, and looked out of the window, scanning eachhouse they passed, to see if it were not the last. She was still cryingwhen the cab drew up. The house-key had been forgotten; there wasnothing for it but to ring for the landlady, and to stand in the windtill she came down. The old woman was not so astonished as Maurice hadexpected; but she was very wroth at the folly of the proceeding, anddid not scruple to say so. 

"SO 'NE DUMMHEIT, SO 'NE DUMMHEIT!" she mumbled, as, between them, theygot Louise up the stairs; and she treated Maurice's advice concerningcordials and hot drinks with scant courtesy. 

"JA, JA--JAWOHL!" she sniffed. And, on the landing, the door was shutin his face. 

VIII. 

What she needed, what she had always needed, was a friend, he said tohimself. She had never had anyone to stand by her and advise her towisdom, in the matter of impulsive acts and wishes. He would be thatfriend. He had not, it was true, made a very happy beginning, with theexpedition that had ended so unfortunately; but he promised himself notto be led into an indiscretion of the kind again. It was a friend'spart to warn in due time, and to point out the possible consequences ofa rash act. He only excused his behaviour because he had not seen herfor over two months, and had felt too sorry for her to refuse the firstthing she asked of him. But from now on, he would be firm. He would winher back to life--reawaken her interest in what was going on aroundher. He would devote himself to serving her: not selfishly, as othershad done, with their own ends in view; the gentle, steady aid should behers, which he had always longed to give her. He felt strong enough toface any contingency: it seemed, indeed, as if his love for her had allalong been aiming at this issue; as if each of the unhappy hours he hadspent, since first meeting her, was made up for by the words: "You aremy friend. "

A deep sense of responsibility filled him. In obedience, however, to apuritanic streak in his nature, he hedged himself round withrestrictions, lest he should believe he was setting out on all tooprimrose a path. He erected limiting boundaries, which were not to beoverstepped. For example, on the two days that followed the memorableChristmas Eve, he only made inquiries at the door after Louise, andwhen he learned that the cold she had caught was better, did notreturn. For, on one point, his mind was made up: idle tongues shouldhave no fresh cause for gossip. 

At the expiry of a fortnight, however, he began to fear that if heremained away any longer, she would think him indifferent to her offerof friendship. So, late one afternoon, he called to see her. But whenhe was face to face with her, he doubted whether she had given him athought in the interval: she seemed mildly surprised at his coming. Itwas even possible that she had forgotten, by now, what she had said tohim; and he sought anew for a means of impressing himself on herconsciousness. 

She was crouched in the rocking-chair, close beside the stove, and waswrapped in a thick woollen shawl; but the hand she gave him was as coldas stone. She was trying to keep warm, she said; she had not beenproperly warm since the night on the ice. 

"But there's an easy remedy for that, " said Maurice, who came in ruddyfrom the sharp air. "You must go out and walk. Then you will soon getwarm. "

But she shuddered at the suggestion, and also made an expressivegesture to indicate the general laxity of her dress--the soileddressing-gown, her untidy hair. Then she leaned forward again, holdingboth hands, palms out, to the mica pane in the door of the stove, through which the red coals glowed. 

"If only winter were over!"

He gazed at the expressive lines of hand and wrist, and was reminded ofan adoring Madonna he had somewhere seen engraved: her hands were heldback in the same way; the thumbs slightly thrown out, the three longfingers together, the little one apart: here as there, was the samesupple, passionate indolence. But he could find no more to say than onthe occasion of his former visit; she did not help him; and more andmore did it seem to the young man as if the words he had gone abouthugging to him, had never been spoken. After a desperate quarter of anhour, he rose to take leave. But simultaneously, she, too, got up fromthe rocking-chair, and, standing pale and uncertain before him, askedhim if she might trouble him to do something for her. A box had beensent to her from England, she told him, while she tumbled over thedusty letters and papers accumulated on the writing-table, and had beenlying unclaimed at the custom-house for several weeks now--how many shedid not know, and she spread out her fingers, with a funny littlemovement, to show her ignorance. She had only remembered it a day ortwo ago; the dues would no doubt be considerable. If it were not toomuch trouble . .. She would be so grateful; she would rather ask himthan Mr. Eggis. 

"I should be delighted, " said Maurice. 

He went the next morning, at nine o'clock, spent a trying hour withuncivil officials, and, in the afternoon, called to report to Louise. As he was saying good-bye to her, he inquired if there were nothingelse of a similar nature he could do for her; he was glad to be of use. Smiling, Louise admitted that there were other things, many of them, more than he would have patience for. She should try him and see, saidMaurice, and laid his hat down again, to hear what they were. 

As a consequence of this, the following days saw him on variouscommissions in different quarters of the town, scanning the names ofshops, searching for streets he did not know. But matters did notalways run smoothly; complications arose, for instance, over a paidbill that had been sent in a second time, and over an earlier one thathad not been paid at all; and Maurice was forced to confess hisignorance of the circumstances. When this had happened more than once, he sat down, with her consent, at the writing-table, to work throughthe mass of papers, and the contents of a couple of drawers. 

In doing this, he became acquainted with some of the more intimatedetails of her life--minute and troublesome details, for which she hadno aptitude. From her scat at the stove, Louise watched him sorting andreckoning, and she was as grateful to him as it was possible for her tobe, in her present mood. No one had ever done a thing of the kind forher before; and she was callous to the fact of its being a stranger, who had his hands thus in her private life. When, horrified beyondmeasure at the confusion that reigned in all belonging to her, Mauriceasked her how she had ever succeeded in keeping order, she told himthat, before her illness, there had, now and again, come a day ofstrength and purpose, on which she had had the "courage" to face thesedistasteful trifles and to end them. But she did not believe such a daywould ever come again. 

Bills, bills, bills: dozens of bills, of varying dates, sent in once, twice, three times, and invariably tossed aside and forgotten--a modeof proceeding incomprehensible to Maurice, who had never boughtanything on credit in his life. And not because she was in want ofmoney: there were plenty of gold pieces jingling loose in a drawer; butfrom an aversion, which was almost an inability, to take in what thefigures meant. And the amounts added up to alarming totals; Maurice hadno idea what a woman's dress cost, and could only stand amazed; but thesum spent on fruit and flowers alone, in two months, represented to hiseyes a small fortune. Then there was the Bluthner, the unused piano;the hire of it had not been paid since the previous summer. Three termswere owed at Klemm's musical library, from which no music was nowborrowed; fees were still being charged against her at theConservatorium, where she had given no formal notice of leaving. Itreally did not matter, she said, with that carelessness concerningmoney, which was characteristic of her; but it went against the grainin Maurice to let several pounds be lost for want of an effort; and hespent a diplomatic half-hour with the secretaries in the BUREAU, getting her released from paying the whole of the term that had nowbegun. As, however, she would not appear personally, she was under thenecessity of writing a letter, stating that she had left theConservatorium; and when she had promised twice to do, it, and it wasstill unwritten, Maurice stood over her, and dictated the words intoher pen. A day or two afterwards, he prevailed upon her to do the samefor Schwarz, to inform him of her illness, and to say that, at Easter, if she were better, she would come to him for a course of privatelessons. This was an idea of Maurice's own, and Louise looked up at himbefore putting down the words. 

"It's not true. But if you think I should say so--it doesn't matter. "

This was the burden of all she said: nothing mattered, nothing wouldever matter again. There was not the least need for the half-jestingtone in which Maurice clothed his air of authority. She obeyed himblindly, doing what he bade her without question, glad to besubordinate to his will. As long as he did not ask her to think, or tofeel, or to stir from her chair beside the stove. 

But it was only with regard to small practical things; in matters ofmore importance she was not to be moved. And the day came, only toosoon, when the positive help Maurice could give her was at an end; shedid not owe a pfennig to anyone; her letters and accounts were filedand in order. Then she seemed to elude him again. He did what lay inhis power: brought her books that she did not read, brought news andscraps of chit-chat, which he thought might interest her and which didnot, and an endless store of sympathy. But to all he said and did, shemade the same response: it did not matter. 

Since the night on the river, she had not set foot across the thresholdof her room; nervous fears beset her. Maurice was bent on her going outinto the open air; he also wished her to mix with people again, andthus rid herself of the morbid fancies that were creeping on her. Butshe shrank as he spoke of it, and pressed both hands to her face: itwas too cold, she murmured, and too cheerless; and then the streets!. .. The publicity of the streets, the noise, the people! This was whatshe said to him; to herself she added: and all the old familiar places, to each of which a memory was attached! He spent hours in urging her totake up some regular occupation; it would be her salvation, hebelieved, and, not allowing himself to be discouraged, he returned tothe attack, day after day. But she only smiled the thin smile withwhich she defeated most of his proposals for her good. Work?--what hadshe to do with work? It had never been anything to her but a narcotic, enabling her to get through those hours of the day in which she wasalone. 

She let Maurice talk on, and hardly heard what he said. He meant well, but he did not understand. No one understood. No one but herself knewthe weight of the burden she had borne since the day when her happinesswas mercilessly destroyed. Now she could not raise a finger to helpherself. On waking, in the morning, she turned with loathing from thenew day. In the semi-darkness of the room, she lay motionless, halfsleeping, or dreaming with open eyes. The clock ticked benumbingly thelong hours away; the wind howled, or the wind was still; snow fell, orit was frostily clear; but nothing happened--nothing at all. The daywas well advanced before she left her bed for the seat by the stove;there she brooded until she dragged herself back to bed. One day wasthe exact counterpart of another. 

The only break in the deathlike monotony was Maurice's visit. He camein, fresh, and eager to see her; he held her hand and said kind thingsto her; he talked persuasively, and she listened or not, as she feltdisposed. But little though he was able to touch her, she unconsciouslybegan to look to his visits; and one day, when he was detained andcould not come, she was aware of a feeling of injury at his absence. 

As time went by, however, Maurice felt more and more clearly that hewas making no headway. His uneasiness increased; for her want of spirithad something about it that he could not understand. It began to lookto him like a somewhat morbid indulgence in grief. 

"This can't go on, " he said sternly. 

She was in one of her most pitiable moods; for there were gradations inher unhappiness, as he had learned to know. 

"This can't go on. You are killing yourself by inches--and I'm a partyto it. "

For the first time, there was a hint of impatience in his manner. Tohis surprise, Louise raised her head, raised it quickly, as he had notseen her make a movement for weeks. 

"By inches? Inches only? Oh, I am so strong . .. Nothing hurts me. Nothing is of any use. "

"If you look in the glass, you will see that you're hurting yourselfconsiderably. "

"You mean that I'm getting old?--and ugly?" she caught him up. "Do youthink I care?--Oh, if I had only had the courage, that day! A fewgrains of something, and it would have been all over, long ago. But Iwasn't brave enough. And now I have no more courage in me than strengthin my little finger. "

Maurice looked meditatively at her, without replying: this was thesingle occasion on which she had been roused to a retort of any kind;and, bitter though her words were, he could not prevent the spark ofhope which, by their means, was lit in him. 

And from this day on, things went forward of themselves. Again andagain, some harmless observation on his part drew forth a caustic replyfrom her; it was as if, having once experienced it, she found an outcryof this kind a relief to her surcharged nerves. At first, what she saidwas directed chiefly against herself--this self for which she nownursed a fanatic hatred, since it had failed her in her need. But, little by little, he, too, was drawn within the circle of herbitterness; indeed, it sometimes seemed as if his very kindness incitedher, by laying her under an obligation to him, which it was in hernature to resent: at others, again, as if she merely wished to try him, to see how far she might go. 

"Do I really deserve that thrust?" he once could not help asking. Hesmiled, as he spoke, to take the edge off his words. 

Louise threw a penitent glance at him, and, for all answer, held outher hand. 

But, the very next day, after a similar incident, she crossed the roomto him, with the swiftness of movement that was always disturbing inher, contrasting as it did with her customary indolence. "Forgive me. Iought not to. And you are the only friend I have. But there's so much Imust say to some one. If I don't say it, I shall go mad. "

"Why, of course. That's what I'm here for, " said Maurice. 

And so it went on--a strange state of things, in which he never calledher by her name, and seldom touched her hand. He had himself well undercontrol--except for the moment immediately before he saw her, and themoment after. He could not yet meet her, after the briefest absence, unmoved. 

For a week on end that penetrating rawness had been abroad, whichprecedes and accompanies a thaw; and one day, early in February, when, after the unequalled severity of the winter, the air seemed of anincredible mildness, the thaw was there in earnest; on the ice of morethan three months' standing, pools of water had formed overnight. Bythe JOHANNATEICH, Maurice and Madeleine stood looking dubiously acrossthe bank of snow, which, here and there, had already collapsed, leavingminiature crater-rings, flecked with moisture. Several people who couldnot tear themselves away, were still flying about the ice, dexterouslyavoiding the watery places; and Dove and pretty Susie Fay called out tothem that it was better than it looked. But Maurice was fastidious andMadeleine indifferent; she was really rather tired of skating, sheadmitted, as they walked home, and was ashamed to think of the time shehad wasted on it. As, however, this particular afternoon was alreadybroken into, she would have been glad to go for a walk; but Maurice didnot take up her suggestion, and parted from her at her house-door. 

"Spring is in the air, " he sought to tempt Louise, when, a few minuteslater, he entered her room. 

She, too, had been aware of the change; for it had aggravated herdejection. She raised her eyes to his like a tired child, and had notstrength enough to make her usual stand against him. Oh, if he reallywished it so much, she would go out, she said at last. And so he lefther to dress, and ran to the Conservatorium, arriving just in time fora class. 

Later on, a curious uneasiness drew him back to see how she had fared. It was almost dark, but she had not returned; and he waited for half anhour before he heard her step in the hall. Directly she came in, heknew that something was the matter. 

In each of her movements was a concentrated, but noiseless energy: sheshut the door after her as if it were never to open again; tore offrather than unpinned the thick black veil in which she had shroudedherself; threw her hat on the sofa, furs and jacket to the hat; thenstood motionless, pressing her handkerchief to her lips. Her face hademerged from its wrappings with renewed pallor; her eyes shone as ifwith belladonna. She took no notice of the silent figure in the corner, did not even look in his direction. 

"You've got back, " said Maurice, for the sake of saying something. "It's too late. "

At his words, she dropped on a chair, put her arms on the table, andhid her face in them. 

"What's the matter? Has anything happened?" he asked, in quick alarm, as she burst into violent sobs. He should have been accustomed to herway of crying by this time--it sounded worse than it was, as heknew--but it invariably racked him anew. He stood over her; but theonly comfort he ventured on was to lay his hand on her hair--this wildblack hair, which met his fingers springily, with a will of its own. 

"What is the matter?" he besought her. "Tell me, Louise--tell me whatit is. "

He had to ask several times before he received an answer. Finally, shesobbed in a muffled voice, without raising her head: "How could youmake me go out! Oh, how COULD you!"

"What do you mean? I don't understand. What is it?" He had visions ofher being annoyed or insulted. 

But she only repeated: "How could you! Oh, it was cruel of you!" andwept afresh. 

Word by word, Maurice drew her story from her. There was not very muchto tell. 

She had gone out, and had walked hurriedly along quiet by-streets tothe ROSENTAL. But before she had advanced a hundred yards, her couragebegan to fail, and the further she went, the more her spirits sank. Hersurroundings were indescribably depressing: the smirched, steadilyretreating snow was leaving bare all the drab brownness it hadconcealed--all the dismal little gardens, and dirty corners. Houses, streets and people wore their most bedraggled air. Particularly thepeople: they were as ugly as the areas of roof and stone, off which thesoft white coating had slid; their contours were as painful to see. Andthe mud--oh, God, the mud! It spread itself over every inch of the way;the roads were rivers of filth, which spattered and splashed; at thesides of the streets, the slush was being swept into beds. Before shehad gone any distance, her boots and skirts were heavy with it; and shehated mud, she sobbed--hated it, loathed it, it affected her with aphysical disgust--and this lie might have known when he sent her out. In the ROSENTAL, it was no better; the paths were so soaked that theysquashed under her feet; on both sides, lay layers of rotten leavesfrom the autumn; the trees were only a net-work of blackened twigs, their trunks surrounded by an undergrowth that was as ragged as unkempthair. And everything was mouldering: the smell of moist, earthy decayreminded her of open graves. Not a soul was visible but herself. Shesat on a seat, the only living creature in the scene, and the past rosebefore her with resistless force: the intensity of her happiness; thebase cruelty of his conduct; her misery, her unspeakable misery; herforlorn desolation, which was of a piece with the desolation aroundher, and which would never again be otherwise, though she lived to bean old woman. --How long she sat thinking things of this kind, she didnot know. But all of a sudden she started up, frightened both by herwretched thoughts and by the loneliness of the wood; and she fled, notlooking behind her, or pausing to take breath, till she reached thestreets. Into the first empty droschke she met, she had sunk exhausted, and been driven home. 

It was of no use trying to reason with her, or to console her. 

"I can't bear my life, " she sobbed. "It's too hard . .. And there is noone to help me. If I had done anything to deserve it . .. Then it wouldbe different . .. Then I shouldn't complain. But I didn't--didn't doanything--unless it was that I cared too much. At least it was amistake--a dreadful mistake. I should never have shown him how I cared:I should have made him believe he loved me best. But I was a fool. Iflung it all at his feet. And it was only natural he should get tiredof me. The wonder was that I held him so long. But, oh, how can onecare as I did, and yet be able to plot and plan? I couldn't. It isn'tin me to do it. "

She wept despairingly, with her head on her outstretched arms. When sheraised it again, her tear-stained face looked out, Medusa-like, fromits setting of ruffled hair. More to herself than to the young man, asif, on this day, secret springs had been touched in her, she continuedwith terse disconnectedness: "I couldn't believe it; I wouldn't--evenwhen I heard it from his own lips. You thought, all of you, that I wasill; but I wasn't; I was only trying to get used to the terriblethought--just as a suddenly blinded man has to get used to being alwaysin the dark. And while I was still struggling came Madeleine, with hercruel tongue, and told me--you know what she told me. Oh, if hisleaving me had been hard to bear, this stung like scorpions. I wonder Ididn't go mad. I should have, if you hadn't come to help me. For a dayand night, I did not move from the corner of that sofa there. I turnedher words over till there was no sense left in them. My nails cut mypalms. "

Her clasped hands were slightly stretched from her: her whole attitudebetrayed the tension at which she was speaking. "Oh, my God, how Ihated him . .. Hated him . .. How I hate him still! If I live to be anold, old woman, I shall never forgive him. For, in time, I might havelearnt to bear his leaving me, if it had only been his work that tookhim from me. It was always between us, as it was; but it was at leastonly a pale brain thing, not living flesh and blood. But that all thetime he should have been deceiving me, taking pains to do it--that Icannot forgive. At first, I implored, I prayed there might be somemistake: you, too, told me there was. And I hoped against hope--till Isaw her. Then, I knew it was true-----as plainly as if it had beenwritten on that wall. " She paused for breath, in this bitter pleasureof laying her heart bare. "For I wasn't the person he could always havebeen satisfied with--I see it now. He liked a woman to be fair, andsoft, and gentle--not dark, and hot-tempered. It was only a phase, afancy, that brought him to me, and it couldn't have lasted for ever. But all I asked of him was common honesty--to be open with me: itwasn't much to ask, was it? Not more than we expect of a stranger inthe street. But it was too much for him, all the same. And so . .. Now. .. I have nothing left to remind me that I ever knew him. That night, when I had seen her, I burned everything--every photograph, every scrapof writing I had ever had from him . .. If only one could burn memoriestoo! I had to tear my heart over it; I used to think I felt itbleeding, drop by drop. For all the suffering fell on me, who had donenothing. He went free. "

"Are you sure of that? It may have been hard for him, too--harder thanyou think. " Maurice was looking out of the window, and did not turn. 

She shook her head. "The person who cares, can't scheme and contrive. He didn't care. He never really cared for me--only for himself; atheart, he was cold and selfish. No, I paid for it all--I who hate andshrink from pain, who would do anything to avoid it. I want to gothrough life knowing only what is bright and happy; and time and again, I am crushed and flung down. But, in all my life, I haven't sufferedlike this. And now perhaps you understand, why I never want to hear hisname again, and why I shall never--not if I live to be a hundred yearsold--never forgive him. It isn't in me to do it. As a child, I groundmy heel into a rose if it pricked me. "

There was a silence. Then she sighed, and pushed her hair back fromforehead. "I don't know why I should say all this to you, " she saidcontritely. "But often, just with you, I seem to forget what I amsaying. It must be, I think, because you're so quiet yourself. "

At this, Maurice turned and came over to her. "No, it's for anotherreason. You need to say these things to some one. You have brooded overthem to yourself till they are magnified out of all proportion. It'sthe best thing in the world for you to say them aloud. " He drew up achair, and sat down beside her. "Listen to me. You told me once, notvery long ago, that I was your friend. Well, I want to speak to youto-night as that friend, and to play the doctor a little as well. Willyou not go away from here, for a time?--go away and be with people whoknow nothing of . .. All this--people you don't need to be afraid of?Let yourself be persuaded. You have such a healthy nature. Give it achance. "

She looked at him with a listless forbearance. "Don't go on. I knoweverything you are going to say. --That's always the way with you calm, quiet people, who are not easily moved yourselves. You still but faithin these trite remedies; for you've never known the ills they'resupposed to cure. "

"Never mind me. It's you we have to think of. And I want you to give myold-fashioned remedy a trial. "

But she did not answer, and again a few minutes went by, before shestretched out her hand to him. "Forget what I've said to-night. I shallnever speak of it again. --But then you, too, must promise not to makeme go out alone--to think and remember--in all the dirt and ugliness ofthe streets. "

And Maurice promised. 

IX. 

The unnatural position circumstances had forced him into, was to himsummed up in the fact that he had spoken in defence of the man hedespised above all others. Only at isolated moments was he content withthe part he played; it was wholly unlike what he had intended. He hadwished to be friend and mentor to her, and he was now both; butnevertheless, there was something wrong about his position. It seemedas if he had at first been satisfied with too low a place in heresteem, ever to allow of him taking a higher one. He was conscious thatin her liking for him, there was a drop of contempt. And he tormentedhimself with such a question as: should a new crisis in her life arise, would she, now that she knows you, turn to you? And in moments ofdespondency he answered no. He felt the tolerance that lurked in herregard for him. Kindness and care on his part were not enough. 

None of his friends had an idea of what was going on. No one he knewlived in the neighbourhood of the BRUDERSTRASSE; and, the skating at anend, he was free to spend his time as he chose. When another brief nipof frost occurred, he alleged pressure of work, and did not takeadvantage of it. 

Then, early one morning, Dove paid him a visit, with a list in hishand. Since the night of the skating party, his acquaintances had notseen much of Dove; for he had been in close attendance on the prettylittle American, who made no scruple of exacting his services. Now, after some preamble, it came out that he wished to include Maurice in alist of mutual friends, who were clubbing to give a ball--a "Bachelors'Ball, " Dove called it, since the gentlemen were to pay for the tickets, and to invite the ladies. But Maurice, vexed at the interruption, madeit clear that he had neither time nor inclination for an affair of thiskind: he did not care a rap for dancing. And after doing his best topersuade him, and talking round the matter for half an hour, Dove saidhe did not of course wish to press anyone against his will, anddeparted to disturb other people. 

Maurice had also to stand fire from Madeleine; for she had counted onhis inviting her. She was first incredulous, then offended, at hisrefusal: and she pooh-poohed his strongest argument--that he did notown a dress-suit. If that was all, she knew a shop in the BRUHL, wheresuch things could be hired for a song. 

Maurice now thought the matter closed. Not many days later, however, Dove appeared again, with a crestfallen air. He had still over a dozentickets on his hands, and, at the low price fixed, unless all weresold, the expenses of the evening would not be covered. In order to getrid of him, Maurice bought a ticket, on the condition that he was notexpected to use it, and also suggested some fresh people Dove mighttry; so that the latter went off with renewed courage on hisdisagreeable errand. 

Maurice mentioned the incident to Louise that evening, as he mentionedany trifle he thought might interest her. He sat on the edge of hischair, and did not mean to stay; for he had found her on the sofa witha headache. 

So far, she had listened to him with scant attention; but at this, sheraised her eyebrows. 

"Then you don't care for dancing?"--she could hardly believe it. 

He repeated the words he had used to Dove. 

She smiled faintly, looking beyond him, at a sombre patch of sky. 

"I should think not. If it were me!----" She raised her hand, andconsidered her fingers. 

"If it were you?--yes?"

But she did not continue. 

It had been almost a spring day: that, no doubt, accounted for herheadache. Maurice made a movement to rise. But Louise turned quickly onher side, and, in her own intense way, said: "Listen. You have theticket, you say? Use it, and take me with you. Will you?"

He smiled as at the whim of a child. But she was in earnest. 

"Will you?"

"No, of course not. "

He tempered his answer with the same smile. But she was not pleased--hesaw that. Her nostrils tightened, and then, dilated, as they had a wayof doing when she was annoyed. For some time after, she did not speak. 

But the very next day, when he was remonstrating with her over somesmall duty which she had no inclination to perform, she turned on himwith an unreasonable irritation. "You only want me to do disagreeablethings. Anything that is pleasant, you set yourself against. "

It took him a minute to grasp that she was referring to what he hadsaid the evening before. 

"Yes, but then . .. I didn't think you were in earnest. "

"Am I in the habit of saying things I don't mean? And haven't you saidyourself that I am killing myself, shut up in here?--that I must go outand mix with people? Very well, here is my chance. "

He kept silence: he did not know whether she was not mainly inspired bya spirit of contradiction, and he was afraid of inciting her, byresistance, to say something she would be unable to retract. "I don'tthink you've given the matter sufficient thought, " he said at last. "Itcan't be decided offhand. "

She was angry, even more with herself than with him. "Oh, I know whatyou mean. You think I shall be looked askance at. As if it matteredwhat people say! All my life I haven't cared, and I shall not beginnow, when I have less reason than ever before. "

He did not press the subject; he hoped she would change her mind, andthus render further discussion unnecessary. But this was not the case;she clung to the idea, and was deaf to reason. To a certain extent, hecould feel for her; but he was too troubled by the thought ofunpleasant possibilities, not to endeavour to persuade her against it:he knew, as she did not, how unkindly she had been spoken of; and hewas not sure whether her declared bravado was strong enough to sustainher. But the more he reasoned, the more determined she was to have herown way; and she took his efforts in very bad part. 

"You pretend to be solicitous about me, " she said one afternoon, fromher seat by the fire. "Yet when a chance of diversion comes youbegrudge it to me. You would rather I mouldered on here. "

"That's not generous of you. It is only you I am thinking of--in allthis ridiculous affair. "

The word stung her. "Ridiculous? How dare you say that! I'm stillyoung, am I not? And I have blood in my veins, not water. Well, I wantto feel it. For months now, I have been walled up in this tomb. Now Iwant to live. Not--do you understand?--to go out alone, on a filthyday, with no companion but my own thoughts. I want to dance--to forgetmyself--with light and music. It's the most natural thing in the world. Anyone but you would think so. "

"It is not life you mean; it's excitement. "

"What it means is that you don't want to take me. --Yes, that's what itis. But I can get some one else. I will send for Eggis; he will have noobjection. "

"Why drag in that cad's name? You know very well if you do go, it willbe with me, and no one else. "

A slight estrangement grew up between them. Maurice was hurt: she hadshown too openly the small value she set on his opinion. In addition tothis, he was disagreeably affected by her craving for excitement at anycost. To his mind, there was more than a touch of impropriety in theproceeding; it was just as if a mourner of a few months' standingshould suddenly discard his mourning, and with it all the otherdecencies of grief. 

She had not been entirely wrong in accusing him of unreadiness toaccompany her. When he pictured to himself the astonished faces of hisfriends, he found it impossible to look forward to the event withcomposure. He saw now that it would have been better to make no secretof his friendship with Louise; so harmless was it that every one heknew might have assisted at it; but now, the very abruptness of itsdisclosure would put it in a bad light. Through Dove, he noised itabroad that he would probably be present at the ball after all; but heshunned Madeleine with due precaution, and could not bring himself evento hint who his companion might be. In his heart, he still thought itpossible that Louise might change her mind at the last moment--takefright in the end, at what she might have to face. 

But the night came, and this had not happened. While he dressed himselfin the hired suit, which was too large here, too small there, he laid aplan of action for the evening. Since it had to be gone through with, it must be carried off in a highhanded way. He would do what he couldto make her presence in the hall seem natural; he would be attentive, without devoting himself wholly to her; and he would induce her toleave early. 

He called for her at eight o'clock. The landlady said that Fraulein wasnot quite ready, and told him to wait in the passage. But the door ofthe room was ajar, and Louise herself called to him to come in. 

It was comparatively dark; for she had the lamp behind the screen, where he heard her moving about. Her skirts rustled; drawers andcupboards were pulled noisily open. Then she came out, with the lamp inher hand. 

Maurice was leaning against the piano. He raised his eyes, and made astep forward, to take the lamp from her. But after one swift, startledglance, he drew back, colouring furiously. For a moment he could notcollect himself: his heart seemed to have leapt into his throat, andthere to be hammering so hard that he had no voice with which to answerher greeting. 

Owing to what he now termed his idiotic preoccupation with himself, hehad overlooked the fact that she, too, would be in evening dress. Another thing was, he had never seen Louise in any but street-dress, orthe loose dressing-gown. Now he called himself a fool and absurd; thiswas how she was obliged to be. Convention decreed it, hence it wasperfectly decorous; it was his own feelings that were unnatural, overstrained. But, in the same breath, a small voice whispered to himthat all dresses were not like this one; also that every girl was notof a beauty, which, thus emphasised, made the common things of lifeseen poor and stale. 

Louise wore a black dress, which glistened over all its surface, as ifit were sown with sparks; it wound close about her, and out behind heron the floor. But this was only the sheath, from which rose thewhiteness of her arms and shoulders, and the full column of her throat, on which the black head looked small. Until now, he had seen her baredwrist--no more. Now the only break on the long arm was a band of blackvelvet, which as it were insisted on the petal-white purity of theskin, and served in place of a sleeve. 

Strange thoughts coursed through the young man's mind. His firstimpulse had been to avert his eyes; in this familiar room it did notseem fitting to see her dressed so differently from the way he hadalways known her. Before, however, he had followed this sensation to anend, he made himself the spontaneous avowal that, until now, he hadnever really seen her. He had known and treasured her face--her facealone. Now he became aware that to the beautiful head belonged also abeautiful body, that, in short, every bit of her was beautiful anddesirable. And this feeling in its turn was overcome by a painfulreflection: others besides himself would make a similar observation;she was about to show herself to a hundred other eyes: and this struckhim as such an unbearable profanation, that he could have gone down onhis knees to her, to implore her to stay at home. 

Unconscious of his embarrassment, Louise had gone to the console-glass;and there, with the lamp held first above her head, then placed on theconsole-table, she critically examined her appearance. As ifdissatisfied, she held a velvet bow to the side of her hair, andconsidered the effect; she took a powderpuff, and patted cheeks andneck with powder. Next she picked up a narrow band of velvet, on whicha small star was set, and put it round her throat. But the clasp wouldnot meet behind, and, having tried several times in vain to fasten it, she gave an impatient exclamation. 

"I can't get it in. "

As Maurice did not offer to help her, she went out of the room with thething in her hand. During the few seconds she was absent, the young manracked his brain to invent telling reasons which would induce her notto go; but when she returned, slightly flushed at the landlady's readyflattery, she was still so engrossed in herself, and so unmindful ofhim, that he recognised once more his utter powerlessness. He only halfexisted for her this evening: her manner was as different as her dress. 

She gathered her skirts high under her cloak, displaying her feet infur-lined snow-boots. In the turmoil of his mind, Maurice found nothingto say as they went. But she did not notice his silence; there was asuppressed excitement in her very walk; and she breathed in the cold, crisp air with open lips and nostrils, like a wild animal. 

"Oh, how glad I am I came! I might still have been sitting in that dullroom--when I haven't danced for years--and when I love it so!"

"I can't understand you caring about it, " he said, and the few wordscontained all his bitterness. 

"That is only because you don't know me, " she retorted, and laughed. "Dancing is a passion with me. I have dance-rhythms in my blood, Ithink. --My mother was a dancer. "

He echoed her words in a helpless way, and a set of new images ran riotin his brain. But Louise only smiled, and said no more. 

They were late in arriving; dancing had already begun; the cloak-roomswere black with coats and mantles. In the narrow passage that dividedthe rooms, two Englishmen were putting on their gloves. As Mauricechanged his shoes, close to the door, he overheard one of these men sayexcitedly: "By Jove, there's a pair of shoulders! Who the deuce is it?"

Maurice knew the speaker by sight: he was a medical student, namedHerries, who, on the ice, had been conspicuous for his skill as askater. He had a small dark moustache, and wore a bunch of violets inhis buttonhole. 

"You haven't been here long enough, old man, or you wouldn't need toask, " answered his companion. Then he dropped his voice, and made asomewhat disparaging remark--so low, however, but what the listener wasforced to hear it, too. 

Both laughed a little. But though Maurice rose and clattered his chair, Herries persisted, with an Englishman's supreme indifference to thebystander: "Do you think she can dance?"

"Can't tell. Looks a trifle heavy. "

"Well, I'll risk it. Come on. Let's get some one to introduce us. "

The blood had rushed to Maurice's head and buzzed there: anothersecond, and he would have stepped out and confronted the speaker. Butthe incident had passed like a flash. And it was better so: it wouldhave been a poor service to her, to begin the evening with anunpleasantness. Besides, was this not what he had been bracing himselfto expect? He looked stealthily over at Louise; considering theproximity of the rooms, it was probable that she, too, had overheardthe derogatory words. But when she had put on her gloves, she took hisarm without a trace of discomfiture. 

They entered the hall at the close of a polka, and slipped unnoticedinto the train of those who promenaded. But they had not gone onceround, when they were the observed of all eyes; although he lookedstraight in front of him, Maurice could see the astonished eyebrows andopen mouths that greeted their advance. At one end of the hall was animmense mirror: he saw that Louise, who was flushed, held her headhigh, and talked to him without a pause. In a kind of bravado, she madehim take her round a second time; and after the third, which was asolitary progress, they remained standing with their backs to themirror. Eggis at once came up, with Herries in his train, and, onlearning that she had no programme, the latter ran off to fetch one. Before he returned, a third man had joined them, and soon she was thecentre of a little circle. Herries, having returned with the programme, would not give it up until he had put his initials opposite severaldances. Louise only smiled--a rather artificial smile that had been onher lips since she entered the hall. 

Maurice had fallen back, and now stood unnoticed behind the group. OnceLouise turned her head, and raised her eyebrows interrogatively; but afeeling that was mingled pride and dismay restrained him; and as, evenwhen the choosing of dances was over, he did not come forward, shewalked down the hall on Herries's arm. The musicians began to tune;Dove, as master of ceremonies, was flying about, with his hands ingloves that were too large for him; people ranged themselves for thelancers in lines and squares. Maurice lost sight for a moment of thecouple he was watching. As soon as the dance began, however, he sawthem again; they were waltzing to the FRANCAISE, at the lower end ofthe hall. 

He was driven from the corner in which he had taken refuge, by hearingsome one behind him say, in an angry whisper: "I call it positivelyhorrid of her to come. " It was Susie Fay who spoke; through someoversight, she had not been asked to dance. Moving slowly along, behindthe couples that began a schottische, he felt a tap on his arm, and, looking round, saw Miss Jensen. She swept aside her ample skirts, andinvited him to a seat beside her. But he remained standing. 

"You don't care for dancing?" she queried. And, when he had replied:"Well, say, now, Mr. Guest, --we are all dying to know--however have yougotten Louise Dufrayer along here this evening? It's the queerest thingout. "

"Indeed?" said the young man drily. 

"Well, maybe queer is not just the word. But, why, we all presumed shewas perfectly inconsolable--thinking only of another world. That's so. And then you work a miracle, and out she pops, fit as can be. "

"I persuaded her . .. For the sake of variety, " mumbled Maurice. 

Little Fauvre, the baritone, had come up; but Miss Jensen did not heedhis meek reminder that this was their dance. 

"That was excessively kind of you, " said the big woman, and looked atMaurice with shrewd, good-natured eyes. "And no doubt, Louise is mostgrateful. She seems to be enjoying herself. Keep quiet, Fauvre, do, till I am ready. --But I don't like her dress. It's a lovely goods, andno mistake. But it ain't suitable for a little hop like this. It's toomuch. "

"How Miss Dufrayer dresses is none of my business. "

"Well, maybe not. --Now, Fauvre, come along"--she called it "Fover. " "Ireckon you think you've waited long enough. "

Maurice, left to himself again, was astonished to hear Madeleine'svoice in his ear. She had made her way to him alone. 

"For goodness' sake, pull yourself together, " she said cuttingly. "Every one in the hall can see what's the matter with you. "

Before he could answer, she was claimed by her partner--one of the fewGermans scattered through this Anglo-American gathering. "Is zat yourbrozzer?" Maurice heard him ask as they moved away. He watched themdancing together, and found it a ridiculous sight: round Madeleine, tall and angular, the short, stout man rotated fiercely. From time totime they stopped, to allow him to wipe his face. 

Maurice contemplated escaping from the hall to some quiet room beyond. But as he was edging forward, he ran into Dove's arms, and that was theend of it. Dove, it seemed, had had his eye on him. The originator ofthe ball confessed that he was not having a particularly good time; hehad everything to superintend--the dances, the musicians, thearrangements for supper. Besides this, there were at least a dozen toomany ladies present; he believed some of the men had simply given theirtickets away to girl-friends, and had let them come alone. So far, Dovehad been forced to sacrifice himself entirely, and he was hot andimpatient. 

"Besides, I've routed half a dozen men out of the billiardroom, morethan once, " he complained irrelevantly, wiping the moisture from hisbrow. "But it's of no----Now just look at that!" he interruptedhimself. "The 'cellist has had too much to drink already, and they'rehanding him more beer. Another glass, and he won't be able to play atall. --I say, you're not dancing. My dear fellow, it really won't do. You must help me with some of these women. "

Taking Maurice by the arm, he steered him to a corner of the hall wheresat two little provincial English sisters, looking hopeless andforlorn. Who had invited them, it was impossible to say; but no onewished to dance with them. They were dressed exactly alike, were alikein face, too--as like as two nuts, thought Maurice, as he bowed tothem. Their hair was of a nutty brown, their eyes were brown, and theywore brown dresses. He led them out to dance, one after the other, andthey were overwhelmingly grateful to him. He could hardly tell themapart; but that did not matter; for, when he took one back to her seat, the other sat waiting for her turn. 

In dancing, he was thrown together with more of his friends, and he wasnot slow to catch the looks--cynical, contemptuous, amused--that weredirected at him. Some were disposed to wink, and to call him a sly dog;others found food for malicious gossip in the way Louise had desertedhim; and, when he met Miss Martin in a quadrille, she snubbed hisadvances with a definiteness that left no room for doubt. 

Round dances succeeded to square dances; the musicians' playing grewmore mechanical; flowers drooped, and dresses were crushed. AnEnglishman or two ran about complaining of the ventilation. As often asMaurice saw Louise, she was with Herries. At first, she had at leastmade a feint of dancing with other people; now she openly showed herpreference. Always this dapper little man, with the violets and thesimpering smile. 

They were the two best dancers in the hall. Louise, in particular, gaveherself up to the rhythm of the music with an abandon not often to beseen in a ball-room. Something of the professional about it, saidMaurice to himself as he watched her; and, in his own estimation, thiswas the hardest thought he had yet had of her. 

At supper, he sat between the two little sisters, whose birdlikechatter acted upon him as a reiterated noise acts on the nerves of onewho is trying to sleep. He could hardly bring himself to answercivilly. At the further end of the table, on the same side as he, satLouise. She was with those who had been her partners during theevening. They were drinking champagne, and were very lively. Mauricecould not see her face; but her loud, excited laugh jarred on his ears. 

Afterwards, the same round was to begin afresh, except that the sistershad generously introduced him to a friend. But when the first dance wasover, Maurice abruptly excused himself to his surprised partner, andmade his way out of the hall. 

At the disordered supper-table, a few people still lingered; anddeserters were again knocking balls about the green cloth of thebilliard-table. Maurice went past them, and up a flight of stairs thatled to a gallery overlooking the hall. This gallery was insemidarkness. At the back of it, chairs were piled one on top of theother; but the two front rows had been left standing, from the lastconcert held in the building, and here, two or three couples weresitting out the dance. He went into the extreme corner, where it wasdarkest. 

At last he was alone. He no longer needed to dance with girls he didnot care a jot for, or to keep up appearances. He was free to be aswretched as he chose, and he availed himself unreservedly of thechance. It was not only the personal slight Louise had put upon himthroughout the evening, making use of him, as it were, to the verydoor, and then throwing him off: but that she could be attracted by amere waxen prettiness, and well-fitting clothes--for the first time, distrust of her was added to his hurt amazement. 

He had not been in his hiding-place for more than a very few minutes, when the door he had entered by reopened, and a couple came down thesteps to the corner where he was sitting. 

"Oh, there's some one there!" cried Louise at the sight of the darkfigure. "Maurice! Is it you? What are you doing here?"

"Sssh!" said Herries warningly, afraid lest her clear voice shouldcarry too far. 

"Yes. It's me, " said Maurice stiffly, and rose. "But I'm going. Ishan't disturb you. "

"Disturb?" she said, and laughed a little. "Nonsense! Of course not. "From her position on Herries's arm, she looked down at him, uncertainhow to proceed. Then she laughed again. "But how fortunate that I foundyou! The next is our dance, isn't it?"---she pretended to examine herprogramme. "It will begin in a minute. I think I'll wait here. "

"The next may be, but not the next again, remember, " said Herries, before he allowed her to withdraw her arm. Louise nodded and laughed. "AUF WIEDERSEHEN!"

But after the door had dosed behind Herries, she remained standing, astep higher than Maurice, tipping her face with her handkerchief. 

When she descended the step, and was on a level with him, he could seehow her eyes glittered. 

"Was that lie necessary?--for me?"

"What's the matter, Maurice? Why are you like this? Why have you notasked me to dance?"

He was unpleasantly worked on by her free use of his name. 

"I, you? Have I had a chance?"

"Wasn't it for you to make the chance? Or did you expect me to come toyou: Mr. Guest, will you do me the honour of dancing with me?--Oh, please, don't be cross. Don't spoil my pleasure--for this one night atleast. "

But she laughed again as she spoke, as though she did not fear hispower to do so, and laid her hand on his arm: and, at her touch, heseemed to feel through sleeve and glove, the superabundance of vitalitythat was throbbing in her this evening. She was unable to be still fora moment; in the delicate pallor of her face, her eyes burned, black asjet. 

"Are you really enjoying yourself so much? What CAN you find in it all?"

"Come--come down and dance. Listen!--can you resist that music? Quick, let us go down. "

"I dance badly. I'm not Herries. "

"But I can suit my step to anyone's. Won't you dance with me?--when Iask you?"

She had been leaning forward, looking over the balustrade at thecouples arranging themselves below. Now she turned, and put her armthrough his. 

They went down the stairs, into the hall. Close beside the door atwhich they entered, they began to dance. 

In all these months, Maurice had scarcely touched her hand. Nowconvention required that he should take her in his arms: he hadcomplete control over her, could draw her closer, or put her furtheraway, as he chose. For the first round or two, this was enough tooccupy him entirely: the proximity of the lithe body, the nearness ofthe dark head, the firm, warm resistance that her back offered to hishand. 

They were dancing to the music of the WIENER BLUT, most melancholy gayof waltzes, in which the long, legato, upward sweep of the violins saysas plainly as in words that all is vanity. But with the passing of theplayers to the second theme, the melody made a more direct appeal:there was a passionate unrest in it, which disquieted all who heard it. The dancers, with flushed cheeks and fixed eyes, respondedinstinctively to its challenge: the lapidary swing with which theyfollowed the rhythm became less circumspect; and a desire to dance tillthey could dance no more, took possession of those who were fanatic. Noone yielded to the impulse more readily than Louise; she was quitecarried away. Maurice felt the change in her; an uneasiness seized him, and increased with every turn. She had all but closed her eyes; herhair brushed his shoulder; she answered to the lightest pressure of hisarm. Even her face looked strange to him: its expression, itsindividuality, all that made it hers, was as if wiped out. Involuntarily he straightened himself, and his own movements grewstiffer, in his effort to impart to her some of his own restraint. Butit was useless. And, as they turned and turned, to the maddening music, cold spots broke out on his forehead: in this manner she had dancedwith all her previous partners, and would dance with those to come. Such a pang of jealousy shot through him at the thought that, withoutknowing what he was doing, he pulled her sharply to him. And sheyielded to the tightened embrace as a matter of course. 

With a jerk he stopped dancing and loosened his hold of her. 

She stood and blinked at lights and people: she had been far away, in aworld of melody and motion, and could not come back to herself all atonce. Wonderingly she looked at Maurice; for the music was going on, and no one else had left off dancing; and, with the same ofcomprehension, but still too dazed to resist, she followed him up thestairs. 

"It's easy to see you don't care for dancing, " she said, when they wereback in the corner of the gallery. Her breath came unsteadily, andagain she touched her face with the small, scented handkerchief. 

"No. Not dancing like that, " he answered rudely. But now again, as sooften before, directly it was put into words, his feeling seemedstrained and puritanic. 

Louise leaned forward in her seat to look into his face. 

"Like what?--what do you mean? Oh, you foolish boy, what is the matterwith you to-night? You will tell me next I can't dance. "

"You dance only too well. "

"But you would rather I was a wooden doll--is that it How is one toplease you? First you are vexed with me because YOU did not ask ME todance; and when I send my partner away, on your account, you won'tfinish one dance with me but exact that I shall sit here, in a darkcorner, and let that glorious music go by. I don't know what to make ofyou. " But her attention had already wandered to the dancers below. "Look at them!--Oh, it makes me envious! No one else has dreamt ofstopping yet. For no matter how tired you are beforehand, when youdance you don't feel it, and as long as the music goes on, you must goon, too, though it lasted all night. --Oh, how often I have longed for anight like this! And then I've never met a better dancer than Mr. Herries. "

"And for the sake of his dancing, you can forget what a puppy he is?"

"Puppy?" At the warmth of his interruption, she laughed, the low, indolent laugh, by means of which she seemed determined, on this night, to keep anything from touching her too nearly. "How crude you men are!Because he is handsome and dances well, you reason that he mustnecessarily be a simpleton. "

"Handsome? Yes--if a tailor's dummy is handsome. "

But Louise only laughed again, like one over whom words had no power. "If he were the veriest scarecrow, I would forgive him--for the sake ofhis dancing. "

She leant forward, letting her gloved arms lie along her knees; andabove the jet-trimmed line of her bodice, he saw her white chest riseand fall. At a slight sound behind, she turned and looked expectantlyat the door. 

"No, not yet, " said the young man at her side. "Besides, even if itwere, this is my dance, remember. You said so yourself. "

"You are rude to-night, Maurice--and LANGWEILIG. " She averted her face, and tapped her foot. But the content that lapped her made it impossiblefor her to take anything earnestly amiss, and even that others shouldshow displeasure jarred on her like a false note. 

"Don't be angry. To-morrow it will all be different again. Let me havejust this one night of pleasure--let me enjoy myself in my own way. "

"To hear you talk, one would think I had no wish but to spoil yourpleasure. "

"Oh, I didn't mean that. You misunderstand everything. "

"What I say or think has surely no weight with you?"

She gave up the attempt to pacify him, and leaning back in her chair, stifled a yawn. Then with an exclamation of: "How hot it is up here!"she peeled off her gloves. With her freed hands, she tidied her hair, drawing out and thrusting in again the silver dagger that held the coiltogether. Then she let her bare arms fall on her lap, where they lay instrong outline against the black of her dress. One was almost directlyunder Maurice's eyes; even by the poor light, he could see the markleft on the inside of the wrist, by the buttons of the glove. It was agenerously formed arm, but so long that it looked slender, and its firmwhite roundness was flawless from wrist to shoulder. He shut his eyes, but he could see it through his eyelids. Sitting beside her like this, in the semidarkness, morbidly aware of the perfume of her hair anddress, he suddenly forgot that he had been rude, and she indifferent. He was conscious only of the wish to drive it home to her, how unhappyshe was making him. 

"Louise, " he said so abruptly that she started. "I'm going to ask youto do something for me. I haven't made many demands, have I?--since youfirst called me your friend. " He paused and fumbled for words. "Don't--don't dance any more to-night. Don't dance again. "

She stooped forward to look at him. "Not dance again?--I? What do youmean?"

"What I say. Let us go home. "

"Home? Now? When it's only half over?--You don't know what you aresaying. " But her surprise was already on the wane. 

"Oh, yes, I do. I'm not going to let you dance again. "

She laughed, in spite of herself, at the new light in which he wasshowing himself. But, the moment after, she ceased to laugh; for, withan audacity he had not believed himself capable of, Maurice took thearm that was lying next him, and, midway between wrist and elbow, puthis lips to it, kissing it several times, in different places. 

Taken unawares, Louise was helpless. Then she freed herself, ungently. "No, no, I won't have it. Oh, how can you be so foolish! Mygloves--where is my glove? Pick it up, and give it to me--at once!"

He groped on the dusty floor; the veins in his forehead hammered. Shehad moved to a distance, and now stood busy with the gloves; she wouldnot look at him. 

In the uneasy silence that ensued, Herries opened the door: a momentlater, they went out together. Maurice remained standing until he sawthem appear below. Then he dropped back into his seat, and covered hisface with his hands. 

He did not regret what he had done; he did not care in the least, whether he had made her angry with him or not. On the contrary, thefeeling he experienced was akin to relief: disapproval andmortification, jealousy and powerlessness--all the varying emotions ofthe evening--had found vent and alleviation in the few hastily snatchedkisses. He no longer felt injured by her treatment of him: that hardlyseemed to concern him now. His sensations, at this minute, resolvedthemselves into the words: "She is mine, she is mine!" which went roundand round in his brain. And then, in a sudden burst of clearness, heunderstood what it meant for him to say this. It meant that the farceof friendship, at which he had played, was at an end; it meant that heloved her--not as hitherto, with a touch of elegiac resignation--butwith a violence that made him afraid. If seemed incredible to him nowthat he had spent two months in close fellowship with her: it wasludicrous, inhuman. For he now saw, that his ultimate desire had beenneither to help her nor to restore her to life--that was a comedy hehad acted for the benefit of the traditions in his blood. Brutally, atthis moment, he acknowledged that he had only wished to hear her voiceand to touch her hand: to make for himself so indispensable a placeamong the necessities of her life that no one could oust him fromit. --Mine--mine! Instinct alone spoke in him to-night--that same bluntinstinct which had reared its head the first time he saw her, butwhich, until now, he had kept under, like a medieval ascetic. No reasoncame to his aid; he neither looked into the future nor did he considerthe past: he only swore to himself in a kind of stubborn wrath that shewas his, and that no earthly power should take her from him. 

One by one the slow-dragging hours wore away. The dancers' ranks werethinned; but those who remained, gyrated as insensately as ever. Therewas an air of greater freedom over the ball-room. The chaperons who, earlier in the evening, had sat patiently on the red velvet sofas, hadvanished with their charges, and, in their train, the more sedate ofthe company: it was past three o'clock, and now, every few minutes, acloaked couple crossed a corner of the hall to the street-door. 

When Maurice went downstairs, he could not find Louise, and some timeelapsed before she and Herries emerged from the supper-room. Althoughthe lines beneath her eyes were like rings of hammered iron, she dancedanew, went on to the very end, with a few other infatuated people. Finally, the tired musicians rose stiffly to pack their instruments;and, with a sigh of exhaustion, she received on her shoulders the cloakMaurice stood holding. 

They were among the last to leave the hall; the lights went out behindthem. Herries walked a part of the way home with them, and talked muchand idly--ineffable in his self-conceit, thought Maurice. But Louiseurged him on, saying wild, disconnected things, as if, as long as wordswere spoken, it did not matter what they were. Again and again herlaugh resounded: it was hoarse, and did not ring true. 

"She has had too much champagne, " Maurice said to himself, as he walkedsilent at her side. 

In the ROSSPLATZ, Herries, who was in a becoming fur cap, and a coatwith a fur-lined collar, took a circumstantial leave of her. He raisedboth her hands to his lips. 

"To the memory of those divine waltzes--our waltzes!" he saidsentimentally. "And to all the others the future has in store for us!"

She left her hands in his, and smiled at him. 

"Till to-morrow then, " said Herries. "Or shall you forget your promise?"

"It is you who will forget--not I. "

After this, Maurice and she walked on alone together. It was thatdreariest of all the hours between sunset and dawn, when it is scarcelynight any longer, and yet not nearly day. The crisp frost of theprevious evening had given place to a bleak rawness; the day that wascoming would crawl in, lugubriously, unable to get the better of thedarkness. The houses about them were wrapped in sleep; they two werethe only people abroad, and their footsteps echoed in the damp streets. But, for once, Louise was not affected by the gloom of hersurroundings. She walked swiftly, and her chief aim seemed to be torender any but the most trival words impossible. Now, however, herstrained gaiety had the aspect of a fever; Maurice believed that, forthe most part, she did not know what she was saying. 

Until they stood in front of the house-door, she kept up the tension. But when the young man had fitted the key in the lock and turned it, she looked at him, and, for the first time this night, gave him herfull attention. 

"Good night--my friend!"

She was leaning against the woodwork; beneath the lace scarf, her eyeswere bent on him with a strange expression. Maurice looked down intothem, and, for a second or two, held them with his own, in one of thoselooks which are not for ordinary use between a man and a woman. Louiseshivered under it, and gave a nervous laugh; the next moment, she madea slight movement towards him, an involuntary movement, which was soimperceptible as to be hardly more than an easing of her positionagainst the doorway, and yet was unmistakable--as unmistakable as wasthe little upward motion with which she resigned herself at the outsetof a dance. For an instant, his heart stopped beating; in a flash heknew that this was the solution: there was only one ending to thisnight of longing and excitement, and that was to take her in his arms, as she stood, to hold her to him in an infinite embrace, till his ownnerves were stilled, and the madness had gone from her. But thereturning beat of his blood brought the knowledge that a morrow mustsurely come--a morrow for both of them--a cold, grey day to be facedand borne. She was not herself, in the bonds of her unnaturalexcitement; it was for him to be wise. 

He took her limply hanging hand, and looked at her gravely and kindly. 

"You are very tired. "

At his voice, the wild light died out of her eyes; she seemed to shrinkinto herself. "Yes, very tired. And oh, so cold!"

"Can't you get a cup of tea?--something to warm you?"

But she did not hear him; she was already on the stair. He waited tillher steps had died away, then went headlong down the street. But, whenhe came to think things over, he did not pride himself on theself-control he had displayed. On the contrary, he was tormented by thewish to know what she would have said or done had he yielded to hisimpulse; and, for the remainder of the night, his brain lost itself ina maze of hazardous conjecture. Only when day broke, a cheerlessFebruary day, was he satisfied that he could not have acted differently. 

Upstairs, in her room, Louise lay face downwards on her bed, and there, her arms thrown wildly out over the pillows, all the froth andintoxication of the evening gone from her--there lay, and wished shewere dead. 

* * * * *

Three days later, towards four o'clock in the afternoon, Mauricewatched the train that carried her from him steam out of the DRESDENERBAHNHOF. 

The clearness he had gained as to his own motives, and the ruthlessprobing of himself it induced, both led to the same conclusion: Louisemust go away. The day after the ball, too, he had found her in a stateof collapse, which was unparalleled even in the ups and downs of thepast weeks. 

"Anything!--do anything you like with me. I wish I had never beenborn;" and, though no muscle of her face moved, large slow tears randown her sallow cheeks. 

Unconsciously twisting and bending Herries's card, which was lying onthe table, Maurice laid his plan before her. And having won the aboveconsent, he did not let the grass grow under his feet. He applied toMiss Jensen for practical aid, and that lady was tactful enough to giveit without curiosity. She knew Dresden well, recommended it as a livelyplace, and wrote forthwith to a PENSION there, engaging rooms for alady who had just recovered from a severe illness. By tacit agreement, this was understood to cover any extravagance or imprudence, of whichLouise might make herself guilty. 

Now she had gone, and with her, the central interest of his life. Butthe tired gesture, with which he took off his hat and wiped hisforehead, as he walked home, was expressive of the relief he felt thathe was not going to see her again for some time. 

He let a fortnight elapse--a fortnight of colourless days, unbroken byword or sign from her. Then, one night, he spent several hours writingto her--writing a carefully worded letter, in which he put forward thebest reasons he could devise, for her remaining away altogether. 

To this he received no answer. 

X. 

From one of the high, wooden benches, at the back of the amphitheatrein the ALBERTHALLE, where he had lain at full length, listening to theperformance of a Berlin pianist, Krafft rose, full to the brim ofimpressions, and eager to state them. 

"That man, " he began, as he left the hall between Maurice and AveryHill, "is a successful teacher. And therewith his fate as an artist issealed. No teacher can get on to the higher rungs of the ladder, and noinspired musician be a satisfactory teacher. If the artist is obligedto share his art, his pupils, should they be intelligent, may pick upsomething of his skill, learn the trick of certain things; but themoment he begins to set up dogmas, it is the end of him. --As if it werepossible for one person to prescribe to another, of a totally differenttemperament, how he ought to feel in certain passages, or be affectedby certain harmonies! If I, for example, choose to play the laterBeethoven sonatas as I would the Brahms Concerto in B flat, with athoroughly modern irony, what is it that hinders me from doing it, andfrom satisfying myself, and kindred souls, who are honest enough toadmit their feelings? Tradition, nothing in the world but tradition;tradition in the shape of the teacher steps in and says anathema: tothis we are not accustomed, ERGO, it cannot be good. --And it is justthe same with those composers who are also pedagogues. They know, nonebetter, that there are no hard and fast rules in their art; that it isonly convention, or the morbid car of some medieval monk, which hasbanished, say, consecutive fifths from what is called g pure writing ';that further, you need only to have the regulation number of yearsbehind you, to fling squeamishness to the winds. In other words, youlearn rules to unlearn them with infinite pains. But the pupil, in hisinnocence, demands a rigid basis to go on--it is a human weakness, this, the craving for rules--and his teachers pamper him. Instead ofsaying: develop your own ear, rely on yourself, only what you teachyourself is worth knowing--instead of this, they build up walls andbarriers to hedge him in, behind which, for their benefit, he must gothrough the antics of a performing dog. But nemesis overtakes them;they fall a victim to their own wiles, just as the liar finallybelieves his own lies. Ultimately they find their chief delight in theadroitness with which they themselves overcome imaginary obstacles. "

His companions were silent. Avery Hill had a nine hours' working-daybehind her, and was tired; besides, she made a point of never replyingto Krafft's tirades. Once only, of late, had she said to him inMaurice's presence: "You would reason the skin off one's bones, Heinz. You are the most self-conscious person alive. " Krafft had been muchannoyed at this remark, and had asked her to call him a Jew and be donewith it; but afterwards, he admitted to Maurice that she was right. 

"And it's only the naive natures that count. "

Maurice had found his way back to Krafft; for, in the days ofuncertainty that followed the posting of his letter, he needed humancompanionship. Until the question whether Louise would return or notwas decided, he could settle to nothing; and Krafft's ramblings tookhim out of himself. Since the ball, his other friends had given him thecold shoulder; hence it did not matter whether or no they approved ofhis renewed intimacy with Krafft--he said "they, " but it was Madeleinewho was present to his mind. And Krafft was an easy person to take upwith again; he never bore a grudge, and met Maurice readily, half-way. 

It had not taken the latter long to shape his actions or what hebelieved to be the best. But his thoughts were beyond control. He wasas helpless against sudden spells of depression as against dreams of aniridescent brightness. He could no more avoid dwelling on the futurethan reliving the Past. If Louise did not return, these memories wereall that were left him. If she did, what form were their relations toeach other going to assume?--and this was the question that cost himmost anxious thought. 

A thing that affected him oddly, at this time, was his growinginability to call up her face. It was incredible. This face, which hehad supposed he knew so well that he could have drawn it blindfold, hadtaken to eluding him; and the more impatient he became, the poorer washis success. The disquieting thing, however, was, that though he couldnot materialise her face, what invariably rose before his eyes was herlong, bare arm, as it had lain on the black stuff of her dress. Atfirst, it only came when he was battling to secure the face; then ittook to appearing at unexpected moments; and eventually, it became akind of nightmare, which haunted him. He would start up from dreamingof it, his hair moist with perspiration, for, strangely enough, he wasalways on the point of doing it harm: either his teeth were meeting init, or he had drawn the blade of a knife down the middle of theblue-veined whiteness, and the blood spurted out along the line, whichreddened instantly in the wake of the knife. 

April had come, bringing April weather; it was fitfully sunny, and amild and generous dampness spurred on growth: shrubs and bushes were sothickly sprinkled with small buds that, at a distance, it seemed asthough a transparent green veil had been flung over them. In theGewandhaus, according to custom, the Ninth Symphony had brought theconcert season to a close; once more, the chorus had struggledvictoriously with the ODE TO JOY. And early one morning, Maurice held anote in his hand, in which Louise announced that she had "come home, "the night before. 

She had been away for almost two months, and, to a certain extent, hehad grown inured to her absence. At the sight of her handwriting, hehad the sensation of being violently roused from sleep. Now he shrankfrom the moment when he should see her again; for it seemed that notonly the present, but all his future depended on it. 

Late in the evening, he returned from the visit, puzzled and depressed. 

Seven had boomed from church-clocks far and near, before he reached theBRUDERSTRASSE, but, nevertheless, he had been kept waiting in thepassage for a quarter of an hour: and he was in such an apprehensiveframe of mind that he took the delay as a bad omen. 

When he crossed the threshold, Louise came towards him with one ofthose swift movements which meant that she was in good spirits, andconfident of herself. She held out her hands, and smiled at him withall her dark, mobile face, saying words that were as impulsive as hergesture. Maurice was always vaguely chilled by her outbursts oflight-heartedness: they seemed to him strained and unreal, soaccustomed had he grown to the darker, less adaptable side of hernature. 

"You have come back?" he said, with her hand in his. 

"Yes, I'm here--for the present, at least. "

The last words caught in his ear, and buzzed there, making hisforeboding a certainty. On the spot, his courage failed him; and thoughLouise continued to ring all the changes her voice was capable of, hedid not recover his spirits. It was not merely the sense ofstrangeness, which inevitably attacked him after he had not seen herfor some time; on this occasion, it was more. Partly, it might be dueto the fact that she was dressed in a different way; her hair was donehigh on her head, and she wore a light grey dress of modish cut anddesign. Her face, too, had grown fuller; the hollows in her cheeks hadvanished; and her skin had that peculiar clear pallor that wascharacteristic of it in health. 

He was stupidly silent; he could not join in her careless vivacity. Besides, throughout the visit, nothing was said that it was worth hiscoming to hear. 

But when she wished him good-bye, she said, with a strange smile:"Altogether, I am very grateful to you, Maurice, for having made me goaway. "

He himself no longer felt any satisfaction at what he had done. As soonas he left her, he tried to comprehend what had happened: the change inher was too marked for him to be able to console himself that he hadimagined it. Not only had she seemingly recovered, as if by magic, fromthe lassitude of the winter--he could even have forgiven her thealteration in her style of dress, although this, too, helped toalienate her from him. But what he ended by recognising, with a jealousthrob, was that she had mentally recovered as well; she was once morethe self-contained girl he had first known, with a gift for keeping anoutsider beyond the circle of her thoughts and feelings. An outsider!The weeks of intimate companionship were forgotten, seemed never tohave been. She had no further need of him, that was the clue to themystery, and the end of the matter. 

And so it continued, the next day, and the next again; Louisedeliberately avoided touching on anything that lay below the surface. She vouchsafed no explanation of the words that had disquieted him, norwas the letter Maurice had written her once mentioned between them. 

But, though she seemed resolved not to confide in him, she could notdispense with the small, practical services, he was able to render her. They were even more necessary to her than before; for, if one thing wasclear, it was that she no longer intended to cloister herself up insideher four walls: the day after her return, she had been out till late inthe afternoon, and had come home with her hands full of parcels. Shetook it now as a matter of course that Maurice should accompany her;and did not, or would not, notice his abstraction. 

After the lapse of a very short time, however, the young man began tofeel that there was something feverish in the continual high level ofher mood. She broke down, once or twice, in trying to sustain it, andwas more of her eloquently silent self again: one evening, he came uponher, in the dusk, when she was sitting with her chin on her hand, looking out before her with the old questioning gaze. 

Occasionally he thought that she was waiting for something: in themiddle of a sentence, she would break off, and grow absent-minded; andmore than once, the unexpected advent of the postman threw her into astate of excitement, which she could not conceal. She was waiting for aletter. But Maurice was proud, and asked no questions; he took pains touse the cool, friendly tone, she herself adopted. 

Not a week had dragged out, however, since her return, before he wassuffering in a new way, in the oldest, cruellest way of all. 

The PENSION at which she had stayed in Dresden, had been frequented byleisured foreigners: over twenty people, of various nationalities, hadsat down daily at the dinner-table. Among so large a number, it wouldhave been easy for Louise to hold herself aloof. But, as far as Mauricecould gather, she had felt no inclination to do this. From the first, she seemed to have been the nucleus of an admiring circle, chief amongthe members of which was a family of Americans--a brother and twosisters, rich Southerners, possessed of a vague leaning towards art andmusic. The names of these people recurred persistently in her talk;and, as the days went by, Maurice found himself listening for one namein particular, with an irritation he could not master. Raymond vanHoust--a ridiculous name!--fit only for a backstairs romance. But asoften as she spoke of Dresden, it was on her lips. Whether in theGalleries, or at the Opera, on driving excursions, or on foot, this manhad been at her side; and soon the mere mention of him was enough toset Maurice's teeth on edge. 

One afternoon, he found her standing before an extravagant mass offlowers, which were heaped up on the table; there were white and purpleviolets, a great bunch of lilies of the valley, and roses of differentcolours. They had been sent to her from Dresden, she said; but, beyondthis, she offered no explanation. All the vases in the room werecollected before her; but she had not begun to fill them: she stoodwith her hands in the flowers, tumbling them about, enjoying thecontact of their moist freshness. 

To Maurice's remark that she seemed to take a pleasure in destroyingthem, she returned a casual: "What does it matter?" and taking up asmany violets as she could hold, looked defiantly at him over theirpurple leaves. Through all she said and did ran a strong undercurrentof excitement. 

But before Maurice left, her manner changed. She came over to him, andsaid, without looking up: "Maurice I want to tell you something. "

"Yes; what is it?" He spoke with the involuntary coolness this mood ofhers called out in him; and she was quick to feel it. She returned tothe table. 

"You ask so prosaically: you are altogether prosaic to-day. And it isnot a thing I can tell you off-hand. You would need to sit down again. It's a long story; and you were going; and it's late. We will leave ittill to-morrow: that will be time enough. And if it is fine, we can goout somewhere, and I'll tell you as we go. "

It was a brilliant May afternoon: great white clouds were piled one onthe top of another, like bales of wool; and their fantastic bulgingroundnesses made the intervening patches of blue seem doubly distant. The wind was hardly more than a breath, which curled the tips of thinbranches, and fluttered the loose ends of veils and laces. In theROSENTAL, where the meadow-slopes were emerald-green, and each branchbore its complement of delicately curled leaves, the paths were socrowded that there could be no question of a connected conversation. But again, Louise was not in a hurry to begin. 

She continued meditative, even when they had reached the KAISERPARK, and were sitting with their cups before them, in the long, wooden, shed-like building, open at one side. She had taken off her hat--asomewhat showy white hat, trimmed with large white feathers--and laidit on the table; one dark wing of hair fell lower than the other, andshaded her forehead. 

Maurice, who was on tenterhooks, subdued his impatience as long as hecould. Finally, he emptied his cup at a draught, and pushed it away. 

"You wanted to speak to me, you said. "--His manner was curt, from sheernervousness. 

His voice startled her. "Yes, I have something to tell you, " she said, with a hesitation he did not know in her. "But I must go back alittle. --If you remember, Maurice, you wrote to me while I was away, didn't you?" she said, and looked not at him, but at her hands claspedbefore her. "You gave me a number of excellent reasons why it would bebetter for me not to come back here. I didn't answer your letter at thetime because . .. What should you say, Maurice, if I told you now, thatI intended to take your advice?"

"You are going away?" The words jerked out gratingly, of themselves. 

"Perhaps. --That is what I want to speak to you about. I have a chanceof doing so. "

"Chance? How chance?" he asked sharply. 

"That's what I am going to tell you, if you will give me time. "

Drawing a letter from her pocket, she smoothed the creases out of theenvelope, and handed it to him. 

While he read it, she looked away, looked over the enclosure. Somepeople were crossing it, and she followed them with her eyes, thoughshe had often seen their counterparts before. A man in a heavyulster--notwithstanding the mildness of the day--stalked on ahead, unconcerned about the fate of his family, which dragged, a woman andtwo children, in the rear: like savages, thought Louise, where the malegoes first, to scent danger. But the crackling of paper recalled herattention; Maurice was folding the sheet, and replacing it in theenvelope, with a ludicrous precision. His face had taken on a pinchedexpression, and he handed the letter back to her without a word. 

She looked at him, expecting him to say something; but he was obdurate. "This was what I was waiting all these days to tell you, " she said. 

"You knew it was coming then?" He scarcely recognised his own voice; hespoke as he supposed a judge might speak to a proven criminal. 

Louise shrugged her shoulders. "No. Yes. --That is, as far as it'spossible to know such a thing. "

Through the crude glass window, the sun cast a medley of lines andlights on her hands, and on the checkered table-cloth. There were tworough benches, and a square table; the coffeecups stood on a metaltray; the lid of the pot was odd, did not match the set: all theseinanimate things, which, a moment ago, Maurice had seen without seeingthem, now stood out before his eyes, as if each of them had acquired anindependent life, and no longer fitted into its background. 

"Let us go home, " he said, and rose. 

"Go home? But we have only just come!" cried Louise, with what seemedto him pretended surprise. "Why do you want to go home? It is so quiethere: I can talk to you. For I need your advice, Maurice. You must helpme once again. "

"I help you?--in this? No, thank you. All I can do, it seems, is towish you joy. " He remained standing, with his hand on the back of thebench. 

But at the cold amazement of her eyes, he took his seat again. "It is amatter for yourself--only you can decide. It's none of my business. " Hemoved the empty cups about on the cloth. 

"But why are you angry?"

"Haven't I good reason to be? To see you--you!--accepting animpertinence of this kind so quietly. For it IS an impertinence, Louise, that a man you hardly know should write to you in this cocksureway and ask you to marry him. Impertinent and absurd!"

"You have a way of finding most things I want to do absurd, " sheanswered. "In this case, though, you're mistaken. The tone of theletter is all it should be. And, besides, I know Mr. Van Houst verywell. "

Maurice looked at her with a sardonic smile. 

"Seven weeks is a long time, " she added. 

"Seven weeks!--and for a lifetime!"

"Oh, one can get to know a man inside out, in seven weeks, " she said, with wilful flippancy. "Especially if, from the first, he shows soplainly . .. Maurice, don't be angry. You have always been kind to me;you're not going to fail me now that I really need help? I have no oneelse, as you very well know. " She smiled at him, and held out her hand. He could not refuse to take it; but he let it drop again immediately. 

"Let me tell you all about it, and how it happened, and then you willunderstand, " Louise went on, in a persuasive voice--he had oncebelieved that the sound of this voice would reconcile him to any fate. "You think the time was short, but we were together every day, andsometimes all day long. I knew from the first that he cared for me; hemade no secret of it. If anything, it is a proof of tactfulness on hispart that he should have written rather than have spoken to me himself. I like him for doing it, for giving me time. And then, listen, Maurice, what I should gain by marrying him. He is rich, really rich, andgood-looking--in an American way--and thirty-two years old. His sisterswould welcome me--one of them told me as much, and told me, too, thather brother had never cared for anyone before. He would make an idealhusband, " she added with a sudden recklessness, at the sight ofMaurice's unmoved face. "Americanly chivalrous to the fingertips, andwith just enough of the primitive animal in him to ward off monotony. "

Maurice raised his hand, as if in self-defence. "So you, too, then, like any other woman, would marry just for the sake of marrying?" heasked, with bitter disbelief. 

"Yes. --And just especially and particularly I. "

"For Heaven's sake, let us get out of here!"

Without listening to her protest, he went to find the waiter. Louisefollowed him out of the enclosure, carrying hat and gloves in her hand. 

They struck into narrow by-paths going back, to avoid the people. Butit was impossible to escape all, and those they met, eyed them withcuriosity. The clear English voices rang out unconcerned; the pale girlwith the Italian eyes was visibly striving to appease her companion, who marched ahead, angry and impassive. 

For a few hundred yards neither of them spoke. Then Louise began anew. 

"And that is not all. You judge harshly and unfairly because you don'tknow the facts. I am almost quite alone in the world. I have norelatives that I care for, except one brother. I lived with him, on hisstation in Queensland, until I came here. But now he's married, andthere would be no room for me in the house--figuratively speaking. If Igo back now, I must share his home with his wife, whom I knew anddisliked. While here is some one who is fond of me, and is rich, andwho offers me not only a home of my own, but, what is far more to me, an entirely new life in a new world. "

"Excellent reasons! But in reckoning them up, you have forgotten whatseems to me the most important one of all; whether or no you care forhim, for this . .. " this in his trouble, he could not find a suitableepithet. 

But Louise refused to be touched. "I like him, " she answered, andlooked across the slope of meadow they were passing. "I liked him, yes, as any woman would like a man who treated her as he did me. He was verygood tome. And not in the least repugnant. --But care?" she interruptedherself. "If by care, you mean . .. Then no, a hundred thousand times, no! I shall never care for anyone in that way again, and you know it. Ihad enough of that to last me all my life. "

"Very well, then, and I say, if you married a man you care for aslittle as that, I should never believe in a woman again. --Not, ofcourse, that it matters to you what I believe in and what I don't? Butto hear you--you, Louise!--counting up the profits to be gained fromit, like . .. Like--oh, I don't know what! I couldn't have believed itof you. "

"You are a very uncomfortable person, Maurice. "

"I mean to be. And more than uncomfortable. Listen to me! You talk ofit lightly and coolly; but if you married this man, without caring forhim more than you say you do, just for the sake of a home, or hismoney, or his good manners, or the primitive animal, or whatever it isthat attracts you in him:"--he grew bitter again in spite ofhimself--"if you did this, you would be stifling all that is good andgenerous in your nature. For you may say what you like; the man islittle more than a stranger to you. What can you know of his realcharacter? And what can he know of you?"

"He knows as much of me as I ever intend him to know. "

"Indeed! Then you wouldn't tell him, for instance, that only a fewmonths ago, you were eating your heart out for some one else?"

Louise winced as though the words had struck her in the face. Beforeshe answered, she stood still, in the middle of the path, and pinnedon, with deliberate movements, the big white hat, beneath the droopingbrim and nodding feathers of which, her eyes were as black as coals. 

"No, I should not, " she said. "Why should I? Do you think it would makehim care more for me to know that I had nearly died of love for anotherman?"

"Certainly not. And it might also make him less ready to marry you. "

"That's exactly what I think. "

One was as bitter as the other; but Maurice was the more violent of thetwo. 

"And so you would begin the new life you talk of, with lies anddeceit?--A most excellent beginning!"

"If you like to call it that. I only know, that no one with any sensethinks of dragging up certain things when once they are dead andburied. Or are you, perhaps, simple enough to believe any man livingwould get over what I have to tell him, and care for me afterwards inthe same way?"

He turned, with tell-tale words on his tongue. But the expression ofher face intimidated him. He had only to look at her to know that, ifhe spoke of himself at this moment, she would laugh him to scorn. 

But the beloved face acted on him in its own way; his sense of injuryweakened. "Louise, " he said in an altered tone; "whatever you say tothe contrary, in a matter like this, I can't advise you. For I don'tunderstand--and never should. --But of one thing I'm as sure as I amthat the sun will rise to-morrow, and that is, that you won't do it. Doyou honestly think you could go on living, day after day, with a manyou don't sincerely care for?--of whom the most you can say is thathe's not repugnant to you? You little know what it would mean!--And youmay reason as you will; I answer for you; and I say no, and again no. It isn't in you to do it. You are not mean and petty enough. You can'thide your feelings, try as you will. --No, you couldn't deceive someone, by pretending to care for him, for months on end. You would bemiserably unhappy; and then--then I know what would happen. You wouldbe candid--candid about everything--when it was too late. "

There was no mistaking the sincerity of his words. But Louise wasboundlessly irritated, and made no further effort to check herresentment. 

"You have an utterly false and ridiculous idea of me, and of everythingbelonging to me. "

"I haven't spent all this time with you for nothing. I know you betterthan you know yourself. I believe in you, Louise. And I know I amright. And some day you'll know it, too. "

These words only incensed her the more. 

"What you know--or think you know--is nothing to me. If you hadlistened to me patiently, as I asked you to, instead of losing yourtemper, and taking what I said as a personal affront, then, yes, then Ishould have told you something else besides. How, when I came back, afortnight ago, I was quite resolved to marry this man, if he asked memarry him and cut myself off for ever from my old life and its hatefulmemories. --And why not? I'm still young. I still have a right topleasure--and change--and excitement. --And in all these days, I didn'tonce hesitate--not till the letter came yesterday--and then not tillnight. It wasn't like me; for when once I have made up my mind, I nevergo back. So I determined to ask you--ask you to help me to decide. Foryou had always been kind to me. --But this is what I get for doing it. "Her anger flared up anew. "You have treated me abominably, to-day, Maurice; and I shan't forget it. All your ridiculous notions aboutright and wrong don't matter a straw. What does matter is, that when Iask for help, you should behave as if--as if I were going to commit acrime. Your opinion is nothing to me. If I decide to marry the man, Ishall do it, no matter what you say. "

"I'm sure you will. "

"And if I don't, let me tell you this: it won't be because of anythingyou've said to-day. Not from any high-flown notions of honesty, orgenerosity, as you would like to make yourself believe; but merelybecause I haven't the energy in me. I couldn't keep it up. I want to bequiet, to have an easy life. The fact that some one else had to suffer, too, wouldn't matter to me, in the least. It's myself I think of, firstand foremost, and as long as I live it will always be myself. "

Her voice belied her words; he expected each moment that she wouldburst out crying. However, she continued to walk on, with her headerect; and she did not take back one of the unkind things she had said. 

They parted without being reconciled. Maurice stood and watched hermount the staircase, in the vain hope that she would turn, beforereaching the top. 

He did not see how the fine May afternoon declined, and passed intoevening; how the high stacks of cloud were broken up at sunset, andshredded into small flakes and strips of cloud, which, saturated withgold, vanished in their turn: how the shadows in the corners turnedfrom blue to black; nor did he note the mists that rose like steam fromthe ground, intensifying the acrid smell of garlic, with which thewoods abounded. Screened by the thicket, he sat on his accustomed scat, and gave himself up to being miserable. 

For some time he was conscious only of how deeply he had beenwounded--just as one suffers from the bruise after the blow. At themoment, he had been stunned into a kind of quiescence; now his nervesthrobbed and tingled. But, little by little, a vivid recollection ofwhat had actually occurred returned to sting him: and certain detailsstood out fixed and unforgettable. Yet, in reliving the hours justpast, he felt no regret at the fact that they had quarrelled. Whatfirst smote him was an unspeakable amazement at Louise. The knowledgethat, for weeks on end, she had been contemplating marriage, was beyondhis belief. Hardly recovered from the throes of a suffering believedincurable, and while he was still going about her with gloved hands, asit were, she was ready to throw herself into the arms of the firstlikely man she met. He could not help himself: in this connection, every little trait in her that was uncongenial to him, started up withappalling distinctness. Hitherto, he had put it down to his ownsensitiveness; he was over-nice. But for the most part, he had forgivenher on account of all she had come through; for he believed that thisgrief had swept destructively through her nature, leaving a jaggedwound, which only time could heal. Now, as if to prove to him what afool he was, she showed him that he had been mistaken in this also; shecould recover her equilibrium, while he still hedged her round withsolicitude--recover herself, and transfer her affection to anotherperson. Good God! Was it so easy, a matter of so little moment, to growfond of one who was almost a stranger to her?--for, in spite of whatshe said to the contrary, he was persuaded that she had a strongerfeeling for this man than she had been willing to admit: this riperman, with his experienced way of treating women. Was, then, his ownidea of her wholly false? Was there, after all, something in her naturethat he could not, would not, understand? He denied it fiercely, almostbefore he had formulated the question: no matter what her actions were, or what words she said, deep down in her was an intense will for good, a spring of noble impulse. It was only that she had never had a properchance. But he denied it to a vision of her face: the haunting eyeswhich, at first sight, had destroyed his peace of mind; the dead blackhair against the ivory-coloured skin. It was in these things that thetruth lay, not in the blind promptings of her inclination. 

For the first time, the idea of marriage took definite shape in hismind. For all he knew, it might have been lying dormant there, allalong; but he would doubtless have remained unconscious of it, forweeks to come, had it not been for the events of the afternoon. Now, however, Louise had made it plain that his feelings for her were of anexaggerated delicacy; plain that she herself had no such scruples. Heneed hesitate no longer. But marry! . .. Marriage! . .. He marryLouise!--at the thought of it, he laughed. That he, Maurice Guest, should, for an instant, put himself on a par with her American suitor!The latter, rich, leisured, able to satisfy her caprices, surround herwith luxury: himself, younger than she by several years, withoutprospects, with nothing to offer her but a limitless devotion. He triedto imagine himself saying: "Louise, will you marry me?" and the wordsstuck in his throat; for he saw the amused astonishment of her eyes. And not merely at the presumption he would be guilty of; what was asclear to him as day was that she did not really care for him; not as hecared for her; not with the faintest hint of a warmer feeling. If hehad never grasped this before, he did so now, to the full. Sittingthere, he affirmed to himself that she did not even like him. She wasgrateful to him, of course, for his help and friendship; but that wasall. Beyond this, he would not have been surprised to learn from herown lips that she actually disliked him: for there was somethingirreconcilable about their two natures. And never, for a moment, hadshe considered him in the light of an eligible lover--oh, how thatstung! Here was she, with an attraction for him which nothing couldweaken; and in him was not the smallest lineament, of body or of mind, to wake a response in her. He was powerless to increase her happinessby a hair's breadth. Her nerves would never answer to the inflection ofhis voice, or the touch of his hand. How could such things be? Whatanomaly was here?

To-day, her face rose before him unsought--the sweet, dark face withthe expression of slight melancholy that it wore in repose, as he lovedit best. It was with him when, stiff and tired, he emerged from hisseclusion, and walked home through the trails of mist that hung, breast-high, on the meadow-land. It was with him under thestreet-lamps, and, to its accompanying presence, the strong convictiongrew in him that evasion on his part was no longer possible. Sooner orlater, come what might, the words he had faltered over, even tohimself, would have to be spoken. 

XI. 

One day, some few weeks later, Madeleine sat at her writingtable, biting the end of her pen. A sheet of note-paper lay before her; butshe had not yet written a word. She frowned to herself, as she sat. 

Hard at work that morning, she had heard a ring at the door-bell, and, a minute after, her landlady ushered in a visitor, in the shape of MissMartin. Madeleine rose from the piano with ill-concealed annoyance, andhaving seated Miss Martin on the sofa, waited impatiently for the gistof her visit; for she was sure that the lively American would not cometo see her without an object. And she was right: she knew to a nicetywhen the important moment arrived. Most of the visit was preamble; MissMartin talked at length of her own affairs, assuming, with disarmingcandour, that they interested other people as much as herself. She wentinto particulars about her increasing dissatisfaction with Schwarz, andretailed the glowing accounts she heard on all sides of a teachercalled Schrievers. He was not on the staff of the Conservatorium; buthe had been a favourite of Liszt's, and was attracting many pupils. From this, Miss Martin passed to more general topics, such as the blowDove had recently received over the head of his attachment to prettySusie Fay. "Why, Sue, she feels perfectly DREADFUL about it. She can'tunderstand Mr. Dove thinking they were anything but real good friends. Most every one here knew right away that Sue had her own boy down homein Illinois. Yes, indeed. "

Madeleine displayed her want of interest in Dove's concerns so plainly, that Miss Martin could not do otherwise than cease discussing them. Sherose to end her call. As, however, she stood for the momentary exchangeof courtesies that preceded the hand-shake, she said, in an off-handway: "Miss Wade, I presume I needn't inquire if you're acquainted withthe latest about Louise Dufrayer? I say, I guess I needn't inquire, seeing you're so well acquainted with Mr. Guest. I presume, though, youdon't see so much of him now. No, indeed. I hear he's thrown over allhis friends. I feel real disappointed about him. I thought he was amost agreeable young man. But, as momma says, you never can tell. An' Ireckon Louise is most to blame. Seems like she simply CAN'T existwithout a beau. But I wonder she don't feel ashamed to show herself, the way she's talked of. Why, the stories I hear about her! . .. An'they're always together. She's gotten her a heap of new things, too--amillionaire asked her to marry him, when she was in Dresden, but hewasn't good enough for her, no ma'am, an' all on account of Mr. Guest. --Yes, indeed. But I must say I feel kind of sorry for him, anyway. He was a real pleasant young man. "

"Maurice Guest is quite able to look after himself, " said Madeleinedrily. 

"Is that so? Well, I presume you ought to know, you were once so wellacquainted with him--if I may say, Miss Wade, we all thought it was youwas his fancy. Yes, indeed. "

"Oh, I always knew he liked Louise. "

But this was the chief grudge she, too, bore him: that he had been solittle open with her. His seeming frankness had been merely a feint; hehad gone his own way, and had never really let her know what he wasthinking and planning. She now recalled the fact that Louise had onlyonce been mentioned between them, since the time of her illness, oversix months ago; and she, Madeleine, had foolishly believed hisreticence to be the result of a growing indifference. 

Since the night of the ball, they had shunned each other, by tacitconsent. But, though she could avoid him in person, Madeleine could notclose her cars to the gossipy tales that circulated. In the last fewweeks, too, the rumours had become more clamatory: these two misguidedcreatures had obviously no regard for public opinion; and severaltimes, Madeleine had been obliged to go out of her own way, to escapemeeting them face to face. On these occasions, she told herself thatshe had done with Maurice Guest; and this decision was the more easyas, since the beginning of the year, she had moved almost entirely inGerman circles. But now the distasteful tattle was thrust under hervery nose. It seemed to put things in a different light to hear Mauricepitied and discussed in this very room. In listening to her visitor, she had felt once more how strong her right of possession was in him;she was his oldest friend in Leipzig. Now she was ready to blameherself for having let her umbrage stand in the way of them continuingfriends: had he been dropping in as he had formerly done, she mighthave prevented things from going so far, and certainly have been of usein hindering them from growing worse; for, with Louise, one was neversure. And so she determined to write to him, without delay. In this, though, she was piqued as well by a violent curiosity. Louise said tohave given up a good match for his sake! xxx she could not believe it. It was incredible that she could care for him as he cared for her. Madeleine knew them both too well; Maurice was not the type of man bywhom Louise was attracted. 

She wrote in a guarded way. 

IT SEEMS ABSURD THAT OLD FRIENDS SHOULD BEHAVE AS WE ARE DOING. IFANYTHING THAT HAPPENED WAS MY FAULT, FORGIVE IT, AND SHOW ME YOU DON'TBEAR ME A GRUDGE, BY COMING TO SEE ME TO-MORROW AFTERNOON. 

They had not met for close on four months, and, for the first fewminutes after his arrival, Madeleine was confused by the change thathad taken place in Maurice. It was not only that he was paler andthinner than of old: his boyish manner had deserted him; and, when heforgot himself, his eyes had a strange, brooding expression. 

"Other-worldly . .. Almost, " thought Madeleine; and, in order tosurmount an awkwardness she had been resolved not to feel, she talkedglibly. Maurice said he could not stay long, and wished to keep his hatin his hand; but before he knew it, he was sitting in his accustomedplace on the sofa. 

As they stirred their tea, she told him how annoyed she had felt athaving recently had a performance postponed in favour of Avery Hill:and how the latter was said to be going crazy, with belief in her owngenius. Maurice seemed to be in the dark about what was happening, andmade no attempt to hide his ignorance. She could see, too, that he wasnot interested in these things; he played with a tassel of the sofa, and did not notice when she stopped speaking. 

It is his turn now, she said to herself, and left the silence thatfollowed unbroken. Before it had lasted long, however, he looked upfrom his employment of twisting the tassel as far round as it would go, and then letting it fly back. "I say, Madeleine, now I'm here, there'ssomething I should like to ask you. I hope, though, you won't think itimpertinence on my part. " He cleared his throat. "Once or twice latelyI've heard a report about you--several times, indeed. I didn't pay anyattention to it--not till a few days back, that is--when I saw it--orthought I saw it--confirmed with my own eyes. I was at Bonorand's onMonday evening; I was behind you. "

In an instant Madeleine had grasped what he was driving at. "Well, andwhat of that, pray?" she asked. "Do you think I should have been there, if I had been ashamed of it?"

"I saw whom you were with, " he went on, and treated the tassel soroughly that it came away in his hand. "I say, Madeleine, it can't betrue, what they say--that you are thinking of . .. Of marrying that oldGerman?"

Madeleine coloured, but continued to meet his eyes. "And why not?" sheasked again. --"Don't destroy my furniture, please. "

"Why not?" he echoed, and laid the tassel on the table. "Well, if youcan ask that, I should say you don't know the facts of the case. If Ihad a sister, Madeleine, I shouldn't care to see her going about withthat man. He's an old ?? ??--don't you know he has had two wives, andis divorced from both?"

"Fiddle-dee-dee! You and your sister! Do you think a man is going tocome to nearly fifty without knowing something of life? That he hasn'tbeen happy in his matrimonial relations is his misfortune, not hisfault. "

"Then it's true?"

"Why not?" she asked for the third time. 

"Then, of course, I've nothing more to say. I've no right to interferein your private affairs. I hoped I should still be in time--that's all. "

"No, you can't go yet, sit still, " she said peremptorily. "I too, havesomething to say. --But will you first tell me, please, what it canpossibly matter to you, whether you are in time, as you call it, ornot?"

"Why, of course, it matters. --We haven't seen much of each otherlately; but you were my first friend here, and I don't forget it. Particularly in a case like this, where everything is against the ideaof you marrying this man: your age--your character--all common sense. "

"Those are only words, Maurice. With regard to my age, I am overtwenty-seven, as you know. I need no boy of eighteen for a husband. Then I am plain: I shall never attract anyone by my personalappearance, nor will a man ever be led to do foolish things for mysake. I have worked hard all my life, and have never known what it isto let to-morrow take care of itself. --Now here, at last, comes a manof an age not wholly unsuitable to mine, whatever you may say. Whatthough he has enjoyed life? He offers me, not only a certain socialstanding, but material comfort for the rest of my days. Whereas, otherwise, I may slave on to the end, and die eventually in agovernesses' home. "

"YOU would never do that. You are not one of that kind. But do youthink, for a moment, you'd be happy in such a position of dependence?"

"That's my own affair. There would certainly be nothing extraordinaryin it, if I were. "

"As you put it, perhaps not. But------If it were even some one of yourown race! But these foreigners think so queerly. And then, too, Madeleine, you'll laugh, I daresay, but I've always thought of you asdifferent from other women--strong and independent, and quite sure ofyourself. The kind of girl that makes others seem little and stupid. Noone here was good enough for you. "

Madeleine's amazement was so great that she did not reply immediately. Then she laughed. "You have far too high an opinion of me. Do youreally think I like standing alone? That I do it by preference?--Youwere never more mistaken, if you do. It has always been a case ofnecessity with me, no one ever having asked me to try the other way. Isuppose like you, they thought I enjoyed it. However, set your mind atrest. Your kind intervention has not come too late. There is stillnothing definite. "

"I'm glad to hear it. "

"I don't say there mayn't be, " she added. "Herr Lohse and I areexcellent friends, and it won't occur to me not to accept thetheatre-tickets and other amusements he is able to give me. --But it isalso possible that for the sake of 'your ideals, I may die a solitaryold maid. "

Here she was overcome by the comical side of the matter, and burst outlaughing. 

"What a ridiculous boy you are! If you only knew how you have turnedthe tables on me. I sent for you, this afternoon, to give you a soundtalking-to, and instead of that, here you sit and lecture me. "

"Well, if I have achieved something----"

"It's too absurd, " she repeated more tartly. "For you to come here inthis way to care for my character, when you yourself are the talk ofthe place. "

His face changed, as she had meant it to do. He choked back a sharprejoinder. "I'd be obliged, if you'd leave my affairs out of thequestion. "

"I daresay you would. But that's just what I don't intend to do. For ifthere are rumours going the round about me, what on earth is one to sayof you? I needn't go into details. You know quite well what I mean. Letme tell you that your name is in everybody's mouth, and that you arebeing made to appear not only contemptible, but ridiculous. "

"The place is a hot-bed of scandal. I've told you that before, " hecried, angry enough now. "These dirty-minded MUSIKER think it outsidethe bounds of possibility for two people to be friends. " But his tonewas unsure, and he was conscious of it. 

"Yes--when one of the two is Louise. "

"Kindly leave Miss Dufrayer out of the question. "

"Oh, Maurice, don't Miss Dufrayer me!--I knew Louise before you evenknew that she existed. --But answer me one question, and I'm done. Areyou engaged to Louise?"

"Most certainly not. "

"Well, then, you ought to be. --For though you don't care what peoplesay about yourself, your conscience will surely prick you when you hearthat you're destroying the last shred of reputation Louise had left. --Ishould be sorry to repeat to you what is being said of her. "

But after he had gone, she reproached herself for having put such aquestion to him. At the pass things had reached, it was surely best forhim to go through with his infatuation, and get over it. Whereas she, in a spasm of conventionality, had pointed him out the sure road toperdition; for the worst thing that could happen would be for him tobind himself to Louise, in any fashion. As if her reputation mattered!The more rapidly she got rid of what remained to her, the better itwould be for every one, and particularly for Maurice Guest. 

Had Maurice been in doubt as to Madeleine's meaning, it would have beenremoved within a few minutes of his leaving the house. As he turned acorner of the Gewandhaus, he came face to face with Krafft. Though theyhad not met for weeks, Heinrich passed with no greeting but adisagreeable smile. Maurice was not half-way across the road, however, when Krafft came running back, and, taking the lappel of his friend'scoat, allowed his wit to play round the talent Maurice displayed forwearing dead men's shoes. 

CARMEN was given that night in the theatre; Maurice had fetched ticketsfrom the box-office in the morning. An ardent liking for the theatrehad sprung up in Louise of late; and they were there sometimes two orthree evenings in succession. Besides this, CARMEN was her favouriteopera, which she never missed. They heard it from the second-topgallery. Leaning back in his corner, Maurice could see little of thestage; but the bossy waves of his companion's head were sharplyoutlined for him against the opposite tier. 

Louise was engrossed in what was happening on the stage; her eyes werewide open, immovable. He had never known anyone surrender himself soutterly to the mimic life of the theatre. Under the influence of musicor acting that gripped her, Louise lost all remembrance of hersurroundings: she lived blindly into this unreal world, without theleast attempt at criticism. Afterwards, she returned to herself tiredand dispirited, and with a marked distaste for the dullness of reallife. Here, since the first lively clash of the orchestra, since thecurtain rose on gay Sevilla, she had been as far away from him as ifshe were on another planet. Not, he was obliged to confess to himself, that it made very much difference. Though he was now her constantcompanion, though his love for her was stronger than it had ever been, he knew less of her to-day than he had known six months ago, when oneall-pervading emotion had made her life an open book. 

Since that unhappy afternoon on which he learnt the contents of theletter from Dresden, they had spent a part of nearly every day in eachother's company. Louise had borne him no malice for what he had said toher; indeed, with the generous forgetfulness of offence, which was oneof the most astonishing traits in her character, she met him, the dayafter, as though nothing had passed between them. By common consent, they never referred to the matter again; Maurice did not know to thisday, whether or how she had answered the letter. For, although she hadforgiven him, she was not quite the same with him as before; a faintchange had come over their relation to each other. It was something soelusive that he could not have defined it; yet nevertheless it existed, and he was often acutely conscious of it. It was not that she kept herthoughts to herself; but she did not say ALL she thought--that was it. And this shade of reserve, in her who had been so frank, ate into himsorely. He accepted it, though, as a chastisement, for he had been in avery contrite frame of mind on awakening to the knowledge that he hadall but lost her. And so the days had slipped away. An outsider hadfirst to open his eyes to the fact that it was impossible for things togo on any longer as they were doing; that, for her sake, he must makean end, and quickly. 

And yet it had been so easy to drift, so hard to do otherwise, whenLouise accepted all he did for her as a matter of course, in thathigh-handed way of hers which took no account of details. He felt sorryfor her, too, for she was not happy. There was a gnawing discontent inher just now, and for this, in great measure, he held himselfresponsible: for a few weeks she had been buoyed up by the hope of anew life, and he had been the main agent in destroying this hope. Inreturn, he had had nothing to offer her--nothing but a rigid living upto certain uncomfortable ideals, which brought neither change norpleasure with them: and, despite his belief in the innate nobility ofher nature, he could not but recognise that ideals were for hersomething colder and sterner than for other people. 

She made countless demands on his indulgence, and he learnt to see, only too clearly, what a dependent creature she was. It was more than aboon, it was a necessity to her, to have some one at her side who wouldcare for her comfort and well-being. He could not picture her alone;for no one had less talent than she for the trifles that compose life. Her thoughts seemed always to be set on something larger, vaguer, beyond. 

He devoted as much time to her as he could spare from his work, andstrove to meet her half-way in all she asked. But it was no slightmatter; for her changes of mood had never been so abrupt as they werenow. He did not know how to treat her. Sometimes, she was cold andunapproachable, so wrapped up in herself that he could not get nearher; and perhaps only an hour later, her lips would curve upwards inthe smile which made her look absurdly young, and her eyes, too, haveall the questioning wonder of a child's. Or she would be silent withhim, not unkindly, but silent as a sphinx; and, on the same day, a fitof loquacity would seize her, when she was unable to speak quicklyenough for the words that bubbled to her lips. He managed to please herseldomer than ever. But however she behaved, he never faltered. Theright to be beside her was now his; and the times she was the hardeston him were the times he loved her best. 

As spring, having reached and passed perfection, slipped over intosummer, she was invaded by a restlessness that nothing could quell. Itgot into her hands and her voice, into all her movements, and workedupon her like a fever-like a crying need. So intense did it become thatit communicated itself to him also. He, too, began to feel that restand stillness were impossible for them both, and to be avoided at anycost. 

"I have never really seen spring, " Louise said to him, one day, inexcuse of some irrational impulse that had driven her out of the house. And the quick picture she drew, of how, in her native land, the briefwinter passed almost without transition into the scathing summer; hersuggestion of unchanging leaves, brown barrenness, and and dryness; ofgrass burnt to cinders, of dust, drought, and hot, sandy winds: allthis helped him to understand something of what she was feeling. Aremembrance of this parched heat was in her veins, making her eager notto miss any of the young, teeming beauty around her, or one of the newstrange scents; eager to let the magic of this awakening permeate herand amaze her, like a primeval happening. But, though he thus graspedsomething of what was going on in her, he was none the less uneasyunder it: just as her feverish unburdening of herself after hours ofsilence, so now her attitude towards this mere change of naturedisquieted him; she over-enjoyed it, let herself go in its exuberance. And, as usual, when she lost hold of her nerves, he found himselfretreating into his shell, practising self-control for two. 

Often, how often he could not count, the words that had to be said hadrisen to his lips. But they had never crossed them--in spite of thewanton greenness of the woods, which should have been the very frame inwhich to tell a woman you loved her. But not one drop of her nervousexaltation was meant for him: she had never shown, by the least sign, that she cared a jot for him; and daily he became more convinced thathe was chasing a shadow, that he was nothing to her but the STAFFAGE inthe picture of her life. He was torn by doubts, and mortally afraid ofthe one little word that would put an end to them. 

He recollected one occasion when he had nearly succeeded in tellingher, and when, but for a trick of fate, he would have done so. Theywere on their way home from the NONNE, where the delicate undergrowthof the high old trees was most prodigal, and where Louise had closedher eyes, and drunk in the rich, earthy odours. They had paused on thesuspension bridge, and stood, she with one ungloved hand on therailing, to watch the moving water. Looking at her, it had seemed tohim that just on this afternoon, she might listen to what he had to saywith a merciful attentiveness; she was quiet, and her face was gentle. He gripped the rail with both hands. But, before he could open hislips, a third person turned from the wood-path on to the bridge, makingit tremble with his steps--a jaunty cavalry officer, with a trimmoustache and bright dancing eyes. He walked past them, but threw asearching look at Louise, and, a little further along the bridge, stoodstill, as if to watch something that was floating in the water, inreality to look covertly back at her. She had taken no notice of him ashe passed, but when he paused, she raised her head; and then she lookedat him--with a preoccupied air, it was true, but none the lesssteadily, and for several seconds on end. The words died on Maurice'slips: and going home, he was as irresponsive as she herself . .. 

"I love you, Louise--love you. " He said it now, sitting back in hisdark corner in the theatre; but amid the buzz and hum of the music, andthe shouting of the toreadors, he might have called the words aloud, and still she would not have heard them. 

Strangely enough, however, at this moment, for the first time duringthe evening, she turned her head. His eyes were fixed on her, in adark, exorbitant gaze. Her own face hardened. 

"The opera-glass!"

Maurice opened the leather case, and gave her the glass. Their fingersmet, and hers groped for a moment round his hand. He withdrew it asthough her touch had burnt him. Louise flashed a glance at him, andlaid the opera-glass en the ledge in front of her, without making useof it. 

Slowly the traitorous blood subsided. To the reverberating music, whichheld all ears, and left him sitting alone with his fate, Maurice had amoment of preternatural clearness. He realised that only one course wasopen to him, and that was to go away. BEI NACHT UND NEBEL, if it couldnot be managed otherwise, but, however it happened, he must go. Morewholly for her sake than Madeleine had dreamed of: unless he wanted tobe led into some preposterous folly that would embitter the rest of hislife. Who could say how long the wall he had built up round her--of theknowledge he shared with her, of pity for what she had undergone--wouldstand against the onset of this morbid, overmastering desire?

To the gay, feelingless music, he thought out his departure in detail, sparing himself nothing. 

But in the long interval after the second act, when they weredownstairs on the LOGGIA, where it was still half daylight; where thelights of cafes and street-lamps were only beginning here and there todart into existence; where every man they met seemed to notice Louisewith a start of attention: here Maurice was irrevocably convinced thatit would be madness to resign his hard-won post without a struggle. Forthat it would long remain empty, he did not for a moment delude himself. 

They hardly exchanged a word during the remainder of the evening. Hismouth was dry. Carmen, and her gaudy fate, drove past him like thephantasmagoria of a sleepless night. 

When, the opera was over, and they stood waiting for the crowd to thin, he scanned his companion's face with anxiety, to discover her mood. With her hand on the wire ledge, Louise watched the slow fall of theiron curtain. Her eyes were heavy; she still lived in what she had seen. 

Her preoccupation continued as they crossed the square; her movementswere listless. Maurice's thoughts went back to a similar night, a yearago, when, for the first time, he had walked at her side: it had beenjust such a warm, lilac-scented night as this, and then, as now, he hadbraced himself up to speak. At that time he had known her but slightly;perhaps, for that very reason, he had been bolder in taking the plunge. 

He turned and looked at her. Her face was averted: he could only seethe side of her cheek, and the clear-cut line of her chin. 

"Are you tired, Louise?" he asked, and, in the protective tenderness ofhis tone, her name sounded like a term of endearment. 

She made a vague gesture, which might signify either yes or no. 

"It was too hot for you up there, to-night, " he went on. "Next time, Ishall take you a scat downstairs--as I've always wanted to. " As shestill did not respond, he added, in a changed voice: "Altogether, though, it will be better for you to get accustomed to going alone tothe theatre. "

She turned at this, with an indolent curiosity. "Why?"

"Because--why, because it will soon be necessary. I'm going away. "

He had made a beginning now, clumsily, and not as he had intended, butit was made, and he would stand fast. 

"You are going away?"

She said each word distinctly, as if she doubted her ears. 

"Yes. "

"Why, Maurice?"

"For several reasons. It's not a new decision. I've been thinking aboutit for some time. "

"Indeed? Then why choose just to-night to tell me?--you've had plentyof other chances. And to-night I had enjoyed the theatre, and themusic, and coming out into the air . .. "

"I'm sorry. But I've put it off too long as it is. I ought to have toldyou before. --Louise . .. You must see that things can't go on like thisany longer?"

His voice begged her for once to look at the matter as he did. But sheheard only the imperative. 

"Must?" she repeated. "I don't see--not at all. "

"Yes. --For your sake, I must go. "

"Ah!--that makes it clearer. People have been talking, have they? Well, let them talk. "

"I can't hear you spoken of in that way. "

"Oh, you're very good. But if we, ourselves, know that what's beingsaid is not true, what can it matter?"

"I refuse to be the cause of it. "

"Do you, indeed?" She laughed. "You refuse? After doing all you can tomake yourself indispensable, you now say: get on as best you can alone;I've had enough; I must go. --Don't say it's on my account--that thethought of yourself is not at the bottom of it--for I wouldn't believeyou though you did. "

"I give you my word, I have only thought of you. I meant it . .. I meanit, for the best. "

She quickened her steps, and he saw that she was nervously worked up. 

"No man can want to injure the woman he respects--as I respect you. "

Her shoulders rose, in her own emotional way. 

"But tell me one thing, " he begged, as she walked inexorable beforehim. "Say it will matter a little to you if I go--that you will missme--if ever so little . .. Louise!"

"Miss you? What does it matter whether I miss you or not? It seems tome that counts least of all. You, at any rate, will have actedproperly. You will have nothing to reproach yourself with. --Oh, Iwouldn't be a man for anything on earth! You are all--all alike. I hateyou and despise you--every one of you!"

They were within a few steps of the house. She pressed on, and, withoutlooking back at him, or wishing him good-night, disappeared in thedoorway. 

XII. 

It was a hot evening in June: the perfume of the lilac, now in fullestbloom, lay over squares and gardens like a suspended wave. The sun hadgone down in a cloudless sky; an hour afterwards, the pavements werestill warm to the touch, and the walls of the buildings radiated theheat they had absorbed. The high old houses in the inner town had allwindows set open, and the occupants leaned out on theirwindow-cushions, with continental nonchalance. The big garden-cafeswere filled to the last scat. In the woods, the midges buzzed roundpeople's heads in accompanying clouds; and streaks of treacherous whitemist trailed, like fixed smoke, over the low-lying meadow-land. 

Maurice and Louise had rowed to Connewitz; but so late in the eveningthat most of the variously shaped boats, with coloured lanterns attheir bows, were returning when they started. 

Louise herself had proposed it. When he went to her that afternoon, hefound her stretched on the sofa. A theatre-ticket lay on the table--forshe had taken him at his word, and shown him that she could do withouthim. But to-night she had no fancy for the theatre: it was too hot. Shelooked very slight and young in her white dress; but was moody and outof spirits. 

On the way to Connewitz, they spoke no more than was necessary. Comingback, however, they had the river to themselves; and she no longerneeded to steer. He placed cushions for her at the bottom of the boat;and there she lay, with her hands clasped under her neck, watching thestarry strip of sky, which followed them, between the tops of the treesabove, like a complement of the river below. 

The solitude was unbroken; they might have gone down in the murkywater, and no one would ever know how it had happened: a snag caughtunawares; a clumsy movement in the light boat; half a minute, and allwould be over. --Or, for the first and the last time in his life, hewould take her in his arms, hold her to him, feel her cheek on his; hewould kiss her, with kisses that were at once an initiation and afarewell; then, covering her eyes with his hands, he would gently, verygently, tilt the boat. A moment's hesitation; it sought to rightitself; rocked violently, and overturned: and beneath it, locked ineach other's arms, they found a common grave. .. . 

In fancy, he saw it all. Meanwhile, he rowed on, with long, leisurelystrokes; and the lapping of the water round the oars was the only soundto be heard. 

At home, on the lid of his piano, lay the prospectuses of music-schoolsin other towns. They were still arriving, in answer to the impulsiveletters he had written off, the night after the theatre. But the lastto come had remained unopened. --He was well aware of it: his lingeringon had all the appearance of a weak reluctance to face the inevitable. For he could never make mortal understand what he had come through, inthe course of the past week. He could no more put into words theisolated spasms of ecstasy he had experienced--when nothing under thesun seemed impossible--than he could describe the slough of misery anduncertainty, which, on occasion, he had been forced to wade through. For the most part, he believed that the words of contempt Louise hadspoken, came straight from her heart; but he had also known the faintstir ring of a new hope, and particularly was this the case when he hadnot seen Louise for some time. Then, at night, as he lay staring beforehim, this feeling became a sudden refulgence, which lighted him throughall the dark hours, only to be remorselessly extinguished by daylight. Most frequently, however, it was so slender a hope as to be a meredistracting flutter at his heart. Whence it sprang, he could nottell--he knew Louise too well to believe, for a moment, that she wouldmake use of pique to hide her feelings. But there was a something inher manner, which was strained; in the fact that she, who had nevercared, should at length be moved by words of his; in a certain way shehad looked at him, once or twice in these days; or in a certain way shehad avoided looking at him. No, he did not know what it was. Butnevertheless it was there--a faint, inarticulate existence--and, compared with it, the tangible facts of life were the shadows of ashadow. 

Surely she had fallen asleep. He said her name aloud, to try her. "Louise!" She did not stir, and the word floated out into thenight--became an expression of the night itself. 

They had passed the weir and its foaming, and now glided under thebridges that spanned the narrower windings of the river. The woodenbathing-house looked awesome enough to harbour mysteries. Another sharpturn, among sedge and rushes, and the outlying streets of the town wereon their right. The boat-sheds were in darkness, when they drew upalongside the narrow landing-place. Maurice got out with the chain inhis hand, and secured the boat. Louise did not follow immediately. Herhair had come down, and she was stiff from the cramped position inwhich she had been lying. When she did rise to her feet, she couldhardly stand. He put out his hand, and steadied her by the arm. 

"A heavy dew must be falling. Your sleeve is wet. "

She made a movement to draw her arm away; at the same moment, shetangled her foot in her skirt, tripped, and, if he had not caught her, would have fallen forward. 

"Take care what you're doing! Do you want to drown yourself?"

"I don't know. I shouldn't mind, I think, " she answered tonelessly. 

His own balance had been endangered. Directly he had righted himself, he set her from him. But it could not be undone: he had had her in hisarms, had felt all her weight on him. The sensation seemed to take hisstrength away: after the long, black, silent evening, her body wasdoubly warm, doubly real. He walked her back, along the desertedstreets, at a pace she could not keep up with. She lagged behind. Shewas very pale, and her face wore an expression of almost physicalsuffering. She looked resolutely away from Maurice; but when her eyesdid chance to rest on him, she was swept by such a sense of nervousirritation that she hated the sight of him, as he walked before her. 

Upstairs, in her room, when he had laid the cushions on the sofa; whenthe lamp was lighted and set on the table; when he still stood there, pale, and wretched, and undecided, Louise came to an abrupt decision. Advancing to the table, she leaned her hands on it, and bendingforward, raised her white face to his. 

"You told me you were going away; why do you not go? Why have you notalready gone?" she asked, and her mouth was hard. "I am waiting . .. Expecting to hear. "

His answer was so hasty that it was all but simultaneous. 

"Louise!--can't you forgive me?--for what I said the other night?"

"I have nothing to forgive, " she replied, coldly in spite of herself. "You said you must go. I can't keep you here against your will. "

"It has made you angry with me. I have made you unhappy. "

"You are making us both unhappy, " she said in a low voice. "Now, it isI who say, things can't go on like this. "

"I know it. " He drew a deep breath. "Louise! . .. If only you could carea little!"

There was silence after these words, but not a silence of conclusion;both knew now that more must follow. He raised his head, and lookedinto her eyes. 

"Can you not see how I love you--and how I suffer?"

It was a statement rather than a question, but he was not aware ofthis: he was only amazed that, after all, he should be able to speak soquietly, in such an even tone of voice. 

There was another pause of suspense; his words seemed like balls ofdown that he had tossed into the still air: they sank, lingeringly, without haste; and she stood, and let them descend on her. His haggardeyes hung on her face; and, as he watched, he saw a change come overit: the enmity that had been in it, a few seconds back, died out; thelips softened and relaxed; and when the eyes were raised to his again, they were kind, full of pity. 

"I'm sorry. Poor boy . .. Poor Maurice. "

She seemed to hesitate; then, with one of her frankest gestures, heldout her hand. At its touch, soft and living, he forgot everything:plans and resolutions, hopes and despairs, happiness and unhappiness nolonger existed for him; he knew only that she was sorry for him, thatsome swift change in her had made her sympathise and understand. Helooked down, with dim eyes, at the sweet, pale face, now alight withcompassion then, with disarming abruptness, he took her head betweenhis hands, and kissed her, repeatedly, whereever his lips chanced tofall--on the warm mouth, the closed eyes, temples, and hair. 

He was gone before she recovered from her surprise. She hadinstinctively stemmed her hands against his shoulders; but, when shewas alone, she stood just as he left her, her eyes still shut, lettingthe sensation subside, of rough, unexpected kisses. She had been takenunawares; her heart was beating. For a moment or two, she remained inthe same attitude; then she passed her hand over her face. "That wasfoolish of him . .. Very, " she said. She looked down at herself and sawher hands. She stretched them out before her, with a sudden sense ofemptiness. 

"If I could care! Yes--if I could only care!"

At two o'clock that morning, Maurice wrote:

FORGIVE ME--I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT I WAS DOING. FOR I LOVE YOU, LOUISE--NOWOMAN HAS EVER BEEN LOVED AS YOU ARE. I KNOW IT IS FOLLY ON MY PART. IHAVE NOTHING TO OFFER YOU. BUT BE MY WIFE, AND I WILL WORK MY FINGERSTO THE BONE FOR YOU. 

He went out into the summer night, and posted the letter. Returning tohis room, he threw himself on the sofa, and fell into a heavy sleep, from which he did not wake till the morning was well advanced. 

Work was out of the question that day, when he waited as if for asentence of death. He paced his narrow room, incessantly, afraid to goout, for fear of missing her reply. The hours dragged themselves by, asit is their special province to do in crises of life; and with each onethat passed, he grew more convinced what her answer to his letter wouldbe. 

It was late in the afternoon when the little boy she employed as amessenger, put a note into his hands. 

COME TO ME THIS EVENING. 

It was all but evening now; he went, just as he was, on the heels ofthe child. 

The windows of her room were open. She sprang up to meet him, thenpaused. He looked desperately yet stealthily at her. The commiserationof the previous night was still in her face; but she was now quite sureof herself: she drew him to the sofa and made him sit down beside her. Then, however, for a few seconds, in which he waited with hammeringpulses, she did not speak. The dull fear at his heart became acertainty; and, unable to bear the suspense any longer, he took one ofher hands and laid it on his forehead. 

Then she said: "Maurice--poor, foolish Maurice!--it is not possible. You see that yourself, I'm sure. "

"Yes. I know quite well: it is presumption. "

"Oh, I don't mean that. But there are so many reasons. And you, too, Maurice . .. Look at me, and tell me if what you wrote was not just anattempt to make up for what happened last night. " And as he did notreply, she added: "You mustn't make yourself reproaches. I, too, was toblame. "

"It was nothing of the sort. I've been trying for weeks now to tellyou. I love you--have loved you since the first time I saw you. "

He let go of her hand, and she sat forward, with her arms along herknees. Her eyes were troubled; but she did not lose her calm manner ofspeaking. "I'm sorry, Maurice, very sorry--you believe me' don't you, when I say so? But believe me, too, it's not so serious as you think. You are young. You will get over it, and forget--if not soon, at leastin time. You must forget me, and some day you will meet the nice, goodwoman, who is to be your wife. And when that happens, you will lookback on your fancy for me as something foolish, and unreal. You won'tbe able to understand it then, and you will be grateful to me, for nothaving taken you at your word. "

Maurice laughed. All the same, he tried to take his dismissal well: herose, wrung her hand, and left her. 

In the seclusion of his own room, he went through the blackest hour ofhis life. 

He began to make final preparations for his departure. His choice hadfallen on Stuttgart: it was far distant from Leipzig; he would be wellout of temptation's way--the temptation suddenly to return. He wrote aletter home, apprising his relatives of his intention: by the time theyreceived the letter, it would be too late for them to interfere. Otherwise, he took no one into his confidence. He would greatly haveliked to wait until the present term was over; another month, and thesummer vacation would have begun, and he would have been able to leavewithout making himself conspicuous. But every day it grew moreimpossible to be there and not to see her--for four days now he hadkept away, fighting down his unreasoning desire to know what she wasdoing. He intended only to see her once more, to bid her good-bye. 

The afternoon before his interview with Schwarz--he had arranged thiswith himself for the morning, at the master's private house--he sat athis writing-table, destroying papers and old letters. There was a heapof ashes in the cold stove by the time he took out, tied up in aseparate packet, the few odd scraps of writing he had received fromLouise. He balanced the bundle in his hand, hesitating what to do withit. Finally, he untied the string, to glance through the letters onceagain. 

At the sight of the bold, black, familiar writing, in which eachword--two or three to a line--seemed to have a life of its own; at thewell-conned pages, each of which he knew by heart; at thecharacteristic, almost masculine signature, and the faint perfume thatstill clung to the paper: at the sight of these things all--that he hadbeen thinking and planning since seeing her last, was effaced from hismind. As often before, where she was concerned, a wild impulse, surgingup in him, took entire possession of him; and hours of patient andlaborious reasoning were by one swift stroke blotted out. 

He rose, locked the letters up again, rested his arm on the lid of thepiano, his head on his arm. The more he toyed with his inclination togo to her, the more absorbent it became, and straightway it was anungovernable longing: it came over him with a dizzy force, which madehim close his eyes; and he was as helpless before it as the drunkardbefore his craving to drink. Standing thus, he saw with a flash ofinsight that, though he went away as far as steam could carry him, hewould never, as long as he lived, be safe from overthrows of this kind. It was something elemental, which he could no more control than theflow of his blood. And he did not even stay to excuse himself tohimself: he went headlong to her, with burning words on his lips. 

"My poor boy, " she said, when he ceased to speak. "Yes, I know what itis--that sudden rage that comes over one, to rush back, at all costs, no matter what happens afterwards. --I'm so sorry for you, Maurice. Itis making me unhappy. "

"You are not to be unhappy. It shall not happen again, I promiseyou. --Besides, I shall soon be gone now. " But at his own words, thethought of his coming desolation pierced him anew. "Give me just onestraw to cling to! Tell me you won't forget me all at once; that youwill miss me and think of me--if ever so little. "

"You asked me that the other night. Was what I said then, not answerenough?--And besides, in these last four days, since I have been alone, I've learnt just how much I shall miss you, Maurice. It's mypunishment, I suppose, for growing so dependent on anyone. "

"You must go away, too. You can't stay here by yourself. We must bothgo, in opposite directions, and begin afresh. "

She did not reply at once. "I shouldn't know where to go, " she said, after a time. "Will nothing else do, Maurice? Is there no otherway?--Oh, why can't we go on being friends, as we were!"

He shook his head. "I've struggled against it so long--you don't know. I've never really been your friend--only I couldn't hurt you before, bytelling you. And it has worn me out; I'm good for nothing. Louise!--think, just once more--ask yourself, once more, if it's quiteimpossible, before you send me into the outer darkness. "

She was silent. 

"I don't ask you to love me, " he went on, in a low voice. "I've comedown from that, in these wretched days. I would be content with less, much less. I only ask you to let yourself be loved--as I could loveyou. If only you could say you liked me a little, all the rest wouldcome, I'm confident of it. In time, I should make you love me. For Iwould take, oh, such care of you! I want to make you happy, only tomake you happy. I've no other wish than to show you what happiness is. "

"It sounds so good . .. You are good, Maurice. But the future--tell me, have thought of the future?"

"I should think I have. --Do you suppose it means nothing to me to be sodespicably poor as I am? To have absolutely nothing to offer you?"

She took his hand. "That's not what I mean. And you know it. Come, letus talk sensibly this afternoon, and look things straight in theface. --You want to marry me, you say, and let the rest come? That isvery, very good of you, and I shall never forget it. --But what does itmean, Maurice? You have been here a little over a year now, haven'tyou?--and still have about a year to stay. When that's over, you willgo back to England. You will settle in some small place, and spend yourlife, or the best part of your life, there--oh, Maurice, you are mykind friend, but I tell you frankly, I couldn't face life in an Englishprovincial town. I'm not brave enough for that. "

He gleaned a ray of hope from her words. "We could live here--anywhereyou liked. I would make it possible. I swear I would. "

She shook her head, and went on, with the same reasonable sweetness. "And then, there's another thing. If I married you, sooner or later youwould have to take me home to your people. Have you really thought ofthat, and how you would feel about it, when it came to the point?--No, no, it's impossible for me to marry you. "

"But that--that American!--you would have married him?"

"That was different, " she said, and her voice grew thinner. "It's theknowing that tells, Maurice. You would have that still to learn. Youdon't realise it yet, but afterwards, it would come home toyou. --Listen! You have always been kind to me, I owe you such a debt ofgratitude, that I'm going to be frank, brutally frank with you. I'vetold you often that I shall never really care for anyone again. Youknow that, don't you? Well, I want to tell you, too--I want you tounderstand quite, quite clearly that . .. That I belonged to himaltogether--entirely--that I . .. Oh, you know what I mean!"

Maurice covered his face with his hands. "The past is the past. Itshould never be mentioned between us. It doesn't matter--nothingmatters now. "

"You say that--every one says that--beforehand, " she answered; and notonly her words, but also her way of saying them, seemed to set her downmiles away from him, on a lonely pinnacle of experience. "Afterwards, you would think differently. "

"Louise, if you really cared, it would be different. You wouldn't saysuch things, then--you would be only too glad not to say them. "

In her heart she knew that he was right, and did not contradict him. The busy little clock on the writing-table ticked away a few seconds. With a jerk, Maurice rose to his feet. Louise remained sitting, and helooked down on her black head. His gaze was so insistent that she feltit, and raised her eyes. His forlorn face moved her. 

"Why is it--what is the matter with me?--that I must upset your lifelike this? I can't bear to see you so unhappy. --And yet I haven't doneanything, have I? I have always been honest with you; I've never mademyself out to be better than I am. There must be something wrong withme, I think, that no one can ever be satisfied to be just myfriend. --Yet with you I thought it was different. I thought thingscould go on as they were. Maurice, isn't it possible? Say it is! Showme just one little spark of good in myself!"

"I'm not different from other men, Louise. I deluded myself longenough, God knows!"

She made a despondent gesture, and turned away. "Well, then, if eitherof us should go, I'm the one. You have your work. I do nothing; I haveno ties, no friends--I never even seem to have been able to makeacquaintances. And if I went, you could stay quietly on. In time, youwould forget me. --If I only knew where to go! I am so alone, and it isall so hard. I shall never know what it is to be happy myself, or tomake anyone else happy--never!" and she burst into tears. 

It was his turn now to play the comforter. Drawing a. Chair up beforeher, he took her hand, and said all he could think of to console her. He could bear anything, he told her, but to see her unhappy. All wouldyet turn out to be for the best. And, on one point, she was to set hermind at rest: her going away would not benefit him in the least. Hewould never consent to stay on alone, where they had been so muchtogether. 

"I've nothing to look forward to, nothing, " she sobbed. "There'snothing I care to live for. "

As soon as she was quieter, he left her. 

For an hour or more Louise lay huddled up on the sofa, with her facepressed to her arm. 

When she sat up again, she pushed back her heavy hair, and, claspingher hands loosely round her knees, stared before her with vacant eyes. But not for long; tired though she was, and though her head ached fromcrying, there was still a deep residue of excitement in her. The levelbeams of the sun were pouring blindly into the room; the air was denseand oppressive. She rose to her feet and moved about. She did not knowwhat to do with herself: she would have liked to go out and walk; butthe dusty, jarring light of the summer streets frightened her. Shethought of music, of the theatre, as a remedy for the long evening thatyawned before her: then dismissed the idea from her mind. She was insuch a condition of restlessness, this night, that the fact of beingforced to sit still between two other human beings, would make her wantto scream. 

The sun was getting low; the foliage of the trees in the oppositegardens was black, with copper edges, against the refulgence of thesky. She leaned her hands on the sill, and gazed fixedly at the stretchof red and gold, which, like the afterglow of a fire, flamed behind thetrees. Her eyes were filled with it. She did not think or feel: shebecame one, by looking, with the sight before her. As she stood there, nothing of her existed but her two widely opened eyes; she was amiracle wrought by the sunset; she WAS the sunset--in one of thosevacancies of mind, which all intense gazers know. 

How long she had remained thus she could not have told, when a strangething happened to her. From some sub-conscious layer of her brain, which started into activity because the rest of it was so passive, asmall, still thought glided in, and took possession of her mind. Atfirst, it was so faint that she hardly grasped it; but, onceestablished there, it became so vivid that, with one sweep, it blottedout trees and sunset; so real that it seemed always to have beenpresent to her. Without conscious effort on her part, the solution toher difficulties had been found; a decision had been arrived at, butnot by her; it was the work of some force outside herself. 

She turned from the window, and pressed her hands to her blinded eyes. Good God! it was so simple. To think that this had not occurred to herbefore!--that, throughout the troubled afternoon, the idea had neveronce suggested itself! There was no need of loneliness and sufferingfor either of them. He might stay; they both might stay; she could makehim happy, and ward off the change she so dreaded. --Who was she tostick at it?

But she remained dazed, doubtful as it were of this peaceful ending;her hand still covered her eyes. Then, with one of the swift movementsby which it was her custom to turn thought into action, she went to thewriting-table, and scrawled a few, big words. 

MAURICE, I HAVE FOUND A WAY. COME BACK TO-MORROW EVENING. 

She hesitated only over the last two words, and, before writing them, sat with her chin in her hand, and deliberately considered. Then sheaddressed the envelope, and stamped it: it would be soon enough if hegot it through the post, the following morning. 

But, with her, to resolve was to act; she was ill at ease underenforced procrastination; and had often to fight against a burningimpatience, when circumstances delayed the immediate carrying out ofher will. In this case, however, she had voluntarily postponedMaurice's return for twenty-four hours, when he might have been withher in less than one: for, in her mind, there lurked the seductivethought of a long, summer day, with an emotion at its close to whichshe could look forward. 

In the meantime, she was puzzled how to fill up the evening. After all, she decided to go to the theatre, where she arrived in time to hear thelast two acts of AIDA. From a seat in the PARQUET, close to theorchestra, she let the showy music play round her. Afterwards, shewalked home through the lilac-haunted night, went to bed, and at oncefell asleep. 

Next morning, she wakened early--that was the sole token ofdisturbance, she could detect in herself. It was very still; there wasa faint twittering of birds, but the noises of the street had not yetbegun. She lay in the subdued yellow light of her room, with one armacross her eyes. 

Fresh from sleep, she understood certain things as never before. Shesaw all that had happened of late--her slow recovery, her striving andseeking, her growing friendship with Maurice--in a different light. Onthis morning, too, she was able to answer one of the questions that hadpuzzled her the night before. She saw that the relations in which theyhad stood to each other, during the bygone months, would have beenimpossible, had she really cared for him. She liked him, yes, hadalways liked him; and, in addition, his patience and kindness had madeher deeply grateful to him. But that was all. Neither his hands, norhis voice, nor his eyes, nor anything he did, had had the power totouch her--SO to touch her, that her own hands and eyes would have methis half-way; that the old familiar craving, which was partly fear andpartly attraction, would have made her callous to his welfare. Hadthere been a breath of this, things would have come to a climax longago. Hot and eager as she was, she could not have lived on coolly athis side--and, at this moment, she found it difficult to make up hermind whether she admired Maurice or the reverse, for having been ableto carry his part through. 

And yet, though no particle of personal feeling drew her to him, she, too, had suffered, in her own way, during these weeks of morbidtension, when he had been incapable either of advancing or retreating. How great the strain had been, she recognised only in the instant whenhe had spanned the breach, in clear, unmistakable words. If he had notdone it, she would have been forced to; for she could never findherself to rights, for long, in half circumstances: if she were not togrow bewildered, she had to see her road simple and straight beforeher. His words to her after they had been on the river together--more, perhaps, his bold yet timid kisses--had given her back strength andassurance. She was no longer the miserable instrument on which he triedhis changes of mood; she was again the giver and the bestower, sinceshe held a heart and a heart's happiness in the hollow of her hand. 

What people would think and say was a matter of indifference to her:besides, they practically believed the worst of her already. No; shehad nothing to lose and, it might be, much to gain. And after all, itmeant so little! The first time, perhaps; or if one cared too much. Butin this case, where she had herself well in hand, and where there wasno chance of the blind desire to kill self arising, which had been herprevious undoing; where the chief end aimed at was the retention of afriend--here, it meant nothing at all. 

The thought that she might possibly have scruples on his part tocombat, crossed her mind. She stretched her arm straight above herhead, then laid it across her eyes again. She would like him none theless for these scruples, did they exist: now, she believed that, atheart, she had really appreciated his reserve, his holding back, whereothers would have been so ready to pounce in. For the first time, sheconsidered him in the light of a lover, and she saw him differently. Asif the mere contemplation of such a change brought her nearer to him, she was stirred by a new sensation, which had him as its object. Andunder the influence of this feeling, she told herself that perhaps justin this gentler, kindlier love, which only sought her welfare, truehappiness lay. She strained to read the future. There would be stormsneither of joy nor of pain; but watchful sympathy, and the fine, manlytenderness that shields and protects. Oh, what if after all herpassionate craving for happiness, it was here at her feet, having cometo her as good things often do, unexpected and unsought!

She could lie still no longer; she sprang up, with an alacrity that hadbeen wanting in her movements of late. And throughout the long day, this impression, which was half a hope and half a belief was present toher mind, making everything she did seem strangely festive. She almostfeared the moment when she would see him again, lest anything he saidshould dissipate her hope. 

When he came, her eyes followed him searchingly. With an instinct thatwas now morbidly sharpened, Maurice was aware of the change in her, even before he saw her eyes. His own were one devouring question. 

She made him sit down beside her. 

"What is it, Louise? Tell me--quickly. Remember, I've been all day insuspense, " he said, as seconds passed and she did not speak. 

"You got my note then?"

"What is it?--what did you mean?"

"Just a little patience, Maurice. You take one's breath away. You wantto know everything at once. I sent for you because--oh, because . .. Iwant you to let us go on being friends. "

"Is that all?" he cried, and his face fell. "When I have told you againand again that's just what I can't do?"

She smiled. "I wish I had known you as a boy, Maurice--oh, but as quitea young boy!" she said in such a changed voice that he glanced up insurprise. Whether it was the look she bent on him, or her voice, or herwords, he did not know; but something emboldened him to do what he hadoften done in fancy: he slid to his knees before her, and laid his headon her lap. She began to smooth back his hair, and each time her handcame forward, she let it rest for a moment. --She wondered how he wouldlook when he knew. 

"You can't care for me, I know. But I would give my life to make youhappy. "

"Why do you love me?" She experienced a new pleasure in postponing hisknowing, postponing it indefinitely. 

"How can I say? All I know is how I love you--and how I have suffered. "

"My poor Maurice, " she said, in the same caressing way. "Yes, I shallalways call you poor. --For the love I could give you would be worthlesscompared with yours. "

"To me it would be everything. --If you only knew how I have longed foryou, and how I have struggled!"

He took enough of her dress to bury his face in. She sat back, andlooked over him into the growing dusk of the room: and, in thealabaster of her face, nothing seemed to live except her black eyes, with the half-rings of shadow. 

Suddenly, with the unexpectedness that marked her movements when shewas very intent, she leant forward again, and, with her elbow on herknee, her chin on her hand, said in a low voice: "Is it for ever?"

"For ever and ever. "

"Say it's for ever. " She still looked past him, but her lips hadparted, and her face wore the expression of a child's listening tofairy-tales. At her own words, a vista seemed to open up before her, and, at the other end, in blue haze, shone the great good that hadhitherto eluded her. 

"I shall always love you, " said the young man. "Nothing can make anydifference. "

"For ever, " she repeated. "They are pretty words. "

Then her expression changed; she took his head between her hands. 

"Maurice . .. I'm older than you, and I know better than you, what allthis means. Believe me, I'm not worth your love. I'm only the shadow ofmy old self. And you are still so young and so . .. So untried. There'sstill time to turn back, and be wise. "

He raised his head. 

"What do you mean? Why are you saying these things? I shall always loveyou. Life itself is nothing to me, without you. I want you . .. Onlyyou. "

He put his arms round her, and tried to draw her to him. But she heldback. At the expression of her face, he had a moment of acuteuncertainty, and would have loosened his hold. But now it was she whoknotted her hands round his neck, and gave him a long, penetratinglook. He was bewildered; he did not understand what it meant; but itwas something so strange that, again, he had the impulse to let her go. She bent her head, and laid her face against his; cheek rested oncheek. He took her face between his hands, and stared into her eyes, asif to tear from them what was passing in her brain. Over both, in thesame breath, swept the warm, irresistible wave of self-surrender. Hecaught her to him, roughly and awkwardly, in a desperate embrace, whichthe kindly dusk veiled and redeemed. 

XIII. 

"Now you will not leave me, Maurice?"

"Never . .. While I live. "

"And you . .. "

"No. Don't ask me yet. I can't tell you. "

"Maurice!"

"Forgive me! Not yet. That after all you should care a little! Afterall . .. That you should care so much!"

"And it is for ever?"

"For ever and ever . .. What do you take me for? But not here! Let us goaway--to some new place. We will make it our very own. "

Their words came in haste, yet haltingly; were all but inaudiblewhispers; went flying back and forwards, like brief cries for aid, implying a peculiar sense of aloofness, of being cut adrift and thrownon each other's mercy. 

Louise raised her head. 

"Yes, we will go away. But now, Maurice--at once!"

"Yes. To-night . .. To-morrow . .. When you like. "

The next morning, he set out to find a place. Three weeks of the termhad still to run, and he was to have played in an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, before the vacation. But, compared with the emotional upheaval he hadundergone, this long-anticipated event was of small consequence. ToSchwarz, he alleged a succession of nervous headaches, which interferedwith his work. His looks lent colour to the statement; and though, as arule, highly irritated by opposition to his plans, Schwarz onlygrumbled in moderation. He would have let no one else off so easily, and, at another time, the knowledge of this would have rankled inMaurice, as affording a fresh proof of the master's indifferencetowards him. As it was, he was thankful for the freedom it secured him. 

On the strength of a chance remark of Madeleine's, which he hadremembered, he found what he looked for, without difficulty. It couldnot have been better: a rambling inn, with restaurant, set in aclearing on the top of a wooded hill, with an open view over theundulating plains. 

That night, he wrote to Louise from the Rochlitzer Berg, painting thenest he had found for them in glowing colours, and begging her to comewithout delay. But the whole of the next day passed without a word fromher, and the next again, and not till the morning of the third, did hereceive a note, announcing her arrival for shortly after midday. Hetook it with him to the woods, and lay at full length on the moss. 

Although he had been alone now for more than forty-eight hours--a Julyquiet reigned over the place--he had not managed to think connectedly. He was still dazed, disbelieving of what had happened. Again and againhe told himself that his dreams and hopes--which he had always pushedforward into a vague and far-off future--had actually come to pass. Shewas his, all his; she had given herself ungrudgingly: as soon as hecould make it possible, she would be his wife. But, in the meantime, this was all he knew: his nearer vision was obstructed by thestupefying thought of the weeks to come. She was to be there, besidehim, day after day, in a golden paradise of love. He could only thinkof it with moist eyes; and he swore to himself that he would repay herby being more infinitely careful of her than ever man before of thewoman he loved. But though he repeated this to himself, and believedit, his feelings had unwittingly changed their pole. On his kneesbefore her, he had vowed that her happiness was the end of all hispleading; now it was frankly happiness he sought, the happiness of themboth, but, first and foremost, happiness. And it could hardly have beenotherwise: the one unpremeditated mingling of their lives had killedthought; he could only feel now, and, throughout these days, he wasconscious of each movement he made, as of a song sung aloud. Hewandered up and down the wooded paths, blind to everything but theimage of her face, which was always with him, and oftenest as it hadbent over him that last evening, with the strange new fire in its eyes. Closing his own, he felt again her arms on his shoulders, her lipsmeeting his, and, at such moments, it could happen that he threw hisarms round a tree, in an ungovernable rush of longing. Beyond themoment when he should clasp her to him again, he could not see: thefuture was as indistinct as were the Saxon plains, in the haze ofmorning or evening. 

He set out to meet her far too early in the day, and when he hadcovered the couple of miles that lay between the inn on the hill andthe railway-station at the foot, he was obliged to loiter about thesleepy little town for over an hour. But gradually the time tickedaway; the hands of his watch pointed to a quarter to two, and presentlyhe found himself on the shadeless, sandy station which lay at the endof a long, sandy street, edged with two rows of young and shadelesstrees; found himself looking along the line of rail that was to bringher to him. Would the signal never go up? He began to feel, in spite ofthe strong July sunlight, that there was something illusive about thewhole thing. Or perhaps it was just this harsh, crude light, withoutrelieving shadows, which made his surroundings seem unreal to him. However it was, the nearer the moment came when he would see her again, the more improbable it seemed that the train, which was even nowoverdue, should actually be carrying her towards him--her to him! Hewould yet waken, with a shock. But then, coming round a corner in thedistance, at the side of a hill, he saw the train. At first it appearedto remain stationary, then it increased in size, approached, made aslight curve, and was a snaky line; it vanished, and reappeared, leaving first a white trail of cloud, then thick rounded puffs ofcloud, until it was actually there, a great black object, with a creakand a rattle. 

He had planted himself at the extreme end of the platform, and thecarriages went past him. He hastened, almost running, along the train. At the opposite end, a door was opened, the porter took out some bags, and Louise stepped down, and turned to look for him. He was the onlyperson on the station, besides the two officials, and in passing shehad caught a glimpse of his face. If he looks like that, every one willknow, she thought to herself, and her first words, as he camebreathlessly up, were: "Maurice, you mustn't look so glad!"

He had never really seen her till now, when, in a white dress, witheyes and lips alight, she stood alone with him on the wayside platform. To curb his first, impetuous gesture, Louise had stretched out both herhands. He stood holding them, unable to take his eyes from her face. Ather movement to withdraw them, he stooped and kissed them. 

"Not look glad? Then you shouldn't have come. "

They left her luggage to be sent up later in the day, and set out ontheir walk. Going down the shadeless street, and through the town, shewas silent. At first, as they went, Maurice pointed out things that hethought would interest her, and spoke as if he attached importance tothem. While, in reality, nothing mattered, now that she was beside him. And gradually, he, too, lapsed into silence, walking by her side acrossthe square, and through the narrow streets, with the solemnly festivefeelings of a child on Sunday. They crossed the moat, passed throughthe gates and courtyard of the old castle, and began to ascend thesteep path that was a short-cut to the woods. It was exposed to thefull glare of the sun, and, on reaching the sheltering trees, Louisegave a sigh of relief, and stood still to take off her hat. 

"It's so hot. And I like best to be bareheaded. "

"Yes, and now I can see you better. Is it really you, at last? I stillcan't believe it. --That you should have come to me!"

"Yes, I'm real, " she smiled, and thrust the pins through the crown ofthe hat. "But very tired, Maurice. It was so hot, and the train was soslow. "

"Tired?--of course, you must be. Come, there's a seat just round thiscorner. You shall rest there. "

They sat, and he laid his arm along the back of the bench. With hisleft hand he turned her face towards him. "I must see you. I expectevery minute to wake and find it's not true. "

"And yet you haven't even told me you're glad to see me. "

"Glad? No. Glad is only a word. "

She leaned lightly against the protective pressure of his arm. On oneof her hands lying in her lap, a large spot of sunlight settled. Hestooped and put his lips to it. She touched his head. 

"Were the days long without me?"

"Why didn't you come sooner?"

Not that he cared, or even cared to know, now that she was there. Buthe wanted to hear her speak, to remember that he could now have hervoice in his ears, whenever he chose. But Louise was not disposed totalk; the few words she said, fell unwillingly from her lips. Thestillness of the forest laid its spell upon them: each faint rustlingamong the leaves was audible; not a living thing stirred exceptthemselves. The tall firs and beeches stretched infinitely upwards, andthe patches of light that lay here and there on the moss, made the cooldarkness seem darker. 

When they walked on again, Maurice put his arm through hers, and, in. This intimacy of touch, was conscious of every step she took. It madehim happy to suit his pace to hers, to draw her aside from a spreadingroot or loose stone, and to feel her respond to his pressure. Shewalked for the most part languidly, looking to the ground. But at athickly wooded turn of the path, where it was very dark, where thesunlight seemed far away, and the pine-scent was more pungent thanelsewhere, she stopped, to drink in the spicy air with open lips andnostrils. 

"It's like wine. Maurice, I'm glad we came here--that you found thisplace. Think of it, we might still be sitting indoors, with the blindsdrawn, knowing that the pavements were baking in the sun. While here!. .. Oh, I shall be happy here!"

She was roused for a moment to a rapturous content with hersurroundings. She looked childishly happy and very young. Mauricepressed her arm, without speaking: he was so foolishly happy that herpraise of the place affected him like praise of himself. Again, he hada chastened feeling of exhilaration: as though an acme of satisfactionhad been reached, beyond which it was impossible to go. 

On catching sight of the rambling wooden building, in the midst of theclearing that had been made among the encroaching trees, Louise gaveanother cry of pleasure, and before entering the house, went to theedge of the terrace, and looked down on the plains. But upstairs, inher room on the first storey, he made her rest in an arm-chair by thewindow. He himself prepared the tea, proud to perform the first of thetrivial services which, from now on, were to be his. There was nothinghe would not do for her, and, as a beginning, he persuaded her to liedown on the sofa and try to sleep. 

Once outside again, he did not know how to kill time; and the remainderof the afternoon seemed interminable. He endeavoured to read, but couldnot take in the meaning of two consecutive sentences. He was afraid togo far away, in case she should wake and miss him. So he loitered aboutin the vicinity of the house, and returned every few minutes, to see ifher blind were not drawn up. Finally, he sat down at one of the tableson the terrace, where he had her window in sight. Towards six o'clock, his patience was exhausted; going upstairs, he listened outside thedoor of her room. Not a sound. With infinite precaution, he turned thehandle, and looked in. 

She was lying just as he had left her, fast asleep. Her head was alittle on one side; her left hand was under her cheek, her right laypalm upwards on the rug that covered her. Maurice sat down in thearm-chair. 

At first, he looked furtively, afraid of disturbing her; then moreopenly, in the hope that she would waken. Sitting thus, and thinkingover the miracle that had happened to him, he now sought to findsomething in her face for him alone, which had previously not beenthere. But his thoughts wandered as he gazed. How he loved it!--thisface of hers. He was invariably worked on afresh by the blackness ofthe lustreless hair; by the pale, imperious mouth; by the dead whitepallor of the skin, which shaded to a dusky cream in the curves of neckand throat, and in the lines beneath the eyes was of a bluish brown. Now the lashes lay in these encircling rings. Without doubt, it was theeyes that supplied life to the face: only when they were open, and thelips parted over the strong teeth, was it possible to realise howintense a vitality was latent in her. But his love would wipe out thelast trace of this wan tiredness. He would be infinitely careful ofher: he would shield her from the impulsiveness of her own nature; sheshould never have cause to regret what she had done. And the affectionthat bound them would day by day grow stronger. All his work, all histhoughts, should belong to her alone; she would be his beloved wife;and through him she would learn what love really was. 

He rose and stood over her, longing to share his feelings with her. Butshe remained sunk in her placid sleep, and as he stood, he becameconscious of a different sensation. He had never seen her face--exceptconvulsed by weeping--when it was not under full control. Was itbecause he had stared so long at it, or was it really changed in sleep?There was something about it, at this moment, which he could notexplain: it almost looked less fine. The mouth was not so proudlyreticent as he had believed it to be; there was even a want ofrestraint about it; and the chin had fallen. He did not care to see itlike this: it made him uneasy. He stooped and touched her hand. Shestarted up, and could not remember where she was. She put both hands toher forehead. "Maurice!--what is it? Have I been asleep long?"

He held his watch before her eyes. With a cry she sprang to her feet. Then she sent him downstairs. 

They were the only guests. They had supper alone in a longish room, ata little table spread with a coloured cloth. The window was open behindthem, and the branches of the trees outside hung into the room. Inhonour of the occasion, Maurice ordered wine, and they remainedsitting, after they had finished supper, listening to the rustling andswishing of the trees. The only drawback to the young man's happinesswas the pertinacious curiosity of the girl who waited on them. Shelingered after she had served them, and stared so hard that Mauriceturned at length and asked her what the matter was. 

The girl coloured to the roots of her hair. 

"Ach, Fraulein is so pretty, " she answered naively, in her broad Saxondialect. 

Both laughed, and Louise asked her name, and if she always lived there. Thus encouraged, Amalie, a buxom, thickset person, with a number offlaxen plaits, came forward and began to talk. Her eyes were fixed onLouise, and she only occasionally glanced from her to the young man. 

"It's nice to have a sweetheart, " she said suddenly. 

Louise laughed again and coloured. "Haven't you got one, Amalie?"

Amalie shook her head, and launched out into a tale of faithlessnessand desertion. "Yes, if I were as pretty as you, Fraulein, it would bea different thing, " she ended, with a hearty sigh. 

Maurice clattered up from the table. "All right, Amalie, that'll do. "

They went out of doors, and strolled about in the twilight. He hadintended to show her some of the pretty nooks in the neighbourhood ofthe house. But she was not as affable with him as she had been withAmalie; she walked at his side with an air of preoccupied indifference. 

When they sat down on a seat, on the side of the hill, the moon hadrisen. It was almost at the full, and a few gently sailing scraps ofcloud, which crossed it, made it seem to be coming towards them. Theplains beneath were veiled in haze; detached sounds mounted from them:the prolonged barking of a dog, the drone of an approaching train. Round about them, the air was heavy with the scent of the sun-warmedpines. Maurice had taken her hand and sat holding it: it was the onething that existed for him. All else was vague and unreal: only theirtwo hearts beat in all the universe. But there was no interchangebetween them of binding words or endearments, such as pass between mostlovers. 

How long they sat, neither could have told. But suddenly, far below, ahuman voice was raised in a long cry, which echoed against the side ofthe hill. Louise shivered: and he had a moment of apprehension. 

"You're cold. We have sat too long. Let us go. "

They rose, and walked slowly back to the house. 

Although the doors were still open, the building was in darkness, andthey had to grope their way up the stairs. Outside her room, he pausedto light the candle that was standing on the table, but Louise openedthe door and went in. As she did so, she gave a cry. The blind had notbeen lowered, and a patch of greenish-white moonlight lay on the floorbefore the window, throwing the rest of the room into massy shadow. Shewent forward and stood in it. 

"Don't make a light, " she said to him over her shoulder. 

Maurice put down the matches, with which he had been fumbling, wentquickly in after her, and shut the door. 

Before anyone else was astir, he had flung out into the freshness ofthe morning. It was cool in the shade of the woods; grass and moss werea little moist with dew. He did not linger under the trees; he neededmovement; and striding along the driving-road, which ran down the hillwhere the incline was easiest, he went out on the plains, among thelittle villages that dotted the level land like huge clumps ofmushrooms. He carried his cap in his hand, and let the early sun playon his head. 

When he returned, it was nine o'clock, and he was ravenously hungry. Amalie carried the coffee and the crisp brown rolls to one of the smalltables on the terrace, and herself stood, after she had served him, andlooked over the edge of the hill. When he had finished eating, heopened a volume of DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT, which he carried in hispocket, and began to read. But after a few lines, his thoughtswandered; the book had a chilling effect on him in his present mood;the writing seemed stiff and strained--the work of a very old man. 

At first, that morning, he had not ventured to review even in thoughtthe past hours. Now, however, that he was again within a stone's throwof Louise, memories crowded upon him; he gazed, with a passion ofgratefulness, at her window. One detail stood out more vividly than allthe rest. It was that of waking suddenly at dawn, from a dreamlesssleep, and of finding on his pillow, a thick tress of black ruffledhair. For a moment, he had hardly been able to believe his eyes; andeven yet, the mere remembrance of this dusky hair on the pillow'swhiteness, seemed to bring what had happened home to him, as nothingelse could have done. 

She had slept on, undisturbed, and she was still asleep, to judge fromthe lowered blind. But though hours seemed to pass while he sat there, he was not dissatisfied; it was enough to know how near she was to him. 

When she came, she was upon him before he was aware of it. At the lightstep behind, he sprang from his seat. 

"At last!"

"Are you tired of waiting for me?"

She was in the same white dress, and a soft-brimmed hat fell over herforehead. He did not answer her words; for Amalie followed on her heelswith fresh coffee, and made a great business of re-setting the table. 

"WUNSCHE GUTEN APPETIT!"

The girl retired to a distance, but still lingered, keeping them insight. Maurice leaned across the table. "Tell me how you are. Have youforgotten me?" He tried to take her hand. 

"Take care, Maurice. We can be seen here. "

"How that girl stares! Why doesn't she go away?"

"She is envying me my sweetheart again . .. Who won't let me eat mybreakfast. "

"I've been alone for hours, Louise. Tell me what I want to know. "

"Yes--afterwards. The coffee is getting cold. "

He sat back and watched her movements, with fanatic eyes. She was notconfused by the insistence of his gaze; but she did not return it. Shewas paler than usual; and the lines beneath her eyes were blacker. Maurice believed that he could detect a new note in her voice thismorning; and he tried to make her speak, in order that he might hearit; but she was as chary of her words as of her looks. Attracted by thetwo strangers, a little child of the landlord's came running up tostare shyly. She spread a piece of bread with honey, and gave it to thechild. He was absurdly jealous, and she knew it. 

For the rest of the morning, she would have been content to bask in thesun, but when she saw how impatient he was, she gave way, and they wentout of the sight of other people, into the friendly, screening woods. 

"I thought you would never come. "

"Why didn't you wake me? Oh, gently, Maurice! You forget that I've justdone my hair. "

"To-day I shall forget everything. Let me look at you again . .. Rightinto your eyes. "

"To-day you believe I'm real, don't you? Are you satisfied?"

"And you, Louise, you?--Say you're happy, too!"

They came upon the FRIEDRICH AUGUST TURM, a stone tower, standing onthe highest point of the hill, beside a large quarry; and, too idlyhappy to refuse, climbed the stone steps, led by a persuasive oldpensioner, who, on the platform at the top, adjusted the telescope, andpointed out the distant landmarks, with something of an owner's pride. On this morning, Maurice would not have been greatly surprised to hearthat the streaky headline of the Dover coast was visible: he had eyesfor her alone, as, with assumed interest, she followed the old man'shand, learned where Leipzig lay, and how, on a clear day, its manyspires could be distinguished. 

"Over there, Maurice . .. A little more to the right. How far away weseem!"

Leaning against the parapet, he continued to look at her. The fewordinary words meant in reality something quite different. It was as ifshe had said to him: "Yes, yes, be at rest--I am still yours;" and hetold himself, with a feverish pleasure, that, from now on, everythingshe said in the presence of others would be a cloak for what she reallymeant to say. He had been right, there was a new tone in her voice thismorning, an imperceptible vibration, a sensuous undertone, which seemedto have been left over from those moments when it had quivered like aroughly touched string beneath a bow. Going down the steps behind her, he heard her dress swish from step to step, and saw the fine grace ofher strong, supple body. At a bend in the stair, he held her back andkissed her neck, just where the hair stopped growing. On theground-floor, she paused to pick out a trifle from a table set withmementoes. The old man praised his wares with zeal, taking up this andthat in his old, reddened hands, on which the skin was drawn andglazed, like a coating of gelatine. Louise chose a carved wooden pen; atiny round of glass was set in the handle, through which might be seena view of the tower, with an encircling motto. 

After this, he had her to himself, for the rest of the day. They sat ona seat that was screened by trees, and thickly grown about. His arm layalong the back of the bench, and every now and then his hand sought andpressed the warm, soft round of her shoulder. In this attitude, hepoured out his heart to her. Hitherto, the very essence of his love hadbeen taciturn endurance; now, he felt how infinitely much he had to sayto her: all that he had undergone since knowing her first, all thehopes and feelings that had so long been pent up in him, struggled toescape. Now, there was no hindrance to his telling her everything; itwas not only permissible, but right that he should: henceforth theremust be no strangeness between them, no knowledge, pleasant orunpleasant, that she did not share. And he went back, and dwelt ondetails and events long past, which, unknown to himself, his memory hadstored up; but it was chiefly the restless misery of the past half yearthat was his theme--he took the same pleasure in reciting it, now thatit was over, as the convalescent in relating his sufferings. Besidesthat, it was easier, there being nothing to conceal; whereas, inreferring to an earlier time, a certain name had to be shirked and goneround about, like a plague-spot. His impassioned words knew no halt; hewas amazed at his own eloquence. And the burden of months fell awayfrom him as he talked. 

The receptiveness of her silence spurred him on. She sat motionless, with loosely clasped hands; and spots of light settled on her barehead, and on the white stuff of her dress. Occasionally, at somethinghe said, a smile would raise the corners of her mouth; sometimes, butless often, she turned her head with incredulous eyes. But, though shewas emotionally so irresponsive, Maurice had the feeling that she wascontent, even happy, to sit inactive at his side, and listen to hisstory. 

Each of these first wonderful days was of the same pattern. Theythemselves lost count of time, so like was one day to another; and yeteach that passed was a little eternity in itself. The weather wassuperb, and to them, in their egotism, it came to seem in the order ofthings that they should rise in the morning to cloudless skies andgolden sunshine; that the cool green seclusion of the woods should betheirs, where they were more securely shut off from the world thaninside the house. Louise lay on the moss, with her arms under her head, or sat with her back against a tree-trunk. Maurice was always in frontof her, so that he could see her face as he talked--this face of whichhe could never see enough. 

He was happy, in a dazed way; he could not appraise the extent of hishappiness all at once. Its chief outward sign was the nervous flood oftalk that poured from his lips--as though they had been sealed andstopped for years. But Louise urged him on; what he had first feltdimly, he soon knew for certain: that she was never tired of learninghow much he loved her, how he had hoped, and ventured, and despaired, and how he had been prepared to lose her, up to the very last day. Shealso made him describe to her more than once how he had first seen her:his indelible impression of her as she played; her appearance at hisside in the concert-hall; how he had followed her out and looked forher, and had vainly tried to learn who she was. 

"I stood quite close to you, you say, Maurice? Perhaps I even looked atyou. How strange things are!"

Still, the interest she displayed was of a wholly passive kind; shetook no part herself in this building up of the past. She left it tohim, just as she left all that called for firmness or decision, in thisnew phase of her life. The chief step taken, it seemed as if no furtherinitiative were left in her; she let herself be loved, waited foreverything to come from him, was without will or wish. He had to ask noself-assertion of her now, no impulsive resolutions. Over all she did, lay a subtle languor; and her abandon was absolute--he heard it in thevery way she said his name. 

In the first riotous joy of possession, Maurice had been conscious ofthe change in her as of something inexpressibly sweet and tender, implying a boundless faith in him. But, before long, it made himuneasy. He had imagined several things as likely to happen; hadimagined her the cooler and wiser of the two, checking him and chidinghim for his over-devotion; had imagined even moments of self-reproach, on her part, when she came to think over what she had done. What he hadnot imagined was the wordless, unthinking fashion in which she gaveherself into his hands. The very expression of her face altered inthese days: the somewhat defiant, bitter lines he had so loved in it, and behind which she had screened herself, were smoothed out; the lipsseemed to meet differently, were sweeter, even tremulous; the eyes weremore veiled, far less sure of themselves. He did not admit to himselfhow difficult she made things for him. Strengthened, from the first, byhis good resolutions, he was determined not to let himself be carriedoff his feet. But it would have been easier for him to stand firm, hadshe met him in almost any other way than this--even with a frank returnof feeling, for then they might have spoken openly, and have helpedeach other. As it was, he had no thoughts but of her; his watchfultenderness knew no bounds; but the whole responsibility was his. It washe who had to maintain the happy mean in their relations; he to drawthe line beyond which it was better for all their after-lives that theyshould not go. He affirmed to himself more than once that he loved herthe more for her complete subjection: it was in keeping with heropenhanded nature which could do nothing by halves. Yet, as timepassed, he began to suffer under it, to feel her absence of will as adisquieting factor--to find anything to which he could compare it, hehad to hark back to the state she had been in when he first offered heraid and comfort. That was the lassitude of grief, this of . .. He couldnot find a word. But it began to tell on him, and more than once madehim a little sharp with her; for, at moments, he would be seized by anoverpowering temptation to shake her out of her lassitude, to rouse heras he very well knew she could be roused. And then, strange desiresawoke in him; he did not himself know of what he was capable. 

One afternoon, they were in the woods as usual. It was very sultry; nota leaf stirred. Louise lay with her elbow on the moss-grown roots of atree; her eyes were heavy. Maurice, before her, smoked a cigarette, andwatched for the least recognition of his presence, thinking, meanwhile, that she looked better already for these days spent out-of-doors--thetiny lines round her eyes were fast disappearing. By degrees, however, he grew restless under her protracted silence; there was somethingominous about it. He threw his cigarette away, and, taking her hand, began to pull apart the long fingers with the small, pink nails, or togather them together, and let them drop, one by one, like warm, butlifeless things. 

"What ARE you thinking of?" he asked at last, and shut her hand firmlywithin his. 

She started. "I? . .. Thinking? I don't know. I wasn't thinking at all. "

"But you were. I saw it in your face. Your thoughts were miles away. "

"I don't know, Maurice. I couldn't tell you now. " And a moment later, she added: "You think one must always be thinking, when one is silent. "

"Yes, I'm jealous of your thoughts. You tell me nothing of them. Butnow you have come back to me, and it's all right. "

He drew her nearer to him by the hand he held, and, putting his armunder her neck, bent her head back on the moss. Her stretched throatwas marked by two encircling lines; he traced them with his finger. Shelay and smiled at him. But her eyes remained shaded: they weremeditative, and seemed to be considering him, a little deliberately. 

"Tell me, Louise, " he said suddenly; "why do you look at me like that?It's not the first time--I've seen it before. And then, I can't helpthinking there's some mistake--that after all you don't really care forme. It is so--so critical. "

"You are curious to-day, Maurice. "

"Yes. There's so much I want to know, and you tell me nothing. It is Iwho talk and talk--till you must be tired of hearing me. "

"No, I like to listen best. And I have nothing to say. "

"Nothing? Really nothing?"

"Only that I'm glad to be here--that I am happy. "

He kissed her on the throat, the eyes and the lips; kissed her, until, under his touch, that vague, elusive influence began to emanate fromher, which, he was aware, might some day overpower him, and drag himdown. They were quite alone, shut in by high trees; no one would findthem, or disturb them. And it was just this mysterious power in herthat his nerves had dreamed of waking: yet now, some inexplicableinstinct made him hesitate, and forbear. He drew his arm from under herhead, and rose to his feet, where he stood looking down at her. She layjust as he had left her, and he felt unaccountably impatient. 

"There it is again!" he cried. "You are looking at me just as you didbefore. "

Louise passed her hand over her eyes, and sat up. "Why, Maurice, whatdo you mean? It was nothing--only something I was trying to understand. "

But what it was that she did not understand, he could not get her totell him. 

A fortnight passed. One morning, when a soft south breeze was inmotion, Maurice reminded her with an air of playful severity, that, sofar, they had not learned to know even their nearer surroundings; whileof all the romantic explorings in the pretty Muldental, which he hadhad in view for them, not one had been undertaken. Louise was not fondof walking in the country; she tired easily, and was always content tobask in the sun and be still. But she did not attempt to oppose hiswish; she put on her hat, and was ready to start. 

His love of movement reasserted itself. They went down thedriving-road, and out upon the long, ribbon-like roads that zigzaggedthe plains, connecting the dotted villages. These roads were edged withfruit-trees--apple and cherry. The apples were still hard, green, polished balls, but the berries were at their prime. And everywhere menwere aloft on ladders, gathering the fruit for market. For the sum often pfennigs, Maurice could get his hat filled, and, by the roadside, they would sit down to make a second breakfast off black, lusciouscherries, which stained the lips a bluish purple. When it grew too hotfor the open roads, they descended the steep, wooded back of the bill, to the romantic little town of Wechselburg at its base. Here, a massivebridge of reddish-yellow stone spanned the winding, slate-grey Mulde; asombre, many-windowed castle of the same stone as the bridge looked outover a wall of magnificent chestnuts. 

On returning from these, and various other excursions, they werepleasantly tired and hungry. After supper, they sat upstairs by thewindow in her room, Louise in the big chair, Maurice at her feet, andthere watched the darkness come down, over the tops of the trees. 

Somewhat later in the month, the fancy took her to go to a place calledAmerika. Maurice consulted the landlord about the distance. Theiroriginal plan of taking the train a part of the way was, however, abandoned when the morning came; for it was an uncommonly lovely day, and a fresh breeze was blowing. So, having scrambled down toWechselburg again, they struck out on the flat, and began their walk. The whole day lay before them; they were bound to no fixed hours; and, throughout the morning, they made frequent halts, to gather the wildraspberries that grew by the roadside. Having passed under a greatrailway viaduct, which dominated the landscape, they stopped at avillage inn, to rest and drink coffee. About two o'clock, they came toRochsburg, and finally arrived, towards the middle of the afternoon, atthe picturesque restaurant that bore the name, of Amerika. Here theydined. Afterwards, they returned to Rochsburg, but much lessbuoyantly--for Louise was growing footsore--paid a bridge-toll, wereshown through the castle, and, at sunset, found themselves on thelittle railway-station, waiting for an overdue train. The restaurant inwhich they sat, was a kind of shed, roofed by a covering of Virginiacreeper; the station stood on an eminence; the plains stretched beforethem, as far as they could see; the evening sky was an unbroken sheetof red and gold. 

The half-hour's journey over--it was made in a narrow woodencompartment, crowded with peasants returning from a market--they leftthe train, and began to climb the hill. But, by now, Louise was at theend of her strength, and Maurice began to fear that he would never gether home; she could with difficulty drag one foot after the other, andhad to rest every few minutes, so that it was nearly ten o'clock beforethey entered the house. In her room, he knelt before her and took offher boots; Amalie carried her supper up on a tray. She hardly touchedit: her eyes were closing with fatigue, and she was asleep as soon asher head touched the pillow. 

Next day she did not waken till nearly noon, and she remained in bedtill after dinner. For the rest of the day, she sat in the armchair. Maurice wished to read to her, but she preferred quiet--did not evenwant to be talked to. The weather was on her nerves, she said--for ithad grown very sultry, and the sky was overcast. The landlordprophesied a thunderstorm. In the evening, however, as it was stilldry, and he had been in the house all day, Maurice went out for asolitary walk. 

He swung down the road at a pace he could only make when he was alone. It had looked threatening when he left the house, but, as he went, theclouds piled themselves up with inconceivable rapidity, and before hewas three miles out on the plain, the storm broke, with a sudden furyfrom which there was no escape. He took to his heels, and ran to thenext village, some quarter of a mile in front of him. There, in thesmoky room of a tiny inn, together with a handful of country-people, hewas held a prisoner for over two hours; the rain pelted, and thethunder cracked immediately overhead. When, drenched to the skin, hereached the top of the hill again, it was going on for midnight. He hadbeen absent for close on four hours. 

The candle in her room was guttering in its socket. By its failinglight, he saw that she was lying across the bed, still dressed. Overher bent Amalie. 

He had visions of sudden illness, and brushed the girl aside. 

"What is it? What's the matter?"

At his voice, Louise lifted a wild face, stared at him as though shedid not recognise him, then rose with a cry, and flung herself upon him. 

"Take care! I'm wet through. "

For all answer, she burst out crying, and trembled from head to foot. 

"What is it, darling? Were you afraid?"

But she only clung to him and trembled. 

Amalie was weeping with equal vehemence; he ordered her out of theroom. Notwithstanding his dripping clothes, he was forced to supportLouise. In vain he implored her to speak; it was long before she was ina state to reply to his questionings. Outside the storm still raged; itwas a wild night. 

"What was it? Were you afraid? Did you think I was lost?"

"I don't know--Oh, Maurice! You will never leave me, will you?"

She wounded her lips against his shoulder. 

"Leave you! What has put such foolish thoughts into your head?"

"I don't know. --But on a night like this, I feel that anything mighthappen. "

"And did it really matter so much whether I came back or not?"

He felt her arms tighten round him. 

"Did you care as much as that?--Louise!"

"I said: my God!--what if he should never come back! And then, then . .. "

"Then----?"

"And then the noise of the storm . .. And I was so alone . .. And all thelong, long hours . .. And at every sound I said, there he is . .. And itnever was you . .. Till I knew you were lying somewhere . .. Dead . .. Under a tree. "

"You poor little soul!" he began impulsively, then stopped, for he feltthe sudden thrill that ran through her. 

"Say that again, Maurice!--say it again!"

"You poor, little fancy-ridden soul!"

"Oh, if you knew how good it sounds!--if I could make you understand!You're the only person who has ever said a thing like that to me--theonly one who has ever been in the least sorry for me. Promise menow--promise again--that you will never leave me. --For you are all Ihave. "

"Promise?--again? When you are more to me than my own life?"

"And you will never get tired of me?--never?"

"My own dear wife!"

She strained him to her with a strength for which he would not havegiven her credit. He tried to see her face. 

"Do you know what that means?"

"Yes, I know. It means, if you leave me now, I shall die. "

By the next morning, all traces of the storm had vanished; the sunshone; the slanting roads were hard and dry again. Other stormsfollowed--for it was an exceptionally hot summer--and many an eveningthe two were prisoners in her room, listening to the angry roar of thetrees, which lashed each other with a sound like that of the open sea. 

Every Sunday in August, too, brought a motley crowd of guests to theinn, and then the whole terrace was set out with little tables. Twowaiters came to assist Amalie; a band played in an arbour; carts andwagonettes were hitched to the front of the house; and the noise andmerry-making lasted till late in the night. Together they leaned fromthe window of Louise's room, to watch the people; they hardly venturedout of doors, for it was unpleasant to see their favourite nooksinvaded by strangers. Except on Sundays, however, their seclusionremained undisturbed; half a dozen visitors were staying in the otherwing of the building, and of these they sometimes caught a glimpse atmeals; but that was all: the solitude they desired was still theirs. 

And so the happy days slid past; August was well advanced, by thistime, and the tropical heat was at its height. In the beginning, it hadbeen Maurice who regretted the rapid flight of the days: now it wasLouise. Occasionally, a certain shadow settled on her face, and, atsuch moments, he well knew what she was thinking of: for, once, out ofthe very fulness of his content, he had said to her with a lazy sigh:"To-day is the first of August, " and then, for the first time, he hadseen this look of intense regret cross her face. She had entreated himnot to say any more; and, after that, the speed with which the monthdecreased, was not mentioned between them. 

But his carelessly dropped words had sown their seed. A couple of weekslater, the remembrance of the work he had still to do for Schwarz, before the beginning of the new term, broke over him like a douche ofcold water. It was a resplendent morning; he had been leaning out ofthe window, idly tapping his fingers on the sill. Suddenly they seemedto him to have grown stiff, to have lost their agility; and by thethoughts that now came, he was so disquieted that he shut himself up inhis own room. 

At his first words to her, Louise, who was still in bed, turned pale. "Yes, yes, be quiet!--I know, " she said, and buried her face in thedown pillow. 

In this position she remained for some seconds; Maurice stood staringout of the window. Then, without raising her face, she held out herhand to him. 

He took it; but he did not do what she expected he would: sit down onthe side of the bed, and put his arm round her. He stood holding it, absent-mindedly. She stole a glance at him, and turned still paler. Then, with a jerk, she released her hand, sat up in bed, and pushed herhair from her face. 

"Maurice! . .. Then if it has to be . .. Then to-day . .. Please, please, to-day! Don't ask me to stay here, and think, and remember, that it'sall over--that this is the end--that we shall never, never be here inthis little room again! Oh, I couldn't bear it!--! can't bear it, Maurice! Let us go away--please, let us go!"

In vain he urged reason; there was no gainsaying her: she brushedaside, without listening to it, his objection that their rooms inLeipzig would not be ready for them. Throwing back the bedclothes, shegot up at once and dressed herself, with cold fingers, then flungherself upon the packing, helped and hindered by Amalie, who weptbeside her. The hour that followed was like a bad dream. Finally, however, the luggage was carried downstairs, the bill paid, and thecircumstantial good-byes were said: they set off, at full speed, downthe woodpath to the station, to catch the midday train. Louise waswhite with exhaustion: her breath came sobbingly. In a firstclasscarriage, he made her lie down on the seat. With her hand in his, hesaid what he could to comfort her; for her face was tragic. 

"We will come again, darling. It is only AUF WIEDERSEHEN, remember!"

But she shook her head. 

"We shall never be here again. "

Leipzig, at three o'clock on an August afternoon, lay baking in thesun. He put her in a covered droschke, himself carrying the bags, forhe could not find a porter. 

"At seven, then! Try to sleep. You are so pale. "

"Good-bye--good-bye!"

His hand rested on the door of the droschke. She laid hers on it, andclung to it as though she would never, let it go. 

Part III. 

 . .. Dove il Sol tace. 

DANTE

I. 

Frau Krause was ill pleased at his unlooked-for reappearance, and didnot scruple to say so. From the condition of disorder in which he foundhis room, Maurice judged that it had been occupied, during his absence, by the entire family. Having been caught napping, Frau Krause carriedthe matter off with a high hand: she gave him to understand that hisbehaviour in descending upon her thus, was not that of a decent lodger. Maurice never parleyed with her; ascertaining by a glance that hisbooks and music had been left untouched, he made his escape from thepails of water that were straightway brought into evidence, as well asfrom her irate assurances that the room would be ready for him in aquarter of an hour. 

He went into the town, and did various small errands necessary to thetaking up anew of the old life. After he had had dinner, and had lookedthrough the newspapers, the temptation was strong to go to Louise, andspend the hot afternoon hours at her side. But he resisted; for thatwould have been a poor beginning to the sensible way of life they wouldhave to follow, from now on. Besides, with the certainty of seeing heragain in a very short time, it was not impossible to be patient. Nomore uncertainty, no more doubts and fears!--the day for these wasover. --And so, having satisfied himself that his room was stilluninhabitable, he strolled to the Conservatorium, to see what noticeshad remained affixed to the notice-board. As he was leaving again, hemet the janitor, and from him learned that his name was down for thefirst ADBENDUNTERHALTUNG of the coming month. 

In the shadeless street, he paused irresolute. The heat of theslumbrous afternoon was oppressive; all animation seemed suspended. Thetrees in streets and gardens drooped, brownishyellow, and heavy withdust. The sun met the eyes blindingly, and was reflected from everyhouse-wall. Maurice went for a walk in the woods. In his pocket he hada letter, still unread, which he had found waiting for him that day. Itwas from his mother, and his eyes slid carelessly over the pages. Therewere the usual reproaches for his prolonged silences, the never-failingreminders that his time in Leipzig would come to an end the followingspring, as well as several details of domestic interest. Then, however, followed a piece of news, which rallied his attention. 

YOU WILL DOUBTLESS BE INTERESTED TO HEAR, she wrote, THAT YOUR FRIENDTHE OLD MUSIC TEACHER IN NORWICH DIED SUDDENLY LAST WEEK. HIS PUPILSHAD FALLEN OFF GREATLY OF LATE AND WHEN EVERYTHING HAD BEEN SOLD THEREWAS SCARCELY ENOUGH TO COVER THE FUNERAL EXPENSES. YOUR FATHER THINKSTHAT THOUGH A YOUNG PERSON FROM LONDON OF THE NAME OF SMITH OR SMYTHEHAS LATELY SET UP THERE AND ATTRACTED MANY OF THE BEST PAYING FAMILIESYET THE OLD CONNECTION MIGHT BE WORKED UP AGAIN AND IT WOULD BE WORTHYOUR WHILE TRYING TO DO IT. AT FIRST YOU COULD LIVE AT HOME AND GO OVERONCE OR TWICE A WEEK. YOUR FATHER HAS BEEN MAKING INQUIRIES ABOUT ASUITABLE ROOM. 

This news called up a feeling of repugnance in Maurice: it came like amessage from another world; the very baldness of its expression seemedto throw him back, at one stroke, into the hated atmosphere of hishome. He folded the letter and replaced it in the envelope, with such aconscious hostility to all that his blood-relations did or said, as hehad not felt since the day when, in their midst, he had struggled toassert his independence. How little they understood him! It was likethem, in their unimaginative dulness, to suppose that they couldarrange his life for him--draw up the lines on which it was to bespent. He saw himself bound down hand and foot again, to the occupationhe so hated; saw himself striving to oust the young person from London, just as no doubt his old friend had striven; saw himself becomingproficient in all the mean, petty tricks of rival teachers, and eithervanquishing or being vanquished, in the effort to earn a living. 

However he viewed them, his prospects had nothing hopeful in them. Theywere vague, too, to the last degree. On one question alone was his mindmade up: he meant to marry Louise at the earliest possible date. Whatever else happened, this should come to pass. For the first time, he thought with something akin to remorse, over the turn affairs hadtaken. He had been blind and dizzy with his infatuation, sick for herto his very marrow--he could only look back on those feverish weeks inJune as on the horrors of a nightmare--and he would not have missed asingle hour of the happy days at Rochlitz. But, none the less, he hadalways felt a peculiar aversion to people who allowed their feelings toget the better of them. Now, he himself was one of them. If only shewere his wife! Had she consented, he would have married her there andthen, without reflection. They might have lived on, just as they weregoing to do, and have kept their marriage a secret, reserving tothemselves the pleasure of knowing that their intimacy was legal. At itwas, he must console himself with the thought that, married or not, they were indissolubly bound: he knew now better than before, that noother woman would ever exist for him; and surely, in the case of anall-absorbing passion such as this, the overstepping of conventionalboundaries would not be counted too heavily against them: laws andconventions existed only for the weak and vacillating loves of the restof the world. 

Then, however, and almost against his will, the other side of thequestion forced itself upon his notice. As the marriage had not alreadytaken place, as, indeed, Louise chose to evade the subject when hebrought it up, he could not but admit to it would be pleasanter for himif it were now postponed until he was independent of home-support. Hisfamily would, he knew, bitterly resent his taking the step; and inregard to them, he was proud. Where Louise was concerned, of course, itwas a different matter: there, no misplaced pride should stand in theway. She had ample means for her own needs; it was merely a question ofearning enough to keep himself. The sole advantage of the present stateof affairs was, that it might still be concealed; whereas even a secretmarriage implied a possible publicity; it might somehow leak out, and, in the event of this, he knew that his parents would immediately cutoff supplies. If once he were independent of them, he could do as heliked. He set his teeth at the thought of it. To no small extent, hisway was mapped out for him. Marrying Louise meant giving up all idea ofreturning home. He understood now, more clearly than before, howunfitted she was for the narrow life that would there be expected ofher. And even--if he had longed for approval and consent, he wouldnever have had courage to ask her to face the petty, ignoble details ofconventional propriety, which such a sanction implied. No, if he wishedto ensure her happiness, he must secure to her the freer atmosphere inwhich she was accustomed to live. He must burn his ships behind him, and the most satisfactory thing was, that he was able to do it withouta pang. 

He racked his brains as to the means of making a livelihood. There wasnothing he would not do. He was more ready to work than ever a labourerwith a starving family at his back. But, having let every possibilitypass before his mind's eye, he was forced to the conclusion that theonly occupation open to him was the one he had come to Leipzig toescape. He was fit for nothing but to be a teacher. All he could do atthe piano, hundreds of others could do better; his talents as aconductor were, he had learned, of the meagrest; the pleasing littlesongs he might compose, of small value. Yet, if this were the price hehad to pay for making her his wife, he was content to pay it: nosacrifice was too great for him. And then, to be a teacher here meantsomething different from what it meant in England. Here, it waspossible to retain your self-respect--the caste of the class wasanother to begin with--and also to remain in touch with all that wasbest worth knowing. As a foreigner, he might add to his earnings byteaching English; but piano-lessons would of necessity be his chiefsource of income. They were plentiful enough: Avery Hill supportedherself entirely by them, and Furst kept his family. Of course, though, this was due to Schwarz: his influence was a key to all doors. Both ofthese were favourite pupils; while a melancholy fact, which had to befaced, was, that he did not stand well with Schwarz. Somehow, they hadnever taken to each other: he, perhaps, had had too open an eye for themaster's foibles, and Schwarz had no doubt been aware, from the first, of his pupil's fatally divided interests. The crown had probably beenset by his ill-considered flight in July. If he wished ultimately toachieve something, the interest he had forfeited must be regained, costwhat it might. He would work, in these coming months, as never before. Could he make a brilliant, even a wholly respectable job of the trio hewas to play, it would go far towards reinstating him in Schwarz's goodgraces: and he might then venture to approach the master with a requestfor assistance. This was the first piece of work that lay to his hand, and he would do it with all his might. After that, the rest. 

There was no time to lose. A mild despair overcame him at the thoughtof the intricate sonata, the long, mazy concerto by Hummel, which hadformed his holiday task. In exactly a fortnight from this date, thevacation came to an end, and, as yet, he did not know a note of them. Through the motionless heat of the paved streets, he went home, andturning Frau Krause out of his room, sat down at the piano to scalesand exercises. Not until he felt suppleness and strength coming back tohis fingers, did he allow his thoughts to wander. Then, however, theyleapt to Louise; after this break in his consciousness, he seemed tohave been absent from her for days. 

The sun was full on her windows; curtains and blinds were drawn againstit. While he hesitated, still dazzled by the glare of the streets, shesprang to meet him, laying both hands on his shoulders. 

"At last!"

He blinked, and laughed, and held her at arm's length. "At last?--Why, what does that mean?"

"That I have been waiting for you, and hoping you would come--forhours. "

"But, dearest, I'm too early as it is. It's not six o'clock. "

"Yes, I know. But I was so sure you would come sooner, --that youwouldn't be able to stay away! Oh, the afternoon has been endless; andthe heat was suffocating. I couldn't dress, and I haven't unpacked athing. "

Now he saw that she was in her dressing-gown, and that the bags andvalises stood in a corner, just as they had been carried up from thedroschke. 

With her hands still on his shoulders, she put back her head. A thinline of white appeared between her lips, and, under their drooped lids, her eyes shone with a moist brilliance. She looked at him eagerly forsome seconds, and it seemed to him wistfully, too. Then, in aninexplicable change of mood, she let her arms fall, and turned away. She had grown pale and despondent. There was only one thing for him todo: to put his arms round her and draw her to his knee. Holding herthus, he whispered in her ear words such as she loved to hear. He hadgrown skilled in repeating them. Under the even murmur of his voice, her face grew tranquil; she sank little by little into a state ofwell-being; her one fear was that he would cease speaking. 

On the writing-table, a gold-faced clock ticked solemnly: its minuteswent by unheeded. Maurice was the first to feel the disillusioningshudder of reality; simultaneously, the remembrance returned to him ofwhat he had come intending to tell her. --He loosened her arms. 

"Louise!" he said in an altered voice. "Look up, dear!--and let me seeyour eyes. You won't believe me, I think, but I came this eveningmeaning to talk very sensibly--nothing but common sense, in fact. There's a great deal I want to say to you. Come, let us be two rationalpeople--yes? As a beginning, I'll draw up the blinds. The sun's behindthe houses now, and the room is so close. "

Louise shrank from the violent, dusty light; and her face, a momentback rapturously content, took on at once a look of apprehension. 

"Not to-night, Maurice--not to-night! It's too . .. Too hot for commonsense to-night. "

He laughed and took her hand. "Be my own brave girl, and help me. Youhave only to look at me, as you know, to make me forget everything. Andthat mustn't be. We have got to be serious for a little--have you everthought, Louise, how seldom you and I have talked seriously together?There was never time, was there? . .. In all these weeks. There was onlytime to tell you how much you are to me. --But now--well, so many thingswere running in my head this afternoon. This letter from home was thebeginning of them. Read it--this page here, at least--and then I'lltell you what I've been thinking. "

He put the letter into her hand, and she ran her eyes over the page. But she laid it down without comment. 

A fear crossed his mind. "Don't misunderstand it, " he said hastily. "You know that point was settled months ago. There's no question ofgoing back for me now--and I'm glad of it. I never want to see Englandagain. But it gave me a lot to think about--how the staying here was tobe managed, and things like that. "

He was conscious of becoming somewhat wordy; and as she did notrespond, his uneasiness grew. In his anxiety to make her think as hedid, he clasped his hand over hers. 

"I needn't say again, need I, darling, what the past weeks have meantto me? I'm so grateful to you for them that I could only prove it withyears of my life. But--and don't misunderstand this either, or think Idon't love you more now than ever before--you know I do. But, look atit as we will, those weeks were play--glorious play, worth half one'sexistence, but still only play. They couldn't last for ever. Now we'vecome back, and we have to face work and the workaday world--you seewhat I mean, I'm sure?"

There was a note of entreaty in his voice. As she still kept silence, he gave his whole strength to demolishing the mute opposition he feltin her. 

"From now on, dear, we must make up our minds to be two very sensiblepeople. I've an enormous amount of work to get through, in the comingmonths. And at Easter, I shall probably be thrown on my own resources. But I'll fight my way somehow--here, beside you. We'll live our ownlife. Just you and I. --Let me tell you what I propose to do, "--andhere, he laid before her, in their entirety, his plans for winning overSchwarz, for gaining a foothold, and for making a modest income. "Agood PRUFUNG, " he concluded, "and I'll be able to get anything I wantout of him. In the meantime, I've got to make a decent job next monthof the trio--I'm pretty well in his black books, I can guess, for goingoff as I did in July. I must work as I've never done before. Eachsingle day must be mapped out, and nothing allowed to interfere. It'san undertaking; but you'll help me, won't you, darling?--as only youcan. I've let things go, far too much--I see it now. But it wasimpossible--frankly, I didn't care. I only wanted you. Now, it will . .. It must be different. The unrest is gone; you belong to me, and I toyou. We are sure of each other. "

"Oh, it's stifling! There's no air in the room. "

She rose from his side, and went to the open window, where she stoodwith her back to him. As a result of his words, her life seemedsuddenly to stretch before her, just as dry, and dusty, andcommonplace, as the street she looked down on. 

"I want to show you, too, " he continued behind her, "that you haven'tutterly thrown yourself away. I know how little I can do; but honestendeavour must count for something. I ask nothing better than to workfor you, Louise--and you know it. "

A wave of warm air came in at the window; the dying afternoon turned totwilight. 

"Yes . .. And I? What am I to do? What room is there for me in yourplans of work?"

He glanced sharply at her; but she had not moved. 

"Louise, dearest! I know that what I say must sound selfish andinconsiderate. And yet I can't help it. I'm forced to ask you to wait. .. Merely to wait. And for what? Good Heavens, no one realises it as Ido! I have nothing to offer you, in return--but my love for you. But ifyou knew how strong that is--if you knew how happy I am resolved tomake you! Have a little patience, darling! It will all come right inthe end--if only you love me! And you do, don't you? Say once more youdo. "

She turned so swiftly that the tail of her dressing-gown twisted, andfell over on itself. 

"Can you still ask that? Have you not had proof enough? Is there aninch of you that doesn't believe in my love for you? Oh, Maurice! . .. It's only that I'm tired to-night--and restless. I was so wretched athaving to come back. And the heat has got on my nerves. I wish a greatstorm would come, and shake the house, and make the branches of thetrees beat against the panes--do you remember? And we were so safe. Theworse the storm was, the closer you held me. " She sat down beside him, on the arm of the sofa. "Such a night seemed doubly wild after thelong, still days that had gone before it--do you remember?--Oh, why hadit all to end? Weren't we happy enough? Or did we ask too much? Whymust time go just the same over happiness and unhappiness alike?" Shegot up again, and strayed back to the window. "Days like those willnever--CAN never--come again. Even as it is, coming back has made adifference. Could you even yesterday have spoken as you do to-day? Wasthere any room then for common sense between us? No, we were too happy. It was enough to know we were alive. "

"Be reasonable, darling. I am as sorry as you that these weeks areover; but, glorious as they were, they couldn't last for ever. Andtrust me; we shall know other days just as happy. --But if, because Italk like this, you imagine I don't love you a hundred times bettereven than yesterday--but you don't mean that! You know me better, myRachel!"

"Yes. Perhaps you're right--you ARE right. But I am right, too. "

She came back, and sat down on the sofa again, and propped her chin onher hand. 

"You're tired to-night, dear--that's all. To-morrow things will lookdifferent, and you'll see the truth of what I say. At night, things getdistorted----"

"No, no, one only really sees in the dark, " she interrupted him. 

--"but in the morning, one can smile at one's fears. Trust me, Louise, and believe in me. All our future happiness depends on how we act justnow. "

"Our future happiness . .. Yes, " she said slowly. "But what of thepresent?"

"Isn't it worth while sacrificing a brief present to a long future?"

She threw him a quick glance. "You talk like an orthodox Christian, Maurice, " she said, and added: "The present is here: it belongs to us. The future is so unclear--who knows what it will bring us!"

"And isn't it just for that very reason that I speak as I do? Ifeverything lay clear and straight before us, do you think I shouldbother about anything but you? It's the uncertainty of the whole thingthat troubles me. But however vague it is, I can tell you one thingthat will happen. And you know, dearest, what that is--the onlyambition I have left: to make you my wife at the earliest possiblemoment. "

She gazed at him meditatively. 

"Why wouldn't you let me have my way at first?" he cried. "Why were youagainst it? We could have kept it a secret: no one need have known athing about it. And I should never have asked you to go to England, orto see my people. Call it narrow, if you must, I can't help it; it'sthe only thing for us to do. Why won't you agree? Tell me what you haveagainst it. Listen!" He knelt down and put his arms round her. "We havestill a fortnight--that's time enough. Let us go to England to-morrow, and be married without a word to anyone--in the first registrar'soffice we find. Only marry me!"

"Would it make you love me more?"

She looked at him intently, turning the whole weight of her dark glanceupon him. 

"You!" he said. "You to ask such a thing! You with these eyes . .. Andthis hair! And these hands!--I love every line of them . .. You can'tunderstand, can you, you bundle of emotions, that I should care for youas I do, and yet be able to talk soberly? It seems to you a man's wayof loving--and poor at that. But if you imagine I don't love you allthe more for what you have sacrificed for me--no, you didn't say that, I know, but it comes to the same thing in the end. "

She made no answer; and a feeling of discouragement began to creep overhim. He rose to his feet. 

"A man who loves a woman as I love you, " he said almost violently, "hasonly one wish--can have only one. I shall never rest or be thoroughlyhappy till you consent to marry me. That you can refuse as you do, seems to prove that you don't care for me enough. "

She put her arms round his neck: her wide sleeves fell back, leavingher arms bear. "Maurice, " she said gently, "why must you worryyourself?--You know if you are set on our marrying, I'll give way. ButI don't want to be married--not yet. There's plenty of time. It's onlya small matter now; it doesn't seem as if it could make any difference;and yet it might. The sense of being bound; of some one--no, of the lawpermitting us to love each other . .. No, Maurice, not yet. --Listen! I'molder and wiser than you, and I know. Happiness like this doesn't comeevery day. Instead of brooding and hesitating, one must seize it whileit's there: it's such a slippery thing; it's gone before you know it. You can't bind it fast, and say it shall last so and so long. We haveit now; don't let us talk and reason about it. --Oh, to-day, I'mnervous! Let me make a confession. As a child I hadpresentiments--things I foresaw came true, and on the morning of amisfortune, I've felt such a load on my chest that I could hardlybreathe. Well, to-day, when I came into this room again, it seemed asif two black wings shut out the sunlight; and I was afraid. The pastweeks have been so unreasonably happy--such happiness mustn't be letgo. Help me to hold it; I can't do it alone. Don't try to make it fastto the future; while you do that, it's going--do you think one can drawout happiness like a thread? Oh, help me!--don't let any thing take itfrom us. And I will give up everything to it. Only you must always bebeside me, Maurice, and love me. Don't let anything come between us!For my sake, for my sake!"

In the face of this outpouring, his own opinions seemed of littlematter; his one concern was to ward off the tears that he saw wereimminent. He held her to him, stroked her hair, and murmured words ofcomfort. But when she raised her head again, her eyelids were reddened, as though she had actually wept. 

"Now I know you. Now you are my own again, " she whispered. "How could Iknow you as you were then? I'd never seen you like that--seen you coldand sensible. "

He looked down at her without speaking, in a preoccupied way. 

She touched his face with her finger. "Here are lines I don't know--Isee them now for the first time--lines of reason, of common sense, ofall that is strange to me in you. "

He caught her hand, continuing to gaze at her with the same expressionof aloofness. "I need them for us both. You have none. "

Her lips parted in a smile. Then this faded, and she looked at him witheyes that reminded him of an untamed animal, or of a startled child. 

"Mine . .. Still mine!" she said passionately. --And in the hours it tookto reassure her, his primly reasoned conclusions were blown like chaffbefore the wind. 

II. 

The next fortnight flew by; and familiar faces began to appear again. The steps and inner vestibule of the Conservatorium became a lounge forseeing acquaintances. In the cafe at the corner, the click of billiardballs was to be heard from early morning on. 

Maurice looked forward to meeting his friends, with some embarrassment. It was unlikely that the events of the summer had remained a secret;for that, there was a clique in the place over-much on the alert forscandal, to which unfortunately the name of Louise Dufrayer lent itselfonly too readily. He could not decide what position to take up, withregard to their present intimacy; to flaunt it openly, to be pointed atas her lover, would for her sake be repugnant to him. It made himreject an idea he had revolved, of begging her to let him announcetheir engagement: for, in the present state of things, the word"BRAUTIGAM" had an evil sound. Eventually, he came to the conclusionthat they must be more cautious than they had ever been, and giveabsolutely no food for talk. 

One day, in the GRASSISTRASSE, he came upon a little knot of men heknew. And it was just as he supposed; the secret was a secret nolonger. He saw it at once in their treatment of him. There was a spiceof deference in their manner: and their looks expressed curiosity, envious surprise, even a kind of brotherly welcome. After this, Mauricechanged his mind. The only course open to him was to brazen things out. He would not wait for his friends to show him what they thought; hewould be beforehand with them. 

A chance soon offered of putting his intentions into practice. Onentering Seyffert's one afternoon, he espied Dove, who had justreturned. Dove sat alone at a small table, reading the TAGEBLATT;before him stood a cup of cocoa. When he saw Maurice, he raised thenewspaper a trifle higher, so that it covered the level of his eyes. But Maurice went across the room, and touched him on the shoulder. Dovedropped his shield, and sprang up, exclaiming with surprise. Mauricesat down beside him, and, by dint of a little wheedling, put Dove athis ease. The latter was bubbling over with new experiences and futureprospects. It seemed that in Peterborough, Dove's native town, the artof music was taking strides that were nothing short of marvellous. Tohear Dove talk, the palm for progress must be awarded to Peterborough, over and above all the other towns of Great Britain; and he was agogwith plans and expectations. During the holidays, he had heldconversations with several local magnates, all of whom expressedthemselves in favour of his scheme for founding a school of music, andpromised him their support. Dove had returned to Leipzig in a brand-newoutfit, and a hard hat; his studies were coming to an end in spring, and he began to think already of casting the skin of Bohemianism. 

Maurice listened to him leniently--even drew Dove out a little. But hekept his eye on the clock. In less than half an hour, he would be withLouise; from some corner of the semidarkened room, she would springtowards him, and throw herself into his arms. 

The majority of the classes were not yet assembled, when one day, arumour rose, and spreading, ran from mouth to mouth. Those who heard itwere at first incredulous; as, however, it continued to make headway, they whistled to themselves, or vented their surprise in a breathless"ACH!" Later in the day, they stood about in groups, and excitedlydiscussed the subject. Ten of Schwarz's most advanced pupils had leftthe master for the outsider named Schrievers. At the head of the liststood Furst. 

The Conservatorium, royally endowed and municipally controlled, held toits time-honoured customs with tenacity. The older masters laboured touphold tradition, and such younger ones as were progressively inclined, had not the influence to effect a change. Unattached teachers wereregarded with suspicion--unless they happened to be former pupils ofthe institution, in which case it was assumed that they carried out itsprecepts. There had naturally always been plenty of others as well; butthese were comparatively powerless: they could give their pupilsneither imposing certificates, nor gala public performances, such asthe PRUFUNGEN, and, for the most part, they flourished unknown. Thiswas previous to the arrival of Schrievers. It was now about a year anda half ago that his settling in Leipzig had caused a flutter in musicalcircles. Then, however, he had been forgotten, or at least rememberedonly at intervals, when it was heard that he had caught another fish, in the shape of a renegade pupil. 

Schrievers was a burly, red-bearded man, still well under middle age, and possessed of plenty of push and self-confidence. It soon transpiredthat he was an out-and-out champion of modern ideas in music; for, fromthe first, he was connected with a leading paper, in which he made hisviews known. He had a trenchant pen, and, with unfailing consistency, criticised the musical conditions of Leipzig adversely. The progressiveLISZTVEREIN, of which he was soon the leading spirit, alone escaped;the opera, bereft of Nikisch, and the Gewandhaus, under its gentle andaged conductor, were treated by him with biting sarcasm. But his chiefbutt was the Conservatorium, and its ancient methods. He asserted thatnot a jot of the curriculum had been altered for fifty years; and itsspeedy downfall was the sole result to be expected and hoped for. Thefact that, at this time, some seven hundred odd students were enrolledon its books went far to discredit this pious hope; but, nevertheless, Schrievers harped always on the same string; and just as perpetualdropping wears a stone, so his continued diatribes ate into emotionaland sensitive natures. He began to attract a following, and, simultaneously, to make himself known as a pupil of Liszt. This broughthim a fresh batch of enemies. Even a small German town is seldomwithout its Liszt-pupil, and in Leipzig several were settled, none ofwhom had ever heard of Martin Schrievers. They refused to admit him totheir jealous clique. In their opinion, he belonged to that goodlyclass of persons, who, having by hook or by crook, contrived to spendan hour in the Abbe of Weimar's presence, afterwards abused the sacrednarre of pupil. He was hated by these chosen few with more vigour thanby the conservative pedagogues, who, naturally enough, saw the ruin ofart in all he did. 

Various reasons were given for his success, no one being willing tobelieve that it was due to his merits as a teacher. Some said that herecognised in a twinkling the weak points of the individual with whomhe had to deal. He humoured foibles, was tender of self-conceit. Healso flattered his pupils by giving them music that was beyond theirpowers of execution: those, for instance, who had worked long and withfeeble interest at Czerny, Dussek and Hummel, were dazzled at theprospect of Liszt and Chopin, which was suddenly thrust beneath theireyes. Other ill-wishers believed that his chief bait was the musicalSOIREES he gave when a famous pianist came to the town. By virtue ofhis journalistic position, he was personally acquainted with all thegreat; they visited at his house, and his pupils had thus not merelythe opportunity of getting to know artists like Rubinstein andd'Albert, and of hearing them play in private, but, what was more tothe point, of themselves taking part in the performance, and perhapsreceiving a golden word from the great man's lips. And though no hugeparchment scroll was forthcoming on the termination of one's studies, yet Schrievers held the weapon of criticism in his hand, and, at thefirst tentative public appearance of the young performer, could make ormar as he chose. He lived on good terms, too, with his fellow-critics, so that wire-pulling was easy--incomparably more so than were theembarrassing visits, open to any snub, which were common if one wasonly a pupil of the Conservatorium, and which, in the case of theladypupils, included costly bouquets of flowers. 

Among those who had deserted Schwarz were some, like Miss Martin, malcontents, who had flitted from place to place, and from master tomaster, in the perpetual hope of discovering that ideal teacher whowould estimate them at their true worth. These were radiantly satisfiedwith the change. Miss Martin bore, wherever she went, an octave-studyby Liszt, and flaunted it in the faces of her friends: and Miss Moses, who had been under Bendel, could not say two sentences without throwingin: "That Chopin ETUDE I studied last, " or: "The Polonaise in E flatI'm working at;" for, beforehand, she too had been a humble performerof Haydn and Bertini. James had the prospect of playing a Concerto byLiszt--forbidden fruit to the pupils of the Conservatorium--in one ofthe concerts of the LISZTVEREIN, and was sure, in advance, of beingfavourably criticised. Boehmer wished to specialise in Bach, and ifSchwarz set himself against one thing more than another, it was aone-sided musical taste: within the bounds of classicism, the masterdemanded catholic sympathies; those students who had romantic leaningstowards Chopin and Schumann, were castigated with severely classicalcompositions; and, vice versa, he had insisted on Boehmer widening hishorizon on Schubert and Mendelssohn. And there were also severalothers, who, having been dragged forward by Schwarz, from inefficientbeginnings, now left him, to write their acquired skill to Schrievers'credit. Furst was the greatest riddle of all. It was he who, onsubsequent concert-tours, was to have extended the fame of theConservatorium; he was the show pupil of the institution, and, in thecoming PRUFUNGEN, was to have distinguished himself, and his masterwith him, by playing Beethoven's Concerto in E flat. 

Other teachers besides Schwarz had been forsaken for the new-comer, butin no case by so large a body of students. They bore their lossesphilosophically. Bendel, one of the few masters who spoke English--itwas against the principles of Schwarz to know a word of it: foreignpupils had to learn his language, not he theirs--Bendel, frequentedchiefly by the American colony, was of a phlegmatic temperament and noteasily roused. He alluded to the backsliders with an ironical jest, preferring to believe that they were the losers. But Schwarz was of adiametrically opposite nature. In the short, thickset man, with theall-seeing eyes, and the head of carefully waved hair, just streakedwith grey--a head at once too massive and too fine for the clumsybody--in Schwarz, dwelt a fierce and indomitable pride. His was one ofthose moody, sensitive natures, quick to resent, always on the look-outfor offence. He was ever ready to translate things into the personal;for though he had an overweening sense of his own importance, there wasyet room in him for a secret doubt; and with this doubt, he, as itwere, put other people to the test. The loss of the flower of his flockmade him doubly unsure; he felt himself a marked man, for Bendel andother enemies to jeer at. Aloud, he spoke long and vehemently, as ifmere noisy words would heal the wound. And the pupils who had remainedfaithful to him, gathered all the more closely round him, and burned ashe did. If wishes could have injured or killed, Furst's career wouldthen and there have come to an end: his ingratitude, his treachery, andhis lack of moral fibre, were denounced on every hand. 

One day, at this time, Maurice entered Schwarz's room. The class wasassembled; but, although the hour was well advanced, no one had begunto play. The master stood at the window, with his back to thegrass-grown courtyard. He was haranguing, in a strident voice, thethree pupils who sat along the wall. From what followed, Mauricegathered that that very afternoon Schwarz had been informed of the lossof four more pupils; and though, as every one knew, he had hitherto notset much store by any of them, he now discovered latent talent in allfour, and was, at the same time, exasperated that such nonentitiesshould presume to judge him. 

To infer from the appearance of those present, the storm had raged foraconsiderable period. And still it went on. After the expiry of afurther interval, Krafft who, throughout, had sat shading his eyes withhis hand, woke as though from sleep, yawned heartily, stretched himselfand, taking out his watch, studied it with profound attention. For thefirst time, Schwarz was checked in his flow of words; he coughed, fumbled for an epithet, then stopped, and, to the general surprise, motioned Krafft to the piano. 

But Heinrich was in a bad mood. He stifled another yawn beforebeginning, and played in a mechanical way. 

Schwarz had often enough made allowance for this pupil's varying moods;he was not now in the humour to do so. 

"HALT!" he cried before the first page was turned. "What in God's nameis the meaning of this? Do you come here to read from sight?"

Krafft continued to play as if nothing had been said. 

"Do you hear me?" thundered Schwarz. 

"It's impossible, " said Krafft, and proceeded. 

"BARMHERZIGER GOTT!--" The master's short neck reddened, and twisted inits collar. 

"Give me music I care to play, and I'll show you how it should be done. I can make nothing of this, " answered Krafft. 

Schwarz strode up to the piano, and swept the volume from the rack; itfell with a crash on the keys and on Krafft's hands, and effectuallyhindered him from continuing. 

What had gone before was as a summer shower to a deluge. With his armsstiffly knotted behind his back, Schwarz paced the floor with a treadthat shook it. His steely blue eyes flashed with passion; the veinsstood out on his forehead; his large, prominent mouth gaped above histuft of beard; he struck ludicrous attitudes, pouring out, meanwhile, without stint--for he had soon passed from Krafft's particular case ofinsubordination to the general one--pouring out the savage anger anddeep-felt injury that had accumulated in him. Finally, he invited theclass to rise and leave him, there and then. For what, in God's name, were they waiting? Let them up and away, without more ado!

On receiving the volume of Beethoven on his fingers, Krafftstraightened out the pages, and taking down his hat from its peg, leftthe room, with movements of a calculated coolness. But only a pupil ofBullow's might take such a liberty; the rest had to assist quietly atthe painful scene. Maurice studied his finger nails, and Dove did notonce remove his eyes from the leg of the piano. They, at least, knewfrom experience that, in time, the storm would pass; also that itsounded worse, than it actually was. But a new-comer, a stout Bavarianlad, with hair cut like Rubinstein's, who was present at the lesson forthe first time, was pale and frightened, and sat drinking in every word. 

Towards the end of the hour, when quiet was re-established, one'sinclination was rather to escape from the room and be free, than to sitdown to play something that demanded coolness and concentration. Dove, who was not sensitive to externals, came safely through the ordeal; butMaurice made a poor job of the trio in which he had hoped to excel. Schwarz did not even offer to turn the pages. This, Beyerlein, thenew-comer, did, in a nervous desire to ingratiate himself; but he wasstill so flustered that, at a critical moment, he brought the musicdown on the keys. Schwarz said nothing; wrapped in the moody silencethat invariably followed his outbursts, he hardly seemed aware thatanyone was playing. After two movements of the trio, he signed toBeyerlein to take his turn, and proffered no comment on Maurice's work. Maurice would have hurried away, without a further word, had he notalready learned the early date of his performance. He knew, too, thatif the practical side of the affair--rehearsals with string players, and so on--was not satisfactorily arranged, he would be blamed for it. So he reminded Schwarz of the matter. From what ensued, it was plainthat the master still bore him a grudge for absconding in summer. Schwarz glared coldly at him, as if unsure to what Maurice alluded; andwhen the latter had recalled the details of the case to his mind, hesaid rudely: "You went your way, Herr Guest. Now I go mine. " Hecommenced to turn the leaves of his ponderous note-book, and afterMaurice had stood for some few minutes, listening to Beyerlein trip andstumble through Mozart, he felt that, for this day at least, he couldput up with no more, and left the class. 

III. 

Shaking all disagreeable impressions from him, he sped through thefading light of the September afternoon. 

This was the time--it was six o'clock--at which he could rejoin Louisewith a free mind. It was the exception for him to go earlier, or atother hours; but, did he chance to go, no matter when, she met him inthe same way--sprang towards him from the window, where she had beensitting or standing, with her eyes on the street. 

"I believe you watch for me all day long, " he said to her once. 

On this particular afternoon, when he had used much the same words toher, she put back her head and looked up at him, with a pale, unsmilingface. 

"Not quite, " she answered slowly. "But I have a fancy, Maurice--afoolish, fancy--that once you will come early--in the morning--and weshall have the whole day together again. Perhaps even go away somewhere. .. Before summer is quite over. "

"And I promise you, dearest, we will. Just let me get through the nextfortnight, and then I shall be freer. We'll take the train, and go backto Rochlitz, or anywhere you like. In the meantime, take more care ofyourself. You are far too pale. You will go out tomorrow, yes?--toplease me?"

But this was a request he had often made, and generally in vain. 

Since the afternoon of their return, Louise had made no further attemptto stem or alter circumstance. She accepted Maurice's absences withoutdemur. But one result was, that her feelings were hoarded up for thefew hours he passed with her: these were then a working-off of emotion;and it seemed impossible to cram enough into them, to make good thestarved remainder of the day. 

Maurice was vaguely troubled. He was himself so busy at this time, andso full of revived energy, that he could not imagine her happy, livingas she did, entirely without occupation. At first he had tried topersuade her to take up her music again; but she would not evenconsider it. To all his arguments, she made the same reply. 

"I have no real talent. With me, it was only an excuse--to get awayfrom home. "

Nor could he induce her to renew her acquaintance with people she hadknown. 

"Do you know, I once thought you didn't care a jot what people said ofyou?" It was not a very kind thing to say; it slipped out unawares. 

But she did not take it amiss. "I used not to, " she answered with herinvincible frankness. "But now--it seems--I do. "

"Why, dearest? Aren't you happy enough not to care?"

For answer, she took his face between her hands, and looked at him withsuch an ill-suppressed fire in her eyes that all he could do was todraw her into his arms. 

His pains for her good came to nothing. He took her his favouritebooks, but--with the exception of an occasional novel--Louise was noreader. In those he brought her, she seldom advanced further than thefirst few pages; and she could sit for an hour without turning a leaf. He had never seen her with a piece of sewing or any such feminineemployment in her hands. Nor did she spend time on her person; as arule, he found her in her dressing-gown. He had to give up trying toinfluence her, and to become reconciled to the fact that she chose tolive only for him. But on this September day, after the unpleasantepisode with Schwarz, he had a fancy to go for a walk; Louise wasunwilling; and he felt anew how preposterous it was for her to spendthese fine autumn days, in this half-dark room. 

"You are burying yourself alive--just as you did last winter. "

She laid her hand on his lips. "No, no!--don't say that. Now I amhappy. "

"But are you really? Sometimes I'm not sure. " He was tired himself thisevening, and found it difficult to be convinced. "It troubles me when Ithink how dull it must be for you. Dearest, are you--can you really behappy like this?"

"I have you, Maurice. "

"But only for an hour or two in the twenty-four. Tell me, what do youthink of?"

"Of you. "

"All that time? Of poor, plain, ordinary me?"

"You are mine, " she said with vehemence, and looked at him with what hecalled her "hungry-beast" eyes. 

"You would like to eat me, I think. "

"Yes. And I should begin here; this is the bit of you I love best"--andbefore he knew what she was going to do, she had stooped, and he felther teeth in the skin of his neck. 

"That's a strange way of showing your love, " he said, and involuntarilyput his hand to the spot, where two bluish-red marks had appeared. 

"It's my way. I want you--I WANT you. I want to feel that you'remine--to make you more mine than you've ever been. I wish I had ahundred arms. I would hold you with them all, and never let you go. "

"But, dearest, one would think I wanted to go. Do you really believe ifI had my own way, I should be anywhere but here with you?"

"No. --I don't know. --How should I know?"

"Doubts?--beloved!"

"No, no, not doubts. It's only--oh, I don't know what it is. If youcould always be with me, Maurice, they wouldn't come. For what I nevermeant to happen HAS happened. I have grown to care too much--far toomuch. I want you, I need you, at every moment of the day. I want younever to be out of my sight. "

Maurice held her at arm's length, and looked at her. "You can saythat--at last!" And drawing her to him: "Patience, darling. Just alittle patience. Some day you will never be alone again. "

"I do have patience, Maurice. But let me be patient in my own way. ForI'm not like you. I have no room in me now for other things. I can'tthink of anything else. If I had my way, we should shut ourselves upalone, and live only for each other. Not share it, not make it just apart of what we do. "

"But man can't live on nectar and honey alone. It wouldn't be life. "

"It wouldn't be life, no. It would be more than life. "

Some of the evening shadows seemed to invade her face. Her expressionwas childishly pathetic. He drew her to his knee. 

"I should like to see you happier, Louise--yes, yes, I know!--but Imean perfectly happy, as you were sometimes at Rochlitz. Since we cameback, it has never been just the right thing--say what you like. "

"If only we had never come back!"

"If you still think so, darling, when I've finished here, we'll go awayat once. In the meantime, patience. "

"Oh, I don't mean to be unreasonable!" But her head was on hisshoulder, his arms were round her; and in this position, nothingmattered greatly to her. 

Patience?--yes, there was need for him to exhort her to patience. Itate already into her soul as iron bands eat into flesh. The greaterpart of her life was now spent in practising it. And for sheer loathingof it, she turned over, on waking, and kept her eyes closed, in anattempt to prolong the night. For the day stretched empty before her;the hours passed, one by one, like grey-veiled ghosts. Yet not for amoment had she harboured his idea of regular occupation; she knewherself too well for that. In the fever into which her blood had workeditself she could settle to nothing: her attention was centred wholly inherself; and all her senses were preternaturally acute. But shesuffered, too, under the stress of her feeling; it blunted her, andmade her, on the one hand, regardless of everything outside it, on theother, morbidly sensitive to trifles. She waited for him, hour afterhour, crouched in a corner of the sofa, or stretched at full length, with closed eyes. 

Long before it was time for him to come, she was stationed at thewindow. She learned to know the people who appeared in the streetbetween the hours of four and six so accurately that she could havedescribed them blindfold. There was the oldfaced little girl whodelivered milk; there was the postman who emptied into his canvasreceptacle, the blue letter-box affixed to the opposite wall; thestudent with the gashed face and red cap, who lived a couple of doorsfurther down, and always whistled the same tune; the big Newfoundlanddog that stalked majestically at his side, and answered to the name ofTasso--she knew them all. These two last hours were weighted with lead. He came, sometimes a poor half-hour too soon, but usually not till pastsix o'clock. Never, in her life, had she waited for anyone like this, and, towards the end of the time, a sense of injury, of more thanmortal endurance, would steal through her and dull her heart towardshim, in a way that frightened her. 

When, at length, she saw him turn the corner, when she had caught andanswered his swift upward glance, she drew back into the shadow of theroom, and hid her face in her hands. 

Then she listened. 

He had the key of the little papered door in the wall. Between thesound of his step on the stair, and the turning of the key in the lock, there was time for her to undergo a moment of suspense that drove herhand to her throat. What if, after the tension of the afternoon, herheart, her nerves--parts of her over which she had no control--shouldnot take their customary bound towards him? What if her pulses shouldnot answer his? But before she could think her thought to the end, hewas there; and when she saw his kind eyes alight, his eager handsoutstretched, her nervous fears were vanquished. Maurice hardly gavehimself time to shut the door, before catching her to him in a longembrace. And yet, though she did not suspect it, he, too, had a twingeof uncertainty on entering. Her bodily presence still affected him witha sense of strangeness--it took him a moment to get used to her again, as it were--and he was forced to reassure himself that nothing hadchanged during his absence, that she was still all his own. 

When the agitation of these first, few, speechless minutes hadsubsided, a great tenderness seized Louise; freeing one hand, shesmoothed back his hair from his forehead, with movements each of whichwas a caress. As for him, his first impetuous rush of feeling wasinvariably followed by an almost morbid pity for her, which, in thisform, was a new note in their relation to each other, or a harking backto the oldest note of all. When he considered how dependent she was onhim, how her one desire was to have him with her, he felt that he couldnever repay her or do enough for her: and, whatever his own state ofmind previous to coming, when once he was there, he exerted himself tothe utmost, to cheer her. It was always she who needed consolation;and, by means of his endearments, she was petted back to happiness likea tired child. 

In his efforts to take her out of herself, Maurice told her how he hadspent the day: where he had been, and whom he had met--every detailthat he thought might interest her. She listened, in grateful silence, but she never put a question. This at an end, he returned once more, ina kind of eternal circle, to the one subject of which she neverwearied. He might repeat, for the thousandth time, how dear she was tohim, without the least fear that the story would grow stale in thetelling. 

And once here, amidst the deep tenderness of his words, he felt herslowly come to life again, and unfold like a flower. After the long, dead day, Louise was consumed by a desire to drain such moments asthese to the dregs. She did not let a word of his pass unchallenged, and all that she herself said, was an attempt to discover some spasm ofmental ecstasy, which they had not yet experienced. Sometimes, thefeeling grew so strong that it forced her to give an outward sign. Slipping to her knees, she gazed at him with the eyes of a faithfulanimal. "What have I done to make you look at me like that?" askedMaurice, amazed. 

"What can I do to show you how I love you? Tell me what I can do. "

"Do?--what do you want to do? Be your own dear self--that's all, andmore than enough. "

But she continued to look beseechingly at him, waiting for the wordthat might be the word of her salvation. 

"Haven't you done enough already, in giving yourself to me?" he asked, seeing how she hung on his lips. 

But she repeated: "What can I do? Let me do something. Oh, I wish youwould hurt me, or be unkind to me!"

He tried to make her understand that he wished for no such humbleadoration, that, indeed, he could not be happy under it. If either wasto serve the other, it was he; he asked nothing better than to put hishands under her feet. But he could neither coax her nor laugh her outof her absorption: she had the will to self-abasement; and she remainedunsatisfied, waiting for the word he would not speak. 

Once or twice, during these weeks, they went out in the evening, and, in the corner of some quiet restaurant, took a festive little meal. But, for the most part, she preferred to stay at home. She was notdressed, she said, or she was tired, or it was too hot, or it hadrained. And Maurice did not urge her; for, on the last occasion, theevening had been spoiled for him by the conduct of some people at aneighbouring table; they had stared at Louise, and whispered remarksabout her. At home, she herself prepared the supper, moving indolentlyabout the room, her dressing-gown dragging after her, from table tocupboard, and back again, often with a pause at his side, in which sheforgot what she had set out for. Maurice disputed each trifling servicewith her; he could only think of Louise as made to be waited on, slowto serve herself. 

"Let me do it, dearest. "

She had risen anew to fetch something. Now she stood beside him, andput her arms round his neck. 

"What can I do for you? Tell me what I can do, " she said, and crushedhis head against her breast. 

He loosened her fingers, and drew her to his knee. "What do you want meto say, dear discontent? Do?--you were never meant to do anything inthis world. Your hands were made to lie one on top of the other. .. So!Look at them! Most white and most useless!"

"There are things not made with hands, " she answered obscurely. She lethim do what he liked; but she kept her face turned away; and over hereyes passed a faint shadow of resignation. 

But this mood also was a transient one; hours followed, when she nolonger sought and questioned, but when she gave, recklessly, in a wildendeavour to lose the sense of twofold being. And before theseoutbreaks, the young man was helpless. His past life, and suchexperience as he had gathered in it, grew fantastic and unreal, mightall have belonged to some one else: the sole reality in a world ofshadows was this soft human body that he held in his arms. 

Point by point, however, each of which wounded, consciousness foughtitself free again. Such violent extremes of emotion were, in truth, contrary to his nature. They made him unsure. And, as the pendulumswung back, something vital in him made protest. 

"Sometimes, it seems as if there were something else . .. Somethingthat's not love at all . .. More like hate--yes, as if you hated me . .. Would like to kill me. "

Her whole body was moved by the sigh she drew. 

"If I only could! Then I should know that you were mine indeed. "

"Is it possible for me to be more yours than I am?"

"Part of you would never be mine, though we spent all our livestogether. "

He roused himself from his lethargy. "How can you say that?--And yet Ithink I know what you mean. It's like a kind of rage that comes overone--Yes, I've felt it, too. Listen, darling!--there are things onecan't say in daylight. I, too, have felt . .. Sometimes . .. That inspite of all my love for you--I mean our love for each other--yet therewas still something, a part of you, I had no power over. The real youis something--some one I don't really know in spite of all the kisses. Yes"--and the more he tried to find words for what he meant, the moreconvinced he grew of its truth. "Nothing keeps us apart; you love me, are here in my arms, and yet . .. Yet there's a bit of you I can'tinfluence--that is still strange to me. How often I have to ask you whyyou look at me in a certain way, or what you are thinking of! I neverknow your thoughts; I've never once been able to read them; you alwayskeep something back. --Why is it, dear? Is it my fault? If I could justonce get at your real self--if I knew that once, only once, in allthese weeks, you had been mine--every bit of you--then . .. Yes, then, Ibelieve I would be satisfied to . .. To--I don't know what!"

He had spoken in an even, monotonous voice, almost more to himself thanto her. Now, however, he was forced to the opposite extreme of anxioussolicitude. "No, no, I didn't really mean it. Darling! . .. Hush!--don'tcry like that. I didn't know what I was saying; it isn't true, not aword of it. "

She had flung herself across him; her own elemental weeping shook herfrom head to foot. He realised, for the first time, the depth andstrength of it, now that it, as it were, went through him, too. Gathering her to him, he made wild and foolish promises. But nothingsoothed her: she wept on, until the dawn crept in, thinly grey, roundthe windows. But when it grew so light that the objects in the roomwere recovering their form, she fell asleep, and he hardly dared tobreathe, for fear of disturbing her. 

By day, the sensations he had tried to express to her seemed thefigments of the night. He needed only to be absent from her to feel theold restlessness tug at his heart-strings. At such moments, it seemedto him ridiculous to torment himself about an infinitesimal flaw intheir love, and one which perhaps existed only in his imagination. Tobe with her again was his sole desire; and to feel her cheek on his, tobe free to run his hands through her exciting hair, belonged, when hewas separated from her, to that small category of things for which hewould have bartered his soul. 

One evening, towards the end of September, Louise watched for him atthe window. It had been a warm autumn day, rich in varying lights andshades. Now it was late, nearly half-past six, and still he had notcome: her eyes were tired with staring down the street. 

When at last he appeared, she saw that that he was carrying flowers. Her heart, which, at the sight of him, had set up a glad and violentbeating, settled down again at once, to its normal course. She knewwhat the flowers meant: in a spirit of candour, which had somethingdisarming in it, he invariably brought them when he could not stay longwith her; and she had learned to dread seeing them in his hand. 

In very truth, he was barely inside the room before he told her that hecould only stay for an hour. He was to play his trio the followingevening, and now, at the last moment, the 'cellist had been taken ill. He had spent the greater part of the afternoon looking for asubstitute, and having found one, had still to interview him again, tolet him know the time at which Schwarz had appointed an extra rehearsalfor the next day. 

Maurice had mentioned more than once the date of his playing; but ithad never seemed more to Louise than a disturbing outside fact, to beput out of mind or kissed away. She had forgotten all about it, and theknowledge of this overcame her disappointment; she tried to atone, bybeing reasonable. Maurice had steeled himself against pleadings anddespondency, and was grateful to her for making things easy. He wishedto outdo himself in tender encouragement; but she remained evasive: andsince, in spite of himself, he could not hinder his thoughts fromslipping forward to the coming evening, he, too, had moments ofpreoccupied silence. 

When the clock struck eight, he rose to go. In saying goodnight, heturned her face up, and asked her had she decided if she were coming tohear him play. 

It was on her direct lips to reply that she had not thought anythingabout it. A glance at his face checked her. He was waiting anxiouslyfor her answer: it was a matter of importance to him. Her previoussense of remissness was still with her, hampering her, making herunfree; and for a minute she did not know what to say. 

"Would you mind much if I asked you not to come?" he said as shehesitated. 

"No, of course not, " she hastened to respond, glad to be relieved ofthe decision. "If you would rather I didn't. "

"It's a fancy of mine, dearest--foolish, I know--that I shall get onbetter if you're not there. "

"It's all right. I understand. "

When he had gone, she returned to her place at the window. It was afine night: there was no moon; but the stars glittered furiously in theinky-blue sky, a stretch of which was visible above the gardens. Thevastness of the night, the distance of sky and stars, made her shiver. Leaning her wrists on the cold, moist sill, she looked down into thestreet; it was not very far; but a jump from where she was, to thepavement, would suffice to put an end to every feeling. She was verylonely; no one wanted her. Here she might stand, at this forlorn post, for hours, for the whole night; no one would either know or care. --Andher feeling of error, of unfreedom and desolation grew so hard to bearthat, for fear she should actually throw herself down, she banged thewindow to, with a crash that resounded through the street. 

But there was something else at work in her to-night, which she couldnot understand. She struggled with it, as one struggles with aforgotten melody, which hovers behind the consciousness, and will notemerge. 

Except for the light thrown by a small lamp, the room was in shadow. She went slowly back to the sofa. On the way she trod on the roses;they had been knocked down and forgotten. She picked them up, and laidthem on the cushioned seat beside her. They were dark crimson, and gaveout a strong scent: Maurice had seldom brought her such beautifulroses. She sat with her elbows on her knees, her hands closed andpressed to her cheeks, as though she could only think with her musclesat a strain. In memory, she went over what he had said, reflected onwhat his words meant, and strove, honestly, to project herself intothat part of his life, of which she knew nothing. But it was not easy;for one thing, the smell of the roses was too strong; it seemed tohinder her imagination. They had the scent that only deep red roseshave--one which seems to come from a distance, from the very heart ofcool, pure things--and more and more, she felt as if something withinher were trying to find vent in it, something that swelled up, subsided, and mounted again, with what was almost a physical effort. Ithad been the truth when she told him that she understood; but it hadtouched her strangely all the same: for it had let her see into anunsuspected corner of his nature. He, too, then, had a cranny in hisbrain, where such fancies lodged--such an eccentric, artist fancy, orwhim, or superstition--as that, out of several hundred people, a singleindividual could distract and disturb. He . .. Too!

The little word had done it. Now she knew--knew what the roses had beentrying to tell her. And as if invisible hands had touched a spring inher brain, thereby opening some secret place, the memory of a certainhour returned to her, returned with such force that she fell on herknees, and pressed her face to the seat of the sofa. On the floorbeside her lay the roses. Why, oh why, had he needed to bring them toher, on this night of all others?

On the day she remembered, they had been lavished over the room-oneJune evening, two years ago. And ever afterwards, the scent ofblood-red roses had been associated for her with one of the sweet, leading themes in Beethoven's violin concerto. There was a specialconcert that night at the Conservatorium; the hall was filled to thelast place. She waited with him in the green-room, until his turn cameto play. Then she went into the hall, and stood at the back, under thegallery. Once more, she was aware of the stir that ran through theaudience, as Schilsky walked down the platform. Hardly, however, had hedrawn his bow across the strings, when she felt a touch on her arm, anda Russian, who was an intimate friend of his, beckoned her outside. There, he told her that he had been sent to ask her to leave the hall;and they smiled at each other, in understanding of the whim. Afterwards, she learned how, just about to step on to the platform, Schilsky had had a presentiment that things would go wrong if sheremained inside. In his gratitude, and in the boyish exultation withwhich success filled him, he had collected all the roses, and wantonlypulled them to pieces. Red petals fell like flakes of red snow; and, crushed and bruised, the fragile leaves had yielded a scent, tenfoldincreased. 

While it lasted, the vision was painfully intense: on returning toherself, she was obliged to look round and think where she was. Thelamp burned steadily; the dull room was just as she had left it. With acry, she buried her face in the cushions again, and held her hands toher ears. 

More, more, and more again! She was as hungry for these memories as achild for dainties. She was starved for them. And now, dead to thepresent, she relived the past happy hours of triumph and excitement, not one of which had hung heavy, in each of which her craving forsensation had been stilled. She saw herself as she had then been, proud, secure, unspeakably content. Forgotten words rang in her ears, words of love and of anger, words that were like ointment and likeknives. Then, not a day had been empty or tedious; life was alwayshighly coloured, and there was neither pleasure nor pain that she hadnot tasted to the full. Even the suffering she had gone through, forhis sake, was no longer hateful to her. Anything--anything rather thanthis dead level of monotony on which she had fallen. 

When, finally, she raised her head, she might, for all she knew, havebeen absent for days. Things had lost their familiar aspect; she hadonce more lived right through the great experience of her life. Puttingher hands to her forehead, she tried to force her thoughts back toreality. Then, stiffly, she rose from her knees. In doing so, shetouched the roses. With a gesture that was her real awakening, shecaught them up and pressed them to her face. It was a satisfaction toher that fingers and cheeks were pricked by their thorns. She wasconscious of wishing to hurt herself. With her lips on the cool buds, she stammered broken words: "Maurice--my poor Maurice!" and kissed theflowers, feeling as if, in some occult way, he would be aware of herkisses, of the love she was thus expending on him. 

For, in a sudden revulsion of feeling, she was sensible of a greatcompassion for him; and with each pressure of her lips to the roses, she implored his forgiveness for her unpremeditated desertion. Shecalled to mind his tenderness, his unceasing care of her, and, closingher eyes, stretched out her arms to him, in the empty room. Already shebegan to live for the following evening, when he would come again. Now, only to sleep through as many as she could of the hours that separatedthem! She would be to him the next night, what she had never yet been:his own rival in fondness. And as a beginning, she crossed the room, and put the fading roses in a pitcher of water. 

IV. 

Towards seven o'clock the following evening, Maurice loitered about thevestibule of the Conservatorium. In spite of his attempt to timehimself, he had arrived too early, and his predecessor on the programmehad still to play two movements of a sonata by Beethoven. 

As he stood there, Madeleine entered by the street-door. 

"Is that you?" she asked, in the ironical tone she now habitually usedto him. "You look just as if you were posing for the John in a RubensCrucifixion. --Feel shaky? No? You ought to, you know. One plays all thebetter for it. --Well, good luck to you! I'll hold my thumbs. "

He went along the passage to the little green-room, at the heels of hisstring-players. On seeing them go by, it had occurred to him that hemight draw their attention to a passage in the VARIATIONS, with whichhe had not been satisfied at rehearsal that day. But when he caughtthem up, they were so deep in talk that he hesitated to interrupt. The'cellist, a greasy, little fellow with a mop of touzled hair, wasrelating an adventure he had had the night before. His droll way oftelling it was more amusing than the long-winded story, and he himselfwas more tickled by it than was the violinist, a lanky German-Americanboy, with oily black hair and a pimpled face. Throughout, both tunedtheir instruments assiduously, with that air of inattention common tostring-players. 

Meanwhile, the sonata by Beethoven ran its course. While thestory-teller still smacked his lips, it came to an end, and theperformer, a tall, Polish girl, with a long, sallow, bird-like neck, round which was wound a piece of black velvet, descended the steps. Behind her was heard the applause of many hands. As this showed no signof ceasing, Schwarz, who had come out of the hall by a lower door, badeher return and bow her thanks. At his words, the girl burst into tears. 

"NA, NA, NA!" he said soothingly. "What's all this about? You didexcellently. "

She seized his hand and clung to it. The 'cellist ran to fetch water;the other two young men were embarrassed, and looked away. 

Here, however, several friends burst into the room, and bore FrauleinPrybowski off. Schwarz gave the signal, the stringplayers picked uptheir instruments, and the little procession, with Maurice at its head, mounted the steps to the platform. 

Although before an audience for the first time in his life, Maurice hadnever felt more composed. Passing by the organ, and the empty seats ofthe orchestra, he descended to the front of the platform, where twogrand pianos stood side by side; and, as he went, he noted that thehall was exceptionally well filled. He let down the lid of the piano tothe peg for chambermusic; he lowered the piano-chair, and flicked thekeys with his handkerchief. And Schwarz, sitting by him, to turn thepages of the music, felt so sure of this pupil's coolness that heyawned, and stroked the insides of his trouser-legs. 

Maurice was just ready for the start, when the 'cellist, who wasrestless, discovered that the stand which had been placed for him wasinsecure; rising from his scat, he went to fetch another from the backof the platform. In the delay that ensued, Maurice looked round at theaudience. He saw innumerable heads and faces, all turned expectantlytowards him, like lines of globular fruits. His eye rangedindifferently over the occupants of the front seats--strange faces, which told him nothing--until his attention was arrested by a facealmost directly beneath him, in the second row. For the flash of asecond, he thought he knew the person to whom it belonged, andstruggled to recall a name. Then, almost as swiftly, he dismissed theidea. It was, however, a face of that kind which, once seen, is neverforgotten--a frog-like face, with protruding eyes, and the frog'sexpressive leer. Somewhere, not very long ago, this face had beenbefore him, and had stared at him in the same disconcerting manner--butwhere? when? In the few seconds that remained, his brain workedfuriously, sped back in desperate haste over all the likely placeswhere he might have seen it. And a restaurant evolved itself; a tablein a secluded corner; chrysanthemums and their acrid scent; a screen, round which this repulsive face had peered. It had fixed them both, with such malevolence that it had destroyed his pleasure, and he hadpersuaded Louise to go home. His memory was now so alert that he couldrecall the man's two companions as well. 

The scene built itself up with inconceivable rapidity. And while he wasstill absorbed by it, Schwarz raised a decisive hand. It was the signalto begin; he obeyed unthinkingly; and was at the bottom of the firstpage before he knew it. 

Throughout the whole of the opening movement, he was not rightly awaketo what he was doing. His fingers, like well-drilled soldiers, wentautomatically through their work, neither blundering nor forgetting;but the mind which should have controlled them was unable toconcentrate itself: he heard himself play as though he were listeningto some one else. He was only roused by the burst of applause thatsucceeded the final chords. As he struck the first notes of the ANDANTEWITH VARIATIONS, he nerved himself for an effort; but now, as if itwere the result of his previous inattention, an odd uneasiness besethim; and his beginning to weigh each note as he played it, his fingershesitated and grew less sure. Having failed, through over-care, in therounding of a turn, he resolved to let things go as they would, and histhoughts wander at will. The movements of the trio succeeded oneanother; the VARIATIONS ceased, and were followed by the crisp gaietyof the MINUET. The lights above his head were reflected in the shiningebony of the piano; regularly, every moment or two, he was struck bythe appearance of Schwarz's broad, fat hand, which crossed his range ofvision to turn a leaf; he meditated absently on a sharp uplifting ofthis hand that occurred, as though the master were dissatisfied withthe rhythm--the 'cellist's fault, no doubt: he had been inexact atrehearsal, and, this evening, was too much taken up with his ownwitticisms beforehand, to think about what he had to do. And thus thefour divisions of the trio slipped past, separated by a disturbingnoise of hands, which continued to seem as unreal to Maurice aseverything else. Only as the last notes of the PRESTISSIMO died away, in the disappointing, ineffectual scales in C major, with which thetrio closed--not till then did he grasp that the event to which he hadlooked forward for many weeks was behind him, and also that no onepresent knew less of how it had passed off than he himself. 

With his music in his hand, he turned to Schwarz, to learn what successhe had had, from the master's face. According to custom, Schwarz shookhands with him; he also nodded, but he did not smile. He was, however, in a hurry; the old: white-haired director had left his seat, and stoodwaiting to speak to him. Both 'cellist and violinist had vanished onthe instant; the audience, eager as ever at the end of a concert toshake off an imposed restraint, had risen while Maurice still playedthe final notes; and, by this time, the hall was all but empty. 

He slowly ascended the platform. Now that it was over, he felt howtired he was; his very legs were tired, as though he had walked formiles. The green-room was deserted; the gas-jet had been screwed downto a peep. None of his friends had come to say a word to him. He hadreally hardly expected it; but, all the same, a hope had lurked in himthat Krafft would perhaps afterwards make some sign--even Madeleine. As, however, neither of them appeared, he seemed to read a confirmationof his failure in their absence, and he loitered for some time in thesemi-darkness, unwilling to face the dispersing crowd. When at lengthhe went down the passage, only a few stragglers remained. One or twoacquaintances congratulated him in due form, but he knew neither wellenough to try to get at the truth. As he was nearing the street-door, however, Dove came out of the BUREAU. He made for Maurice at once; hismanner was eager, his face bore the imprint of interesting news. 

"I say, Guest!" he cried, while still some way off. "An oddcoincidence. Young Leumann is to play this very same trio next week. Alittle chap in knickerbockers, you know--pupils of Rendel's. He is saidto have a glorious LEGATO--just the very thing for the VARIATIONS. "

"Indeed?" said Maurice with a well-emphasised dryness. His tone nudgedDove's memory. 

"By the way, all congratulations, of course, " he hastened to add. "Never heard you play better. Especially the MENUETTO. Some peoplesitting behind me were reminded of Rubinstein. "

"Well, good-night, I'm off, " said Maurice, and, even as he spoke, heshot away, leaving his companion in some surprise. 

Once out of Dove's sight, he took off his hat and passed his hand overhis forehead. Any slender hope he might have had was now crushed; hisplaying had been so little remarkable that even Dove had been on thepoint of overlooking it altogether. 

Louise threw herself into his arms. At last! she exulted to herself. But his greeting had not its usual fervour; instead of kissing her, helaid his face against her hair. Instantly, she became uncertain. Shedid not quite know what she had been expecting; perhaps it had beensomething of the old, pleasurable excitement that she had learnt toassociate with an occasion like the present. She put back her head andlooked at him, and her look was a question. 

"Yes. At least it's over, thank goodness!" he said in reply. 

Not knowing what answer to make to this, she led him to the sofa. Theysat down, and, for a few minutes, neither spoke. Then, he did what onthe way there, he had imagined himself doing: laid his head on her lap, and himself placed her hands on his hair. She passed them backwards andforwards; her sense of having been repulsed, yielded, and she tried tochange the current of his thoughts. 

"Did you notice, Maurice, as you came along, how full the air was ofdifferent scents to-night?" she asked as her cool hands went to andfro. "It was like an evening in July. I was at the window trying tomake them out. But the roses were too strong for them; for you see--orrather you have not seen--all the roses I have got for you--yes, justdark red roses. This afternoon I went to the little shop at the corner, and bought all they had. The pretty girl served me--do you remember thepretty girl with the yellow hair, who tried to make friends with youlast summer? You like roses, too, don't you? Though not as much as Ido. They were always my favourite flowers. As a child, I used toimagine what it would be like to gather them for a whole day, withoutstopping. But, like all my wishes then, this had to be postponed, too, till that wonderful future, which was to bring me all I wanted. Therewere only a few bushes where I lived; it was too dry for them. But thesmell of them takes me back--always. I have only to shut my eyes, and Iam full of the old extravagant longings--the childish impatience withtime, which seemed to crawl so slowly . .. Even to stand still. "

"Tell me all about it, " he murmured, without raising his head. 

She smiled and humoured him. 

"I like flowers best for their scents, " she went on. "No matter whatbeautiful colours they have. A camelia is a foolish flower; like ablind man's face--the chief thing is wanting. But then, of course, thesmell must remind one of pleasant things. It's strange, isn't it, howmuch association has to do with pleasure?--or pain. Some things affectme so strongly that they make me wretched. There's music I can't listento; I have to put my hands to my ears, and run away from it; and allbecause it takes me back to an unhappy hour, or to a time of my lifethat I hated. There are streets I never walk through, even words Idread to hear anyone say, because they are connected with some one Idisliked, or a day I would rather not have lived. And it is just thesame with smells. Wood smouldering outside!--and all the country roundis smoky with bush fires. Mimosa in the room--and I can feel the sunbeating down on deserted shafts and the stillness of the bush. Rottingleaves and the smell of moist earth, and I am a little girl again, inshort dresses, standing by a grave--my father's to which I was drivenin a high buggy, between two men in black coats. I can't remembercrying at all, or even feeling sorry; I only smelt the earth--it was inthe rainy season and there was water in the grave. --But flowers give memy pleasantest memories. Passion-flowers and periwinkles--you will saythey have no smell, but it's not true. Flat, open passionflowers--redor white--with purplish-fringed centres, have a honey-smell, and makeme think of long, hot, cloudless days, which seemed to have neitherbeginning nor end. And little periwinkles have a cool green smell; forthey grew along an old paling fence, which was shady and sometimes evendamp. And violets? I never really cared for violets; not till . .. Imean . .. I never . .. "

She had entangled herself, and broke off so abruptly that he moved. Hewas afraid this soothing flow of words was going to cease. 

"Yes, yes, go on, tell me some more--about violets. "

She hastened to recover herself. "They are silly little flowers. Madeto wither in one's dress . .. Or to be crushed. Unless one could havethem in such masses that they filled the room. But lilac, Maurice, great sprays and bunches of lilac-white and purple--you know, don'tyou, who will always be associated with lilac for me? Do you remembersome of those evenings at the theatre, on the balcony between the acts?The gallery was so hot, and out there it seemed as if the whole townwere steeped in lilac. Or walking home--those glorious nights--whensome one was so silent . .. So moody--do you remember?"

At the peculiar veiled tone that had come into her voice; at thisreminder of a past day of alternate rapture and despair, so differentfrom the secured happiness of the present; at the thought of thiscommon memory that had built itself up for them round a flower's scent, a rush of grateful content overcame Maurice, and, for the first timesince entering the room, he looked up at her with a lover's eyes. 

Safe, with her arms round him, he was strong enough to face the worst. "How good you are to me, dearest! And I don't deserve it. To-night, youmight just have sent me away again, when I came. For I was in adisagreeable mood--and still am. But you won't give me up just yet forall that, will you? However despondent I get about myself? For you areall I have, Louise--in the whole world. Yes, I may as well confess itto you, to-night was a failure--not a noisy, open one but all the same, it's no use calling it anything else. "

He had laid his head on her lap again, so did not see her face. Whilehe spoke, Louise looked at him, in a kind of unwilling surprise. Instinctively, she ceased to pass her hands over his hair. 

"Oh, no, Maurice, " she then protested, but weakly, without conviction. 

"Yes--failure, " he repeated, and put more emphasis than before on theword. "It's no good beating about the bush. --And do you realise whatit--what failure means for us, Louise?"

"Oh, no, " she said again, vaguely trying to ward off what she foresawwas coming. "And why talk about it to-night? You are tired. Things willseem different in the morning. Shut your eyes again, and lie quitestill. "

But, the ice once broken, he felt the need of speaking--of speaking outrelentlessly all that was in him. And, as he talked, he found itimpossible to keep still; he paced the room. He was very pale and veryvoluble, and made a clean breast of everything that troubled him; notso much, however, with the idea of confessing it to her, as of easinghis own mind. And now, again, he let her see into his real self, and, unlike the previous occasion, it was here more than a glimpse that shecaught. He was distressingly frank with her. She heard now, for thefirst time, of the foolish ambitions with which he had begun hisstudies in Leipzig; heard of their gradual subsidence, and his humbleacceptance of his inferiority, as well as of his present fear that, when his time came to an end, he would have nothing to show for it--andunder the influence of what had just happened, this fear grew morevivid. It was one thing, he made clear to her, and unpleasant enough atbest, to have to find yourself to rights as a mediocrity, when you hadhoped with all your heart that you were something more. But what if, having staked everything on it, you should discover that you hadmistaken your calling altogether?

"To-night, you see, I think I should have been a better chimney-sweep. The real something that makes the musician--even the genuinely musicaloutsider--is wanting in me. I've learnt to see that, by degrees, thoughI don't know in the least what it is. --But even suppose I weremistaken--who could tell me that I was? One's friends are only too gladto avoid giving a downright opinion, and then, too, which of them wouldone care to trust? I believe in the end I shall go straight to Schwarz, and get him to tell me what he thinks of me--whether I'm making a foolof myself or not. "

"Oh, I wouldn't do that, " Louise said quickly. 

It was the first time she had interrupted him. She had sat and followedhis restless movements with a look of apprehension. A certain board inthe floor creaked when he trod on it, and she found herself listening, each time, for the creaking of this board. She was sorry for him, butshe could not attach the importance he did to his assumed want ofsuccess, nor was she able to subdue the feeling of distaste with whichhis doubtings inspired her. It was so necessary, too, this outpouring;she had never felt curious about the side of his nature which was notthe lover's side. Tonight, it became clear to her that she would havepreferred to remain in ignorance of it. And besides, what he said wasso palpable, so undeniable, that she could not understand his draggingthe matter to the surface: she had never thought of him but as one ofthe many honest workers, who swell the majority, and are not destinedto rise above the crowd. She had not dreamed of his considering himselfin another light, and it was painful to her now, to find that he haddone so. To put an end to such embarrassing confidences, she went overto him, and, with her hands on his shoulders, her face upturned, saidall the consoling words she could think of, to make him forget. Theyhad never yet failed in their effect. But to-night too much was at workin Maurice, for him to be influenced by them. He kissed her, andtouched her cheek with his hand, then began anew; and she moved away, with a slight impatience, which she did not try to conceal. 

"You brood too much, Maurice . .. And you exaggerate things, too. Whatif every one took himself so seriously?--and talked of failure becauseon a single occasion he didn't do himself justice?"

"It's more than that with me, dear. --But it's a bad habit, I know--notthat I really mean to take myself too seriously; but all my life I havebeen forced to worry about things, and to turn them over. "

"It's unhealthy always to be looking into yourself. Let things go more, and they'll carry you with them. "

He took her hands. "What wise-sounding words! And I'm in the wrong, Iknow, as usual. But, in this case, it's impossible not to worry. Whathappened this evening seems a trifle to you, and no doubt would toevery one else, too. But I had made a kind of touchstone of it; it wasto help to decide the future--that hideously uncertain future of ours!I believe now, as far as I'm concerned, I don't care whether I evercome to anything or not. Of course, I should rather have been asuccess--we all would!--but caring for you has swallowed up theridiculous notions I once had. For your sake--it's you I torment myselfabout. WHAT is to become of us?"

"If that's all, Maurice! Something will turn up, I'm sure it will. Havea little patience, and faith in luck . .. Or fate . .. Or whatever youlike to call it. "

"That's a woman's way of looking at things. "

He was conscious of speaking somewhat unkindly; but he was hurt by herlack of sympathy. Instead, however, of smoothing things over, he wasimpelled, by an unconquerable impulse, to disclose himself stillfurther. "Besides, that's not all, " he said, and avoided her eyes. "There's something else, and I may just as well make a clean breast ofit. It's not only that the future is every bit as shadowy to-night asit has always been: I haven't advanced it by an inch. But I feelto-night that if I could have been what I once hoped to be--no, howshall I put it? You know, dear, from the very beginning there has beensomething wrong, a kind of barrier between us hasn't there? How oftenI've tried to find out what it is! Well, to-night I seem to know. If Iwere not such an out-and-out mediocrity, if I had really been able toachieve something, you would care for me--yes, that's it!--as you can'tpossibly care now. You would have to; you wouldn't be able to helpyourself. "

Her first impulsive denial died on her lips; as he continued to speak, she seemed to feel in his words an intention to wound her, or, atleast, to accuse her of want of love. When she spoke, it was in a coolvoice, as though she were on her guard against being touched too deeply. 

"That has nothing whatever to do with it, " she said. "It's youyourself, Maurice, I care for--not what you can or can't do. "

But these words added fuel to his despondency. "Yes, that's just it, "he answered. "For you, I'm in two parts, and one of them means nothingto you. I've felt it, often enough, though I've never spoken of it tillto-night. Only one side of me really matters to you. But if I'd beenable to accomplish what I once intended--to make a name for myself, orsomething of that sort--then it would all have been different. I couldhave forced you to be interested in every single thing I did--not onlyin the me that loves you, but in every jot of my outside life as well. "

Louise did not reply: she had a moment of genuine despondency. Thestaunch tenderness she had been resolved to feel for him this evening, collapsed and shrivelled up; for the morbid self-probing in which hewas indulging made her see him with other eyes. What he said belongedto that category of things which are too true to be put into words: whycould not he, like every one else, let them rest, and act as if theydid not exist? It was as clear as day: if he were different, the wholestory of their relations would be different, too. But as he could notchange his nature, what was the use of talking about it, and of turningout to her gaze, traits of mind with which she could not possiblysympathise? Standing, a long white figure, beside the piano, she lether arms hang weakly at her sides. She did not try to reason with himagain, or even to comfort him; she let him go on and on, always in thesame strain, till her nerves suddenly rebelled at the needlessirritation. 

"Oh, WHY must you be like this to-night?" she broke in on him. "Why tryto destroy such happiness as we have? Can you never be content?"

From the way in which he seized upon these words, it seemed as if hehad only been waiting for her to say them. "Such happiness as we have!"he repeated. "There!--listen!--you yourself admit it. Admit all I'vebeen saying. --And do you think I can realise that, and be happy? No, I've suffered under it from the first day. Oh, why, loving you as I do, could I not have been different?--more worthy of you. Why couldn't I, too, be one of those favoured mortals . .. ? Listen to me, " he saidlowering his voice, and speaking rapidly. "Let me make anotherconfession. Do you know why to-night is doubly hard to bear? It'sbecause--yes, because I know you must be forced--and not to-night only, but often--to compare me what I am and what I can do--with . .. With . .. You know who I mean. It's inevitable--the comparison must be thrust onyou every day of your life. But does that, do you think, make it anythe easier for me?"

As the gist of what he was trying to say was borne in upon her, Louisewinced. Her face lost its tired expression, and grew hard. "You arebreaking your word, " she said, in a tone she had never before used tohim. "You promised me once, the past should never be mentioned betweenus. "

"I'm not blind, Louise, " he went on, as though she had not spoken. "Noram I in a mood to-night to make myself any illusions. The remembranceof what he was--he was never doubtful of himself, was he?--mustalways--HAS always stood between us, while I have racked my brains todiscover what it was. To-night it came over me like a flash that it washe--that he . .. He spoiled you utterly for anyone else; made itimpossible for you to care for anyone who wasn't made of the same stuffas he was. It would never have occurred to him, would it, to tormentyou and make you suffer for his own failure? For the very good reasonthat he never was a failure. Oh, I haven't the least doubt what a sorryfigure I must cut beside him!"

The unhappy words came out slowly, and seemed to linger in the air. Louise did not break the pause that followed, and by her silence, assented to what he said. She still stood motionless beside the piano. 

"Or tell me, " Maurice cried abruptly, with a ray of hope; "tell me thetruth about it all, for once. Was it mere exaggeration, or was hereally worth so much more than all the rest of us? Of course he couldplay--I know that--but so can many a fool. But all the other part ofit--his incredible talent, or luck in everything he touched--was itjust report, or was it really something else?--Tell me. "

"He was a genius, " she answered, very coldly and distinctly; and hervoice warned him once more that he was trespassing on ground to whichhe had no right. But he was too excited to take the warning. 

"A genius!" he echoed. "He was a genius! Yes, what did I tell you? Yourvery words imply a comparison as you say them. For I?--what am I? Amiserable bungler, a wretched dilettant--or have you another word forit? Oh, never mind--don't be afraid to say it!--I'm not sensitivetonight. I can bear to hear your real opinion of me; for it could notpossibly be lower than my own. Let us get at the truth for once, by allmeans!--But what I want to know, " he cried a moment later, "is, why oneshould be given so much and the other so little. To one all the talentsand all your love; and the other unhappy wretch remains an outsider hiswhole life long. When you speak in that tone about him, I could wishwith all my heart that he had been no better than I am. It would giveme pleasure to know that he, too, had only been a dabbling amateur--thevictim of a pitiable wish to be what he hadn't the talent for. "

He could not face her amazement; he stared at the yellow globe of thelamp till his eyes smarted. 

"It no doubt seems despicable to you, " he went on, "but I can't helpit. I hate him for the way he was able to absorb you. He's my worstenemy, for he has made it impossible for you--the woman I love--to loveme wholly in return. --Of course, you can't--you WON'T understand. You're only aghast at what you think my littleness. Of all I've gonethrough, you know nothing, and don't want to know. But with him, it wasdifferent; you had no difficulty in understanding him. He had the powerover you. Look!--at this very moment, you are siding, not with me, butwith him. All my struggling and striving counts for nothing. --Oh, if Icould only understand you!" He moved to and fro in his agitation. "Whyis a woman so impossible? Does nothing matter to her but tangiblesuccess? Do care and consideration carry no weight? Even matchedagainst the blackguardly egoism of what you call genius?--Or will youtell me that he considered you? Didn't he treat you from beginning toend like the scoundrel he was?"

She raised hostile eyes. "You have no right to say that, " she said in asmall, icy voice, which seemed to put him at an infinite distance fromher. "You are not able to judge him. You didn't know him as . .. As Idid. "

With the last words a deeper note came into her voice, and this was allMaurice heard. A frenzied fear seized him. 

"Louise!" he cried violently. "You care for him still!"

She started, and raised her arms, as if to ward off a blow. "I don't. .. I don't . .. God knows I don't! I hate him--you know I do!" She hadclapped both hands to her face, and held them there. When she looked upagain, she was able to speak as quietly as before. "But do you want tomake me hate you, too? Do you think it gives me a higher opinion ofyou, to hear you talk like that about some one I once cared for? Howcan I find it anything but ungenerous?--Yes, you are right, he WASdifferent--in every way. He didn't know what it meant to be envious ofanyone. He was as different from you as day from night. "

Maurice was hurt to the quick. "Now I know your real opinion of me!Till now you have been considerate enough to hide it. But to-night Ihave heard it from your own lips. You despise me!"

"Well, you drove me to say it, " she burst out, wounded in her turn. "Ishould never have said it of my own accord--never! Oh, how ungenerousyou are! It's not the first time you've goaded me into sayingsomething, and then turned round on me for it. You seem to enjoyfinding out things you can feel hurt by. --But have I ever complained?Did I not take you just as you were, and love you--yes, love you! Iknew you couldn't be different--that it wasn't your fault if you werefaint-hearted and . .. And--But you?--what do you do? You talk as if youworship the ground I walk on: but you can't let me alone. You arealways trying to change me--to make me what you think I ought to be. "

Her words came in haste, stumbling one over the other, as it becameplain to her how deeply this grievance, expressed now for the firsttime, had eaten into her soul. "You've never said to yourself, she'swhat she is because it's her nature to be. You want to remake my natureand correct it. You are always believing something is wrong. You knewvery well, long ago, that the best part of me had belonged to some oneelse. You swore it didn't matter. But to-night, because there'sabsolutely nothing else you can cavil at, you drag it up again--inspite of your promises. I have always been frank with you. Do you thankme for it? No, it's been my old fault of giving everything, when itwould have been wiser to keep something back, or at least to pretendto. I might have taken a lesson from you, in parsimonious reserve. Forthere's a part of you, you couldn't give away--not if you lived with aperson for a hundred years. "

Of all she said, the last words stung him most. 

"Yes, and why?" he cried. "Ask yourself why I You are unjust, as only awoman can be. You say there's a part of me you don't know. If that'strue, what does it mean? It means you don't want to know it. You don'twant it even to exist. You want everything to belong to you. You don'tcare for me well enough to be interested in that side of my life whichhas nothing to do with you. Your love isn't strong enough for that. "

"Love!--need we talk about love?" Her face was so unhappy that itseemed to have grown years older. "Love is something quite different. It takes everything just as it is. You have never really loved me. ". 

"I have never really loved you?"

He repeated the words after her, as if he did not understand them, andwith his right hand grasped the table; the ground seemed to be slippingfrom under his feet. But Louise did not offer to retract what she hadsaid, and Maurice had a moment of bewilderment: there, not three yardsfrom him, sat the woman who was the centre of his life; Louise satthere, and with all appearance of believing it, could cast doubts onhis love for her. At the thought of it, he was exasperated. 

"I not love you!"

His voice was rough, had escaped control. "You have only to lift yourfinger, and I'll throw myself from that window on to the pavement. "

Louise sat as if turned to stone. 

"Don't you hear?" he cried more loudly. "Look up! . .. Tell me to do it!"

Still she did not move. 

"Louise, Louise!" he implored, throwing himself down before her. "Speakto me! Don't you hear me?--Louise!"

"Oh, yes, I hear, " she said at last. "I hear how ready you are withpromises you know you will not be asked to keep. But the small, everyday things--those are what you won't do for me. "

"Tell me . .. Tell me what I shall do!"

"All I ask of you is to be happy. And to let me be happy, too. "

He stammered promises and entreaties. Never, never again!--if only thisonce she would forgive him; if only she would smile at him, and let thelight come back to her eyes. He had not been responsible for hisactions this evening. 

"It was more of a strain than I knew. And after it was over, I had tovent my disappointment somehow; and it was you, poor darling, whosuffered. Forgive me, Louise!--But try, dear, a little to understandwhy it was. Can't you see that I was only like that through fear--yes, fear!--that somehow you might slip from me. I can't help feeling, oneday you will have had enough of me, and will see me for what I reallyam. "

He tried to put his arms round her, but she held back: she had nodesire to be reconciled. The sole response she made to his beseechingwords was: "I want to be happy. "

"But you shall. --Do you think I live for anything else? Only forgiveme! Remember the happiest hours we have spent together. Come back tome; be mine again! Tell me I am forgiven. "

He was in despair; he could not get at her, under her coating ofinsensibility. And since his words had no power to move her, he took tokissing her hands. She left them limply in his; she did not resist him. From this, he drew courage: he began to treat her more inconsiderately, compelling her to bend down to him, making her feel his strength; andhe did not cease his efforts till her head had sunk forward, heavy andsubmissive, on his shoulder. 

They were at peace again: and the joys of reconciliation seemed almostworth the price they had paid for them. 

V. 

The following morning, having drunk his coffee, Maurice pushed back themetal tray on which the delf-ware stood, and remained sitting idle withhis hands before him. It was nine o'clock, and the houses across theroad were beginning to catch stray sunbeams. By this time, his dailywork was as a rule in full swing; but to-day he was in no hurry tocommence. He was even more certain now than he had been on the nightbefore, of his lack of success; and the idea of starting anew on thedull round filled him with distaste. He had been so confident that hisplaying would, in some way or other, mark a turning-point in hismusical career; and lo! it had gone off with as little fizz and effectas a damp rocket. Lighting a cigarette, he indulged in ironicalreflections. But, none the less, he heard the minutes ticking past, andas he was not only a creature of habit, but had also a troublesomenorthern conscience, he rose before the cigarette had formed its secondspike of ash, and went to the piano: no matter how rebellious he felt, this was the only occupation open to him; and so he set staunchly outon the unlovely mechanical exercising, which no pianist can escape. Meanwhile, he recapitulated the scene in the concert hall, from the fewanticipatory moments, when the 'cellist related amatory adventures, tothe abrupt leave he had taken of Dove at the door of the building. Andin the course of doing this, he was invaded by a mild and agreeabledoubt. On such shadowy impressions as these had he built up hisassumption of failure! Was it possible to be so positive? The unrealstate of mind in which he had played, hindered him from acting as hisown judge. The fact that Schwarz had not been effusive, and that noneof his friends had sought him out, admitted of more than oneinterpretation. The only real proof he had was Dove's manner to him;and was not Dove always too full of his own affairs, or, at least, theaffairs of those who were not present at the moment, to have anyattention to spare for the person he was actually with? At the ideathat he was perhaps mistaken, Maurice grew so unsettled that he rosefrom the piano. But, by the time he took his seat again, he hadwavered; say what he would, he could not get rid of the belief that ifhe had achieved anything out of the common, Madeleine would not havemade it her business to avoid him. After this, however, his fluctuatinghopes rallied, then sank once more, until it ended in his leaving thepiano. For it was of no use trying to concentrate his thoughts until heknew. 

Even as he said this to himself, his resolution was taken. There wasonly one person to whom he could apply, and that was Schwarz. Theproceeding might be unusual, but then the circumstances in which he wasplaced were unusual, too. Besides, he asked neither praise norflattery, merely a candid opinion. 

If, however, he faced Schwarz on this point, there were others on whichhe might as well get certainty at the same time. The matter of thePRUFUNG, for instance, had still to be decided. So much depended on thechoice of piece. His fingers itched towards Chopin or Mendelssohn, forthe sole reason that the technique of these composers was in his blood. Whereas Beethoven!--he knew from experience how difficult it was to geta satisfactory effect out of the stern barenesses of Beethoven. Theydemanded a skill he could never hope to possess. 

Between five and six that afternoon, he made his way to the SEBASTIANBACH-STRASSE, where Schwarz lived. It was hot in the new, shadelessstreets through which he passed, and also in crossing the JOHANNAPARK;hardly a hint of September was in the air. He walked at a slow pace, inorder not to arrive too early, and, for some reason unclear to himself, avoided stepping on the joins of the paving-stones. 

On hearing that he had not come for a lesson, the dirty maidservant, who opened the third-floor door to him, showed him as a visitor intothe best sitting-room. Maurice remained standing, in prescribedfashion. But he had no sooner crossed the threshold than he was awareof loud voices in the adjoining room, separated from the one he was inby large foldingdoors. 

"If you think, " said a woman's voice, and broke on "think"--"if youthink I'm going to endure a repetition of what happened two years ago, you're mistaken. Never again shall she enter this house! Oh, you pig, you wretch! Klara has told me; she saw you through the keyhole--withyour arm round her waist. And I know myself, scarcely a note was struckin the hour. You have her here on any pretext; you keep her in theclass after all the others have gone. But this time I'm not going tosit still till the scandal comes out, and she has to leave the place. Aman of your age!--the father of four children!--and this ugly littlehussy of seventeen! Was there ever such a miserable woman as I am! No, she shall never enter this house again. "

"And I say she shall!" came from Schwarz so fiercely that the listenerstarted. "Aren't you ashamed, woman, at your age, to set a servantspying at keyholes?--or, what is more likely, spying yourself? Keep toyour kitchen and your pots, and don't dictate to me. I am the master ofthe house. "

"Not in a case like this. It concerns me. It concerns the children. Isay she shall never enter the door again. "

"And I say she shall. Go out of the room!"

A chair grated roughly on a bare floor; a door banged with suchviolence that every other door in the house vibrated. 

In the silence that ensued, Maurice endeavoured to make his presenceknown by walking about. But no one came. His eyes ranged round theroom. It was, with a few slight differences, the ordinary best room ofthe ordinary German house. The windows were heavily curtained, and, infront of them, to the further exclusion of light and air, stoodrespectively a flower-table, laden with unlovely green plants, and aroom-aquarium. The plush furniture was stiffly grouped round an oblongtable and dotted with crochet-covers; under a glass shade was a massybunch of wax flowers; a vertikow, decorated with shells and grasses, stood cornerwise beside the sofa; and, at the door, rose white andgaunt a monumental Berlin stove. But, in addition to this, which was DERIGUEUR, there were personal touches: on the walls, besides the usualgroup of family photographs, in oval frames, hung the copy of a Madonnaby Gabriel Max, two etchings after Defregger, several largegroup-photographs of Schwarz's classes in different years, a framedconcert programme, yellow with age, and a silhouette of Schumann. Overone of the doors hung a withered laurelwreath of imposing dimensions, and with faded silken ends, on which the inscription was still legible:DEM GROSSEN KUNSTLER, JOHANNES SCHWARZ!--Open on a chair, with anembroidered book-marker between its pages, lay ATTA TROLL; and by thestove, a battered wooden doll sat against the wall, in a relaxedattitude, with a set leer on its painted face. 

Maurice waited, in growing embarrassment. He had unconsciously fixedhis eyes on the doll; and, in the dead silence of the house, thesenseless face of the creature ruffled his nerves; crossing the room, he knocked it over with his foot, so that its head fell with a bump onthe parquet floor, where it lay in a still more tipsy position. Therewas no doubt that he had arrived at a most inopportune moment; itseemed, too, as if the servant had forgotten even to announce him. 

On cautiously opening the door, with the idea of slipping away, heheard a child screaming in a distant room, and the mother's voice sharpin rebuke. The servant was clattering pots and pans in the kitchen, butshe heard Maurice, and put her head out of the door. Her face was redand swollen with crying. 

"What!--you still here?" she said rudely. "I'd forgotten all about you. "

"It doesn't matter--another time, " murmured Maurice. 

But the girl had spoken in a loud voice to make herself heard above thescreaming, which was increasing in volume, and, at her words, a door atthe end of the passage, and facing down it, was opened by about aninch, and Frau Schwarz peered through the slit. 

"Who is it?"

The servant tossed her head, and made no reply. She went back into herkitchen, and, after a brief absence, during which Frau Schwarzcontinued surreptitiously to scrutinise Maurice, came out carrying alarge plateful of BERLINER PFANNKUCHEN. With these she crossed to anopposite room, and, as she there planked the plate down on the table, she announced the visitor. A surly voice muttered something in reply. As, however, the girl insisted in her sulky way, on the length of timethe young man had waited, Schwarz called out stridently: "Well, then, in God's name, let him come in! And Klara, you tell my wife, if thatnoise isn't stopped, I'll throw either her or you downstairs. "

Klara appeared again, scarlet with anger, jerked her arm at Maurice, tosignify that he might do the rest for himself, and, retreating into herkitchen, slammed the door. Left thus, with no alternative, Maurice drewhis heels together, gave the customary rap, and went into the room. 

Schwarz was sitting at the table with his head on his hand, tracing thepattern of the cloth with the blade of his knife. A coffee-servicestood on a tray before him; he had just refilled his cup, and helpedhimself from the dish of PFANNKUCHEN, which, freshly baked, sent aninviting odour through the room. He hardly looked up on Maurice'sentrance, and cut short the young man's apologetic beginnings. 

"Well, what is it? What brings you here?"

As Maurice hesitated before the difficulty of plunging offhand into theobject of his visit, Schwarz pointed with his knife at a chair: hecould not speak, for he had just put the best part of a PFANNKUCHEN inhis mouth, and was chewing hard. Maurice sat down, and holding his hatby the brim, proceeded to explain that he had called on a smallpersonal matter, which would not occupy more than a minute of themaster's time. 

"It's in connection with last night that I wished to speak to you, HerrProfessor, " he said: the title, which was not Schwarz's by right, heknew to be a sop. "I should be much obliged to you if you would give meyour candid opinion of my playing. It's not easy to judgeoneself--although I must say, both at the time, and afterwards, I wasnot too well pleased with what I had done--that is to say . .. "

"WIE? WAS?" cried Schwarz, and threw a hasty glance at his pupil, whilehe helped himself anew from the dish. 

Maurice uncrossed his legs, and crossed them again, the same one up. 

"My time here comes to an end at Easter, Herr Professor. And it'simportant for me to learn what you think of the progress I have madesince being with you. I don't know why, " he added less surely, "but oflate I haven't felt satisfied with myself. I seem to have got a certainlength and to have stuck there. I should like to know if you havenoticed it, too. If so, does the fault lie with my want of talent, or--"

"Or with ME, perhaps?" broke in Schwarz, who had with difficulty thusfar restrained himself. He laughed offensively. "With ME--eh?" Hestruck himself on the chest, several times in succession, with thebutt-end of his knife, that there might be no doubt to whom hereferred. "Upon my soul, what next I wonder!--what next!" He ceased tolaugh, and grew ungovernably angry. "What the devil do you mean by it?Do you think I've nothing better to do, at the end of a hard day'swork, than to sit here and give candid opinions, and discuss theprogress made by each strummer who comes to me twice a week for alesson? Oho, if you are of that opinion, you may disabuse your mind ofit! I'm at your service on Tuesday and Friday afternoon, when I am paidto be; otherwise, my time is my own. "

He laid two of the cakes on top of each other, sliced them through, andput one of the pieces thus obtained in his mouth. Maurice had risen, and stood waiting for the breathing-space into which he could thrustwords of apology. 

"I beg your pardon, Herr Professor, " he now began. "You misunderstandme. Nothing was further from my mind than----"

But Schwarz had not finished speaking; he rapped the table with hisknife-handle, and, working himself up to a white heat, continued: "Butplain and plump, I'll tell you this, Herr Guest"--he pronounced it"Gvest. " "If you are not satisfied with me, and my teaching, you're atliberty to try some one else. If this is a preliminary to inscribingyourself under that miserable humbug, that wretched charlatan, whopretends to teach the piano, do it, and have done with it! No one willhinder you--certainly not I. You're under no necessity to come herebeforehand, and apologise, and give your reasons--none of the othersdid. Slink off like them, without a word! it's the more decent way inthe long run. They at least knew they were behaving like blackguards. "

"You have completely misunderstood me, Herr Schwarz. If you will giveme a moment to explain----"

But Schwarz was in no mood for explanations; he went on again, payingno heed to Maurice's interruption. 

"Who wouldn't rather break stones by the roadside than be a teacher?"he asked, and sliced and ate, sliced and ate. "Look at the years oflabour I have behind me--twenty and more!--in which I've toiled to thebest of my ability, eight and nine hours, day after day, and eternallyfor ends that weren't my own!--And what return do I get for it? Anew-comer only needs to wave a red flag before them, and all alike rushblindly to him. A pupil of Liszt?--bah! Who was Liszt? A barrel-organof execution; a perverter of taste; a worthy ally of that upstart whoruined melody, harmony, and form. Don't talk to me of Liszt!"

He spoke in spurts, blusteringly, but indistinctly, owing to thefullness of his mouth. 

"But I'm not to be imposed on. I know their tricks. Haven't I myselfhad pupils turn to me from Bulow and Rubinstein? Is that not proofenough? Would they have come if they hadn't known what my method wasworth? And I took them, and spared no pains to make something of them. Haven't I a right to expect some gratitude from them inreturn?--Gratitude? Such a thing doesn't exist; it's a word withoutmeaning, a puffing of the air. Look at him for whom I did more than forall the rest. Did I take a pfennig from him in payment?--when I sawthat he had talent? Not I! And I did it all. When he came to me, hecouldn't play a scale. I gave him extra lessons without charge, I putpupils in his way, I got him scholarships, I enabled him to support hisfamily--they would have been beggars in the street, but for me. And nowsoon will be! Yes, I have had his mother here, weeping at my feet, imploring me to reason with him and bring him back to his senses. SHEsees where his infamy will land them. But I? I snap my fingers in hisface. He has sown, and he shall reap his sowing. --But the day willcome, I know it, when he will return to me, and all the rest willfollow him, like the sheep they are. Let them come! They'll see thenwhether I have need of them or not. They'll see then what they wereworth to me. For I can produce others others, I say!--who will put himand his fellows out of the running. Do they think I'm done for, becauseof this? I'll show them the contrary. I'll show them! Why, I set nomore store by the lot of you than I do by this plate of cakes!"

Again he ate voraciously, and for a few moments, the noise his jawsmade in working was the only sound in the room. Maurice stood in thesame attitude, with his hat in his hand. 

"I regret more than I can express, having been the cause of annoyingyou, Herr Professor, " he said at length with stiff formality. "But Ishould like to repeat, once more, that my only object in coming herewas to speak to you about last night. I felt dissatisfied with myselfand . .. "

"Dissatisfied?" echoed Schwarz, bringing his jaws together with a snap. "And what business of yours is it to feel dissatisfied, I'd like toknow? Leave that to me! You'll hear soon enough, I warrant you, when Ihave reason to be dissatisfied. Until then, do me the pleasure ofminding your own business. "

"Excuse me, " said Maurice with warmth, "if this isn't my own business!. .. As I see it, it's nobody's but mine. And it seemed to me natural toappeal to you, as the only person who could decide for me whether Ishould have anything further to do with art, or whether I should throwit up altogether. "

Schwarz, who was sometimes not averse to a spirited opposition, caughtat the one unlucky word on which he could hang his scorn. 

"ART!" he repeated with jocose emphasis--he had finished the plate ofcakes, risen from the table, and was picking teeth at the window. "Art!--pooh, pooh!--what's art got to do with it? In your place, Ishould avoid taking such highflown words on my tongue. Call itsomething else. Do you think it makes a jot of difference whether youcall it art or . .. Pludderdump? Not so much"--and he snapped hisfingers--"will be changed, though you never call it anything!Vanity!--it's nothing but vanity! A set of raw youths inflatethemselves like frogs, and have opinions on art, as on what they haveeaten for their dinner. --Do your work and hold your tongue! A scalewell played is worth all the words that were ever said--and that, themajority of you can't do. "

He closed his toothpick with a snap, spat dexterously at a spittoonwhich stood in a corner of the room, and the interview was over. 

As Maurice descended the spiral stair, he said to himself that, nomatter how long he remained in Leipzig, he would never trouble Schwarzwith his presence again. The man was a loose-mouthed bully. But infuture he might seek out others to be the butt of his clumsy wit. He, Maurice, was too good for that. --And squaring his shoulders, he walkederectly down the street, and across the JOHANNAPARK. 

But none the less, he did not go straight home. For, below the comedyof intolerance at which he was playing, lurked, as he well knew, theconsciousness that his true impression of the past hour had still to befaced. He might postpone doing this; he could not shirk it. It was allvery well: he might repeat to himself that he had happened on Schwarzat an inopportune moment. That did not count. For him, Maurice, theopportune moment simply did not exist; he was one of those people whoare always inopportune, come and go as they will. He might have waitedfor days; he would never have caught Schwarz in the right mood, or inthe nick of time. How he envied those fortunate mortals who alwaysarrived at the right moment, and instinctively said the right thing!That talent had never been his. With him it was blunder. 

One thing, though, that still perplexed him, was that not once, sincehe had been in Leipzig, had he caught a glimpse of that native goodnessof heart, for which he had heard Schwarz lauded. The master had donehis duty by him--nothing more. Neither had had any personal feeling forthe other; and the words Schwarz had used this afternoon had only beenthe outcome of a long period of reserve, even of distrust. At thismoment, when he was inclined to take the onus of the misunderstandingon his own shoulders, Maurice admitted, besides his constantpreoccupation--or possibly just because of it--an innate lack ofsympathy in himself, an inability, either of heart or of imagination, to project himself into the lives and feelings of people he did notgreatly care for. Otherwise, he would not have gone to Schwarz on suchan errand as today's; he would have remembered that the master waslikely to be sore and suspicious. And, from now on, things would beworse instead of better. Schwarz had no doubt been left under theimpression that Maurice had wished to complain of his teaching; andimpressions of this nature were difficult to erase. 

There was nothing to be done, however, but to plod along in thefamiliar rut. He must stomach aspersions and injuries, behave as ifnothing had happened. His first hot intention of turning his back onSchwarz soon yielded to more worldly-wise thoughts. Every practicalconsideration was against it. He might avenge himself, if he liked, byrunning to the rival teacher like a crossed child; Schrievers wouldundoubtedly receive him with open arms, and promise him all he asked. But what could he hope to accomplish, under a complete change ofmethod, in the few months that were left? He would also have to forfeithis fees for the coming term, which were already paid. Schrievers'lessons were expensive, and out of the small sum that remained to himto live on, it would be impossible to take more than half a dozen. Another than he might have appealed to Schrievers' satisfaction insecuring a fresh convert; but Maurice had learnt too thoroughly by now, that he was not one of those happy exceptions--exceptions by reason oftheir talent or their temperament--to whom a master was willing todevote his time free of charge. 

Over these reflections night had fallen; and rising, he walked speedilyback by the dark wood-paths. But before he reached the meadows, fromwhich he could see lights blinking in the scattered villas, his stepshad lagged again. His discouragement had nothing chimerical in it atthis moment; it was part and parcel of himself. --The night was bothchilly and misty, and it was late. But a painful impression of theprevious evening lingered in his mind. Louise would be annoyed with himfor keeping her waiting; and he shrank, in advance, from the thought ofanother disagreeable scene. He was not in the mood to-night, to sootheand console. 

As he entered the MOZARTSTRASSE, he saw that there was a light inMadeleine's window. She was at home, then. He imagined her sittingquiet and busy in her pleasant room, which, except for the ring oflamplight, was sunk in peaceful shadow. This was what he needed: anhour's rest, dim light, and Madeleine's sympathetic tact. 

Without giving himself time for thought, he mounted the stair andpressed the bell-knob on the third floor. 

On seeing who her visitor was, Madeleine rose with alacrity from thewriting-table. 

"Maurice! Is it really you?"

"I was passing. I thought I would run up . .. You're surprised to seeme?"

"Oh, well--you're a stranger now, you know. "

She was vexed with herself for showing astonishment. Moving some books, she made room for him to sit down on the sofa, and, as he was moody, and seemed in no hurry to state why he had come, she asked if she mightfinish the letter she was writing. 

"Make yourself comfortable. Here's a cushion for your head. "

Through half-closed eyes, he watched her hand travelling across thesheet of note-paper, and returning at regular intervals, with a sureswoop, to begin a fresh line. There was no sound except the gentlescratching of her pen. 

Madeleine did not look up till she had finished her letter andaddressed the envelope. Maurice had shut his eyes. 

"Are you asleep?" she roused him. "Or only tired?"

"I've a headache. "

"I'll make you some tea. "

He watched her preparing it, and, by the time she handed him his cup, he was in the right mood for making her his confidant. 

"Look here, Madeleine, " he said; "I came up to-night--The fact is, I'vedone a foolish thing. And I want to talk to some one about it. "

Her eyes grew more alert. 

"Let me see if I can help you. "

He shook his head. "I'm afraid you can't. But first of all, tell mefrankly, how you thought I got on last night. "

"How you got on?" echoed Madeleine, unclear what this was to lead to. "Why, all right, of course. --Oh, well, if you insist on the truth!--Thefact is, Maurice, you did no better and no worse than the majority ofthose who fill the ABEND programmes. What you didn't do, was to reachthe standard your friends had set up for you. "

"Thanks. Now listen, " and he related to her in detail his misadventureof the afternoon. 

Madeleine followed with close attention. But more distinctly than whathe said, she heard what he did not say. His account of the two lastdays, with the unintentional sidelight it threw on just those parts hewished to keep in darkness, made her aware how complicated and involvedhis life had become. But before he finished speaking, she brought allher practical intelligence to bear on what he said. 

"Maurice!" she exclaimed, with a consternation that was three partsgenuine. "I should like to shake you. How COULD you!--what induced youto do such a foolish thing?" And, as he did not speak: "If only you hadcome to me before, instead of after! I should have said: hold whatridiculous opinions you like yourself, but for goodness' sake keepclear of Schwarz with them. Yes, ridiculous, and offensive, too. Anyonewould have taken your talk about being dissatisfied just as he did. Andafter the way he has been treated of late, he's of course doublytouchy. "

"I knew that, when it was too late. But I meant merely to speakstraight out to him, Madeleine--one man to another. You surely don'twant to say he's incapable of allowing one to have an independentopinion? If that's the case, then he's nothing but the wretched littletyrant Heinz declares him to be. "

"Wait till you have taught as long as he has, " said Madeleine, and, athis muttered: "God forbid!" she continued with more warmth: "You'llknow then, too, that it doesn't matter whether your pupils haveopinions or not. He has seen this kind of thing scores of times before, and knows it must be kept down. "

She paused, and looked at him. "To get on in life, one must have acertain amount of tact. You are too naive, Maurice, toounsuspecting--one of those people who would like to carry on socialintercourse on a basis of absolute truth, and then be surprised that itcame to an end. You are altogether a very difficult person to dealwith. You are either too candid, or too reserved. There's no middle wayin you. I haven't the least doubt that Schwarz finds you bothperplexing and irritating; he takes the candour for impertinence, andthe reserve for distrust. "

Maurice smiled faintly. "Go on--don't spare me. No one ever troubledbefore to tell me my failings. "

"Oh, I'm quite in earnest. As I look at it, it's entirely your ownfault that you don't stand better with Schwarz. You have nevercondescended to humour him, as you ought to have done. You thought itwas enough to be truthful and honest, and to leave the rest to him. Well, it wasn't. I won't hear a word against Schwarz; he's goodnessitself to those who deserve it. A little bluff and rude at times; buthe's too busy to go about in kid gloves for fear of hurting sensitivepeople's feelings. "

"Why did you never take private lessons from him?" was her nextquestion. "I told you months ago, you remember, that you ought to. --Oh, yes, you said they were too expensive, I know, but you could havescraped a few marks together somehow. You managed to buy books, andbooks were quite unnecessary. One lesson a fortnight would have broughtyou' more into touch with Schwarz than all you have had in the class. As it is, you don't know him any better than he knows you. " And as sherefilled his tea-cup, she added: "You quoted Heinz to me just now. Butyou and I can't afford to measure people by the same standards asHeinz. We are everyday mortals, remember. --Besides, in all that counts, he is not worth Schwarz's little finger. "

"You're a warm advocate, Madeleine. "

"Yes, and I've reason to be. No one here has been as kind to me asSchwarz. I came, a complete stranger, and with not more than ordinarytalent. But I went to him, and told him frankly what I wanted to do, how long I could stay, and how much money I had to spend. He helped meand advised me. He has let me study what will be of most use to meafterwards, and he takes as much interest in my future as I do myself. How can I speak anything but well of him?--What I certainly didn't do, was to go to him and talk ambiguously about feeling dissatisfied withhim . .. "

"With myself, Madeleine. Haven't I made that clear?"

But Madeleine only sniffed. 

"Well, it's over and done with now, " she said after a pause. "Andtalking about it won't mend it. --Tell me, rather, what you intend todo. What are your plans?"

"Plans? I don't know. I haven't any. Sufficient unto the day, etc. "

But of this she disapproved with open scorn. "Rubbish! When your timehere is all but up! And no plans!--One thing, I can tell you anyhow, is, after to-day you needn't rely on Schwarz for assistance. You'vespoilt your chances with him. The only way of repairing the mischiefwould be the lesson I spoke of--one a week as long as you re here. "

"I couldn't afford it. "

"No, I suppose not, " she said sarcastically, and tore a piece of paperthat came under her fingers into narrow strips. "Tell me, " she added amoment later, in a changed tone: "where do you intend to settle whenyou return to England? And have you begun to think of advertisingyourself yet?"

He waved his hand before his face as if he were chasing away a fly. "For God's sake, Madeleine! . .. These alluring prospects!"

"Pray, what else do you expect to do?"

"Well, the truth is, I . .. I'm not going back to England at all. I meanto settle here. "

Madeleine repressed the exclamation that rose to her lips, and stoopedto brush something off the skirt of her dress. Her face was red whenshe raised it. She needed no further telling; she understood what hiswords implied as clearly as though it were printed black on whitebefore her. But she spoke in a casual tone. 

"However are you going to make that possible?"

He endeavoured to explain. 

"I don't envy you, " she said drily, when he had finished. "You hardlyrealise what lies before you, I think. There are people here who areglad to get fifty pfennigs an hour, for piano lessons. Think ofplodding up and down stairs, all day long, for fifty pfennigs an hour!"

He was silent. 

"While in England, with a little tact and patience, you would soon havemore pupils than you could take at five shillings. "

"Tact and patience mean push and a thick skin. But don't worry! I shallget on all right. And if I don't--life's short, you know. "

"But you are just at: the beginning of it--and ridiculously young atthat! Good Heavens, Maurice!" she burst out, unable to contain herself. "Can't you see that after you've been at home again for a little while, things that have seemed so important here will have shrunk into theirright places? You'll be glad to have done with them then, when you arein orderly circumstances again. "

"I'm afraid not, " answered the young man. "I'm not a good forgetter. "

"A good forgetter!" repeated Madeleine, and laughed sarcastically. Shewas going on to say more, but, just at this moment, a clock outsidestruck ten, and Maurice sprang to his feet. 

"So late already? I'd no idea. I must be off. "

She stood by, and watched him look for his hat. 

"Here it is. " She picked it up, and handed it to him, with anemphasised want of haste. 

"Good night, Madeleine. Thanks for the truth. I knew I could depend onyou. "

"It was well meant. And the truth is always beneficial, you know. Goodnight. --Come again, soon. "

He heard her last words half-way down the stairs, which he took two ata time. 

The hour he had now to face was a painful ending to an unpleasant day. It was not merely the fact that he had kept Louise waiting, in achingsuspense, for several hours. It now came out that, after theirdisagreement of the previous night, she had confidently expected him toreturn to her early in the day, had expected contrition and atonement. That he had not even suspected this made her doubly bitter against him. In vain he tried to excuse himself, to offer explanations. She wouldnot listen to him, nor would she let him touch her. She tore her dressfrom between his fingers, brushed his hand off her arm; and, retreatinginto a corner of the room, where she stood like an animal at bay, shepoured out over him her accumulated resentment. All she had eversuffered at his hands, all the infinitesimal differences there had beenbetween them, from the beginning, the fine points in which he hadfailed--things of which he had no knowledge--all these were raked upand cast at him till, numb with pain, he lost even the wish to comforther. Sitting down at the table, he laid his head on his folded arms. 

At his feet were the fragments of the little clock, which, in her angerat his desertion of her, she had trodden to pieces. 

VI. 

Their first business the next morning was to buy another clock. Bydaylight, Louise was full of remorse at what she had done, and inpassing the writing-table, averted her eyes. They went out early to ashop in the GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE; and Maurice stood by and watched hermake her choice. 

She loved to buy, and entered into the purchase with leisurelyenjoyment. The shopman and his assistant spared themselves no troublein fetching and setting out their wares. Louise handled each clock asit was put before her, discussed the merits of different styles, and afaint colour mounted to her cheeks over the difficulty of decidingbetween two which she liked equally well. She had pushed up her veil;it swathed her forehead like an Eastern woman's. Her eagerness, whichwas expressed in a slight unsteadiness of nostril and lip, would havehad something childish in it, had it not been for her eyes. Theyremained heavy and unsmiling; and the disquieting half-rings below themwere more bluely brown than ever. Leaning sideways against the counter, Maurice looked away from them to her hands; her fingers were entirelywithout ornament, and he would have liked to load them with rings. Asit was, he could not even pay for the clock she chose; it cost morethan he had to spend in a month. 

In the street again, she said she was hungry, and, glad to be able toadd his mite to her pleasure, he took her by the arm and steered her tothe CAFE FRANCAIS, where they had coffee and ices. The church-steepleswere booming eleven when they emerged; it did not seem worth whilegoing home and settling down to work. Instead, they went to theROSENTAL. 

It was a brilliant autumn day, rich in light and shade, and there wasonly a breath abroad of the racy freshness that meant subsequent decay. The leaves were turning red and orange, but had not begun to fall; thesky was deeply blue; outlines were sharp and precise. They were both ina mood this morning to be susceptible to their surroundings; they wereeven eager to be affected by them, and made happy. The disagreements ofthe two preceding nights were like bad dreams, which they were anxiousto forget, or at least to avoid thinking of. Her painful, unreasonabletreatment of him, the evening before, had not been touched on betweenthem; after his incoherent attempts to justify himself, after hisbitter self-reproaches, when she lay sobbing in his arms, they hadboth, with one accord, been silent. Neither of them felt any desire foropen-hearted explanations; they were careful not to stir up the depthsanew. Louise was very quiet; had it not been for her eyes, he mighthave believed her happy. But here, just as an hour before in thewatchmaker's shop, they brooded, unable to forget. And yet there was apliancy about her this morning, a readiness to meet his wishes, which, as he walked at her side, made him almost content. The old, foolishdreams awoke in him again, and vistas opened, of a gentle comradeship, which might still come true, when the strenuous side of her love forhim had worn itself out. If only an hour like the present could havelasted indefinitely!

It was a happy morning. They ended it with an improvised lunch at theKAISERPARK; and it remained imprinted on their minds as an unexpectedpatch of colour, in an unending row of grey days, given up to duty. 

The next one, and the next again, Louise continued in the same yieldingmood, which was wholly different from the emotional expansiveness ofthe past weeks. Maurice took a glad advantage of her willingness toplease him, and they had several pleasant walks together: to Napoleon'sbattlefields; along the GRUNE GASSE and the POETENWEG to Schiller'shouse at Gohlis; and into the heart of the ROSENTAL--DAS WILDEROSENTAL--where it was very solitary, and where the great trees seemedto stagger under their load of stained leaves. 

A burst of almost July radiance occurred at this time; and one day, Louise expressed a wish to go to the country, in order that, by oncemore being together for a whole day on end, they might relive in fancythe happy weeks they had spent on the Rochlitzer Berg. It was never herway to urge over-much, which made it hard to refuse her; so it wasarranged that they should set off betimes the following Saturday. 

Maurice had his reward in the cry of pleasure she gave when he wakenedher to tell her that it was a fine day. 

"Get up, dear! It's less than an hour till the train goes. "

For the first time for weeks, Louise was her impetuous self again. Shethrew things topsy-turvy in the room. It was he who drew her attentionto an unfastened hook, and an unbound ribbon. She only pressed forward. 

"Make haste!--oh, make haste! We shall be late. "

An overpowering smell of newly-baked rolls issued from the bakers'shops, and the errand-boys were starting out with their baskets. Womenand house-porters were coming out to wash pavements and entrances: thecollective life of the town was waking up to another uneventful day;but they two were hastening off to long hours of sunlight and freshair, unhampered by the passing of time, or by fallacious ideas of duty;were setting out for a new bit of world, to strange meals taken instrange places, reached by white roads, or sequestered wood-paths. Inthe train, they were crushed between the baskets of the marketwomen, who were journeying from one village to another. These sat with theirwizened hands clasped on their high stomachs, or on the handles oftheir baskets, and stared, like stupid, placid animals, at the strangeyoung foreign couple before them. Partly for the frolic of astonishingthem, and also because he was happy at seeing Louise so happy, Mauricekissed her hand; but it was she who astonished them most. When she gavea cry, or used her hands with a sudden, vivid effect, or flashed herwhite teeth in a smile, every head in the carriage was turned towardsher; and when, in addition, she was overtaken by a fit of loquacity, she was well-nigh devoured by eyes. 

They did not travel as far as they had intended. From the carriagewindow, she saw a wayside place that took her fancy. 

"Here, Maurice; let us get out here. "

Having breakfasted, and left their bags at an inn, they strayed atrandom along an inviting road lined with apple-trees. When Louise grewtired, they rested in the arbour of a primitive GASTHAUS, and ate theirmidday meal. Afterwards, in a wood, he spread a rug for her, and shelay in a nest of sun-spots. Only their own voices broke the silence. Then she fell asleep, and, until she opened her eyes again, and calledto him in surprise, no sound was to be heard but the sudden, crisprustling of some bird or insect. When evening fell, they returned totheir lodging, ate their supper in the smoky public room--for, outside, mists had risen--and then before them stretched, undisturbed, the longevening and the longer night, to be spent in a strange room, of whichthey had hitherto not suspected the existence, but which, from now on, would be indissolubly bound up with their other memories. 

The first day passed in such a manner was as flawless as any they hadknown in the height of summer--with all the added attractions of closerintimacy. In its course, the shadows lifted from her eyes; and Mauriceceased to remember that he had made a mess of his affairs. But the verynext one failed--as far as Louise was concerned--to reach the samelevel: it was like a flower ever so slightly overblown. The lyriccharms that had so pleased her--the dewy freshness of the morning, thesolitude, the unbroken sunshine--were frail things, and, snatched withtoo eager a hand, crumbled beneath the touch. They were not made tostand the wear and tear of repetition. It was also impossible, shefound, to live through again days such as they had spent at Rochlitz;time past was past irrevocably, with all that belonged to it. And itwas further, a mistake to believe that a more intimate acquaintancemeant a keener pleasure; it was just the stimulus of strangeness, thepiquancy of feeling one's way, that had made up half the fascination ofthe summer. 

With sure instinct, Louise recognised this, even while she exclaimedwith delight. And her heart sank: not until this moment had she knownhow high her hopes had been, how firmly she had pinned her faith uponthe revival of passion which these days were to bring to pass. Theknowledge that this had been a delusion, was hard to bear. In thought, she was merciless to herself, when, on waking, the second morning, shelooked with unexpectant eyes over the day that lay before her. Couldnothing satisfy her, she asked herself? Could she not be content fortwenty-four hours on end? Was it eternally her lot to come to the endof things, before they had properly begun? It seemed, always, as if shealone must be pressing forward, without rest. Here, on the second ofthese days of love and sunshine, she saw, with absolute clearness, thatneither this nor any other day had anything extraordinary to give her;and sitting silent at dinner, under an arbour of highly-colouredcreeper, she was overcome by such a laming discouragement, that shelaid her knife and fork down, and could eat no more. 

Maurice, watching her across the table, believed that she wasover-tired, and filled up her glass with wine. 

But she did not yield without a struggle. And it was not merelyrebellion against the defects of her own nature, which prompted her. The prospect of the coming months filled her with dismay. When thislast brief spell of pleasure was over, there was nothing left, to whichshe could look forward. The approaching winter stretched before herlike a starless night; she was afraid to let her mind dwell on it. Whatwas she to do?--what was to become of her, when the short dark dayscame down again, and shut her in? The thought of it almost drove hermad. Desperate with fear, she shut her eyes and went blindly forward, determined to extract every particle of pleasure, or, at least, ofoblivion, that the present offered. 

Under these circumstances, the poor human element in their relationsbecame once again, and more than ever before, the pivot on which theirlives turned. Louise aimed deliberately at bringing this about. Further, she did what she had never yet done: she brought to bear ontheir intercourse all her own hardwon knowledge, and all her arts. Shedrew from her store of experience those trifling, yet weighty details, which, once she has learned them, a woman never forgets. And, inaddition to this, she took advantage of the circumstances in which theyfound themselves, utilising to the full the stimulus of strange timesand places: she fired the excitement that lurked in surreptitiousembrace and surrender, under all the dangers of a possible surprise. She was perverse and capricious; she would turn away from him till shereduced him to despair; then to yield suddenly, with a completenessthat threatened to undo them both. Her devices were never-ending. Notthat they were necessary: for he was helpless in her hands when sheassumed the mastery. But she could not afford to omit one of the meansto her end, for she had herself to lash as well as him. And so, oncemore, as at the very beginning, hand grew to be a weight in hand, something alive, electric; and any chance contact might rouse a blastin them. She neither asked nor Showed mercy. Drop by drop, they drainedeach other of vitality, two sufferers, yet each thirsty for the other'slife-blood; for, with this new attitude on her part, an element ofcruelty had entered into their love. When, with her hands on hisshoulders, her insatiable lips apart, Louise put back her head andlooked at him, Maurice was acutely aware of the hostile feeling in her. But he, too, knew what it was; for, when he tried to urge prudence onher, she only laughed at him; and this low, reckless laugh, her savageeyes, and morbid pallor, invariably took from him every jot of concern. 

They returned to Leipzig towards the middle of the first week, in ordernot to make their absence too conspicuous. But they had arranged to goaway again, on the following Saturday, and, in the present state ofthings, the few intervening days seemed endless. Louise shut herselfup, and would see little of him. 

The next week, and the next again, were spent in the same fashion. Afine and mild October ran its course. For the fourth journey, towardsthe end of the month, they had planned to return to Rochlitz. At thelast moment, however, Maurice opposed the scheme, and they left thetrain at Grimma. It was Friday, and a superb autumn day. They put up, not in the town itself, but at an inn about a mile and a half distantfrom it. This stood on the edge of a wood, was a favourite summerresort, and had lately been enlarged by an additional wing. Now, it wasempty of guests save themselves. They occupied a large room in the newpart of the building, at the end of a long corridor, which was shut offby a door from the rest of the house. They were utterly alone; therewas no need for them even to moderate their voices. In the earlymorning hours, and on the journey there, Maurice had thought he noticedsomething unusual about Louise, and, more than once, he had asked herif her head ached. But soon he forgot his solicitude. 

Next morning, he felt an irresistible inclination to go out: openingthe window, he leaned on the sill. A fresh, pleasant breeze wasblowing; it bent the tops of the pines, and drove the white cloudssmoothly over the sky. He suggested that they should walk to the ruinedcloister of Nimbschen; but Louise responded very languidly, and he hadto coax and persuade. By the time she was ready to leave the untidyroom, the morning was more than half over, and the shifting clouds hadballed themselves into masses. Before the two emerged from the wood, aneven network of cloud had been drawn over the whole sky; it looked likerain. 

They walked as usual in silence, little or nothing being left to say, that seemed worth the exertion of speech. Each step cost Louise avisible effort; her arms hung slack at her sides; her very hands feltheavy. The pallor of her face had a greyish tinge in it. Maurice beganto regret having hurried her out against her will. 

They were on a narrow path skirting a wood, when she suddenly expresseda wish for some tall bulrushes that grew beside a stream, some distancebelow. Maurice went down to the edge of the water and began to cut therushes. But the ground was marshy, and the finest were beyond his reach. 

On the path at the top of the bank, Louise stood and followed hismovements. She watched his ineffectual efforts to seize the furtherreeds, saw how they slipped back from between his hands; she watchedhim take out his knife and open it, endeavour once more to reach thosehe wanted, and, still unsuccessful, choose a dry spot to sit down on;saw him take off his boots and stockings, then rise and go cautiouslyout on the soft ground. Ages seemed to pass while she watched him dothese trivial things; she felt as if she were gradually turning tostone as she stood. How long he was about it! How deliberately hemoved! And she had the odd sensation, too, that she knew beforehandeverything he would and would not do, just as if she had experienced italready. His movements were of an impossible circumstantiality, out ofall proportion to the trifling service she had asked of him; for, atheart, she cared as little about the rushes as about anything else. Butit was an unfortunate habit of his, and one she noticed more and moreas time went on, to make much of paltry details, which, properly, should have been dismissed without a second thought. It implied acertain tactlessness, to underline the obvious in this fashion. Thevery way, for instance, he stretched out his arm, unclasped his knife, leant forward, and then stooped back to lay the cut reeds on the bank. Oh, she was tired!--tired to exasperation!--of his ways and actions--astired as she was of his words, and of the thousand and one occurrences, daily repeated, that made up their lives. She would have liked to creepaway, to hide herself in an utter seclusion; while, instead, it was herlot to assist, hour after hour, at making much of what, in the depthsof her soul, did not concern her at all. Nothing, she felt, would everreally concern her again. She gazed fixedly before her, at him, too, but without seeing him, till her sight was blurred; trees and sky, stream and rushes, swam together in a formless maze. And all of asudden, while she was still blind, there ran through her such anintense feeling of aversion, such a complete satedness with all she hadof late felt and known, that she involuntarily took a step backwards, and pressed her palms together, in order to hinder herself fromscreaming aloud. She could bear it no longer. In a flash, she graspedthat she was unable, utterly unable, to face the day that was beforeher. She knew in advance every word, every look and embrace that itheld for her: rather than undergo them afresh, she would throw herselfinto the water at her feet. Anywhere, anywhere!--only to get away, tobe alone, to cover her face and see no more! Her hand went to herthroat; her breath refused to come; she shivered so violently that shewas afraid she would fall to the ground. 

Maurice, all unsuspecting, sat with his back to her, and laced hisboots. 

But he was startled into an exclamation, when he climbed the bank andsaw the state she was in. 

"Louise! Good Heavens, what's the matter? Are you ill?"

He took her by the arm, and shook her a little, to arrest her attention. 

"Maurice! . .. No!" Her voice was hoarse. "Oh, let me go home!"

He repeated the words in amazed alarm. "But what is it, darling? Areyou ill? Are you cold?--that you're trembling like this?"

"No . .. Yes. Oh, I want to go home!--back to Leipzig. "

"Why, of course, if you want to. At once. "

The rushes lay forgotten on the ground. Without further words, theyhastened to the inn. There, Maurice helped her to throw her things intothe bag she had not wholly unpacked, and, having paid the bill, ledher, with the same feverish haste, through the woods and town to therailway-station. He was full of distressed concern for her, but hardlydared to show it, for, to all his questions, she only shook her head. Walking at his side, she dug her nails into her palms till she felt theblood come, in her effort to conceal and stifle the waves of almostphysical repugnance that passed through her, making it impossible forher to bear even the touch of his hand. In the train, she leaned backin the corner, and, shutting her eyes, pretended to be asleep. 

They took a droschke home; the driver whipped up his horse; thelandlady was called in to make the first fire of the season. Louisewent to bed at once. She wanted nothing, she said, but to lie still inthe darkened room. He should go away; she preferred to be alone. No, she was not ill, only tired, but so tired that she could not keep hereyes open. She needed rest: tomorrow she would be all right again. Heshould please, please, leave her, and go away. And, turning her face tothe wall, she drew the bedclothes over her head. 

At his wits' end to know what it all meant, Maurice complied. But athome in his room, he could settle to nothing; he trembled at everyfootstep on the stair. No message came, however, and when he had seenher again that evening, he felt more reassured. 

"It's nothing--really nothing. I'm only tired . .. Yes, it was too much. Just let me be, Maurice--till to-morrow. " And she shut her eyes again, and kept them shut, till she heard the door close behind him. 

He was reassured, but still, for the greater part of the night, he laysleepless. He was always agitated anew by the abrupt way in whichLouise passed from mood to mood; but this was something different; hecould not understand it. In the morning, however, he saw things in aless tragic light; and, on sitting down to the piano, he experiencedalmost a sense of satisfaction at the prospect of an undisturbed day'swork. 

Meanwhile Louise shrank, even in memory, from the feverish weeks justpast, as she had shrunk that day from his touch. And she struggled tokeep her thoughts from dwelling on them. But it was the first time inher life that she felt a like shame and regret; and she could not ridher mind of the haunting images. She knew the reason, too; darknessbrought the knowledge. She had believed, had wished to believe, thatthe failure was her fault, a result of her unstable nature; whereas thewhole undertaking had been merely a futile attempt to bolster up theimpossible, to stave off the inevitable, to postpone the end. And ithad all been in vain. The end! It would come, as surely as day followednight--had perhaps indeed already come; for how else could the nervousaversion be explained, which had seized her that day? What, during theforegoing weeks, she had tried not to hear; what had sounded in herears like the tone of a sunken bell, was there at last, horrible anddeafening. She had ceased to care for him, and ceased, surfeited withabundance, with the same vehement abruptness as she had once begun. Theswiftness with which things had swept to a conclusion, had, confessedly, been accelerated by her unhappy temperament; but, howevergentle the gradient, the point for which they made would have remainedthe same. What she was now forced to recognise was, that the wholeaffair had been no more than an episode; and the fact of its havingbegun less brutally than others, had not made it a whit better ablethan these to withstand decay. 

A bitter sense of humiliation came over her. What was she? Not a weekago--she could count the days on her fingers--the mere touch of hishand on her hair had made her thrill; and now the sole feeling she wasconscious of was one of dislike. She looked back over the course of herrelations with him, and many things, unclear before, became plain toher. She had gone into the intimacy deliberately, with open eyes, knowing that she cared for him only in a friendly way. She hadbelieved, then, that the gift of herself would mean little to her, while it would secure her a friend and companion. And then, too--shemight as well be quite honest with herself--she had nourished aromantic hope that a love which commenced as did this shy, adoringtenderness, would give her something finer and more enduring than shehad hitherto known. Wrong, all wrong, from beginning to end! It hadbeen no better than those loves which made no secret of their aim anddid not strut about draped in false sentiment. The end of all was oneand the same. But besides this, it had come to mean more to her thanshe had ever dreamt of allowing. You could not play with fire, itseemed, and not be burned. Or, at least, she could not. She was brandedwith wounds. The fierce demands in her, over which she had no control, had once more reared their heads and got the mastery of her, and ofhim, too. There had been no chance, beneath their scorching breath, fora pallid delicacy of feeling. 

It did not cross her mind that she would conceal what she felt fromhim. Secrecy implied a mental ingenuity, a tiresome care of word anddeed. His eyes must be opened; he, too, must learn to say the horridword "end. " How infinitely thankful she had now reason to be that shehad not yielded to his persuasions, and married him! No, she had neverseriously considered the idea, even at the height of her folly. Butthen, she was never quite sure of herself; there was always a chancethat some blind impulse would spring up in her and overthrow herresolutions. Now, he must suffer, too--and rightly. For, after all, hehad also been to blame. If only he had not importuned her sopersistently, if only he had let her alone, nothing of this would havehappened, and there would be no reason for her to lie and tauntherself. But, in his silent, obstinate way, he had given her no peace;and you could not--she could not!--go on living unmoved, at the side ofa person who was crazy with love for you. 

For two nights, she slept little. On the third, worn out, she fell, soon after midnight, into a deep sleep, from which, the followingmorning, she wakened refreshed. 

When Maurice came, about half-past twelve, her eyes followed him with anew curiosity, as he drew up a chair and sat down at her bedside. Shewondered what he would say when he knew, and what change would comeover his face. But she made no beginning to enlightening him. In hispresence, she was seized by an ungovernable desire to be distracted, tobe taken out of herself. Also, it was not, she began to grasp, a caseof stating a simple fact, in simple words; it meant all thecircumstantiality of complicated explanation; it meant a still moremurderous tearing up of emotion. And besides this, there was anotherfactor to be reckoned with, and that was the peculiar mood he was in. For, as soon as he entered the room, she felt that he was differentfrom what he had been the day before. 

She heard the irritation in his voice, as he tried to persuade her tocome out to dinner with him. In fancy she saw it all: saw them walkingtogether to the restaurant, at a brisk pace, in order to waste none ofhis valuable time; saw dinner taken quickly, for the same reason; sawthem parting again at the house-door; then herself in the room alone, straying from sofa to window and back again, through the long hours ofthe long afternoon. A kind of mental nausea seized her at the thoughtthat the old round was to begin afresh. She brought no answer over herlips. And after waiting some time in vain for her to speak, Mauricerose, and, still under the influence of his illhumour, drew up thethree blinds, and opened a window. A cold, dusty sunlight poured intothe room. 

Louise gave a cry, and put her hands to her eyes. 

"The room is so close, and you're so pale, " he said in selfexcuse. "Doyou know you've been shut up in here for three days now?"

"My head aches. "

"It will never be any better as long as you lie there. Dearest, what isit? WHAT'S the matter with you?"

"You're unhappy about something, " he went on, a moment later. "What isit? Won't you tell me?"

"Nothing, " she murmured. She lay and pressed her palms to her eyeballs, so firmly that when she removed them, the room was a blur. Maurice, standing at the window, beat a tattoo on the pane. Then, with his backto her, he began to speak. He blamed himself for what he called thefolly of the past weeks. "I gave way when I should have been firm. Andthis is the result. You have got into a nervous, morbid state. But it'snonsense to think it can go on. "

For the first time, she was conscious of a somewhat critical attitudeon his part; he said "folly" and "nonsense. " But she made no comment;she lay and let his words go over her. They had so little import now. All the words that had ever been said could not alter a jot of what shefelt--of her intense inward experience. 

Her protracted silence, her heavy indifference infected him; and forsome time the only sound to be heard was that of his fingers drummingon the glass. When he spoke again, he seemed to be concluding anargument with himself; and indeed, on this particular day, Mauricefound it hard to detach his thoughts from himself, for any length oftime. 

"It's no use, dear. Things can't go on like this any longer. I've gotto buckle down to work again. I've . .. I. .. I haven't told you yet:Schwarz is letting me play the Mendelssohn. "

She thought she would have to cry aloud; here it was again: thechilling atmosphere of commonplace, which her nerves were expected tolive and be well in; the well-worn phrases, the "must this, " and "mustthat, " the confident expectation of interest in doings that did notinterest her at all. She could not--it would kill her to begin it anew!And, in spite of her efforts at repression, an exclamation forced itsway through her lips. 

At this, Maurice went quickly back to her. 

"Forgive me . .. Talking about myself, when you are not well. "

He knelt down beside the bed, and removed her hands from her face. Shedid not open her eyes, kept quite still. At this moment, she feltmainly curious: would the strange aversion to his touch return? He waskissing her palms, pressing them to his face. She drew a long, deepsigh: it did not come back. On the contrary, the touch of his hand waspleasant to her. He stroked her cheek, pushed back a loose piece ofhair from her forehead; and, as he did this, she was aware of the oldsense of well-being. Beneath his hand, irksome thoughts fell away. Backwards and forwards it travelled, as gently as though she were asick person. And, little by little, so gradually that, at first, sheherself was not conscious of them, other wishes came to life in heragain. She began to desire more than mere peace. The craving came overher to forget her self-torturings, and to forget them in a dizzy whirl. Reaching up, she put her arms round his neck, and drew him down. Hekissed her eyelids. At this she opened her eyes, enveloping him in alook he had learnt to know well. For a second he sustained it: his lifewas concentrated in the liquid fire of these eyes, in these eagerparted lips. She pressed them to his, and he felt a smart, like a bee'ssting. 

With a jerk, he thrust her arms away, and rose to his feet; to keep hisbalance he was obliged to grasp the back of a chair. Taking out hishandkerchief, he pressed it to his lip. 

"Maurice!"

"It's late . .. I must go . .. I must work, I tell you. " He stood staringat the drop of blood on his handkerchief. 

"Maurice!"

He looked round him in a confused way; he was strangely angry, andhasty to no purpose. "Won't you . .. Then you won't come out with me?"

"Maurice!" The word was a cry. 

"Oh, it's foolish! You don't know what you're doing. " He had found hiscoat, and was putting it on, with unsure hands. "Then, if . .. Thisevening, then! As usual. I'll come as usual. "

The door shut behind him; a minute later, the street-door banged. Atthe sound Louise seemed to waken. Starting up in bed, she threw a wildlook round the empty room; then, turned on her face, and bit a hole inthe linen of the pillow. 

Maurice worked that afternoon as though his future was conditioned bythe number of hours he could practise before evening. Throughout thesethree days, indeed, his zeal had been unabating. He would never haveyielded so calmly to the morbid fashion in which she had cooped herselfup, had not the knowledge that his time was his own again, beensomething of a relief to him. Yes, at first, relief was the word forwhat he felt. For, after making one good resolution on top of another, he had, when the time came, again been a willing defaulter. He hadallowed the chance to slip of making good, by redoubled diligence, hisfoolish mistake with regard to Schwarz. Now it was too late; though themaster had let him have his way in the choice of piece for the comingPRUFUNG, it had mainly been owing to indifference. If only he did notprove unequal to the choice now it was made! For that he was out of therut of steady work, was clear to him as soon as he put his hands to thepiano. 

But he had never been so forlornly energetic as on this particularafternoon. Yet there was something mechanical, too, about his playing;neither heart nor brain was in it. Mendelssohn's effective roulades ranthoughtlessly from his fingers: in the course of a single day, he hadcome to feel a deep contempt for the emptiness of these runs andflourishes. He pressed forward, however, hour after hour without abreak, as though he were a machine wound up for the purpose. But withthe entrance of dusk, his fictitious energy collapsed. He did not eventrouble to light the lamp, but, throwing himself on the sofa, coveredhis eyes with his arm. 

The twilight induced sensations like itself--vague, formless, intolerable. A sudden recognition of the uselessness of human strivinggrew up in him, with the rapidity of a fungus. Effort and work, ambition and success, alike led nowhere, were so many blind alleys:ambition ended in smoke; success was a fleeing phantom, which onesought in vain to grasp. To the great mass of mankind, it was more thanimmaterial whether one of its units toiled or no; not a single soul wasbenefited by it. Most certainly not the toiler himself. It was onlygiven to a few to achieve anything; the rest might stand aside early inthe day. Nothing of their labours would remain, except the scars theythemselves bore. 

He was unhappy; to-night he knew it with a painful clearness. The shockhad been too rude. For him, change had to be prepared, to comegradually. Sooner or later, no doubt, he would right himself again; butin the meantime his plight was a sorry one. It was his duty to protecthimself against another onslaught of the kind--to protect them both. For there was no blinking the fact: a few more weeks like theforegoing, and they would have been two of the wretchedest creatures onearth. They were miserable enough as it was, he in his, she in her ownway. It must never happen again. She, too, had doubtless becomesensible of this, in the course of the past three days. But had she?Could he say that? What had she thought?--what had she felt? And hetold himself that was just what he would never know. 

He saw her as she had lain that morning, her arms long and white on thecoverlet. He recalled all he had said, and tried to piece thingstogether; an inner meaning seemed to be eluding him. Again, in memory, he heard the half-stifled cry that had drawn him to her side, felt herhands in his, the springy resistance of her hair, the delicate skin ofher eyelids. Then, he had not understood the sudden impulse that hadmade him spring to his feet. But now, as he lay in the dusk, and summedup these things, a new thought, or hardly a thought so much as anintuition, flashed through his mind, instantly to take entirepossession of him--just as if it had all along been present, inwaiting. Simultaneously, the colour mounted to his face: he refused toharbour such a thought, and put it from him, angry with himself. But itwas not to be kept down; it rose again, in an inexplicable way--thissuggestion, which was like a slur cast on her. Why, he demanded ofhimself, should it not have occurred to him before?--once, twenty, ahundred times? For the same thing had often happened: times withoutnumber, she had striven to keep him at her side. Was its presenceto-day a result of his aimless irritation? Or was it because, afterholding him at arm's length for three whole days, she had asked, onreturning to him, neither affection nor comradeship, only the blindgratification of sense?

He did not know. But forgotten hints and trifles--words, acts, looks--which he had never before considered consciously, now recurredto him as damning evidence. With his arm still across his eyes, he layand let it work in him; let doubts and frightful uncertainties grow upin his brain; suffered the most horrible suffering of all--doubt of theone beloved. He seemed to be looking at things from a new point, seeingthem in different proportions--all his own poor hopes and beliefs aswell and, while the spasm of distrust lasted, he felt inclined to doubtwhether she had ever really cared for him. He even questioned his ownfeeling for her, seeking to discover whether it, too, had not beenbased on a mere sensual fancy. He saw them satisfying an instinct, without reason and without nobility. And, by this light, he read areason for the past months, which made him groan aloud. 

He rose and paced the room. If what he was thinking of her were true, then it would be better for both their sakes if he never saw her again. But, even while he said this, he knew that he would have to see her, and without loss of time. What he needed was to stand face to face withher, to look into her eyes, which, whatever they might do, had neverlearned to hide the truth, and there gain the certainty that hisimaginings were monstrous--the phantoms of a melancholy Octobertwilight. 

It was nearly nine o'clock, but there was no light in her room. Hepictured her lying in the dark, and was filled with remorse. But hesaid her name in vain; the room was empty. Lighting the lamp, he sawthat the bedclothes had been thrown back over the foot-end of theunmade bed, as though she had only just left it. The landlady said thatshe had gone out, two hours previously, without leaving any message. All he could do was to sit down and wait; and in the long half-hourthat now went by, the black thoughts that had driven him there wereforgotten. His only wish was to have her safe beside him again. 

Towards ten o'clock he heard approaching sounds. A moment later Louisecame in. She blinked at the light, and began to unfasten her veilbefore she was over the threshold. 

He gave a sigh of relief. "At last! Thank goodness! Where have youbeen?"

"Did you think I was lost? Have you been here long?"

"For hours. Where else should I be? But you--where have you been?"

Standing before the table, she fumbled with the veil, which she hadpulled into a knot. He did not offer to help her; he stood looking ather, and both voice and look were a little stern. 

"Why did you go out?"

She did not look at him. "Oh, just for a breath of air. I felt I . .. IHAD to do something. "

From the moment of her entrance, even before she had spoken, Mauricewas aware of that peculiar aloofness in her, which invariably madeitself felt when she was engrossed by something in which he had no part. 

"That's hardly a reason, " he said nervously. 

With the veil stretched between her two hands, she turned her head. "Doyou want another? Well, after you left me to-day, I lay and thought andthought . .. Till I felt I should go mad, if I lay there any longer. "

"Yes, but all of a sudden, like this! After being in bed for three days. .. To go out and . .. "

"But I have not been ill!"

"Go out and wander about the streets, at night. "

"I didn't mean to be so late, " she said, and folded the veil with anexaggerated care. "But I was hindered; I had a little adventure. "

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing much. A man followed me--and I couldn't get rid of him. "

"Go on, please!" He was astonished at the severity of his own voice. 

"Oh, don't be so serious, Maurice!" She had folded the veil to a neatsquare, stuck three hatpins in it, and thrown it with her hat andjacket on the sofa. "No one has tried to murder me, " she said, andraised both her hands to her hair. "I was standing before Haase'swindow--the big jeweller's in the PETERSTRASSE, you know. I've alwaysloved jewellers' windows--especially at night, when they're lighted up. As a child, I thought heaven must be like the glitter of diamonds onblue velvet--the Jasper Sea, you know, and the pearly floor. "

"Never mind that now!"

"Well, I was standing there, looking in, longer perhaps than I knew. Ifelt that some one was beside me, but I didn't see who it was, till Iheard a man's voice say: 'SCHONE SACHEN, FRAULEIN, WAS?' Of course, Itook no notice; but I didn't run away, as if I were afraid of him. Iwent on looking into the window, till he said: 'DARF ICH IHNEN ETWASSKAUFEN?'and more nonsense of the same kind. Then I thought it was timeto go. He followed me down the PETERSTRASSE, and when I came to theROSSPLATZ, he was still behind me. So I determined to lead him a dance. I've been walking about, with him at my heels, for over an hour. In aquiet street where there was no one in sight, he spoke to me again, andrefused to go away until I told him where I lived. I pretended toagree, and, on the condition that he didn't follow me any further, Igave him a number in the QUERSTRASSE; and in case he broke his. Word, Icame home that way. I hope he'll spend a pleasant evening looking forme. "

She laughed--her fitful, somewhat unreal laugh, which was alwaysdispleasing to him. To-night, taken in conjunction with her story, andher unconcerned way of telling it, it jarred on him as never before. 

"Let me catch him here, and I'll make it impossible for him to insult awoman again!" he cried. "For it is an insult though you don't see it inthat light. You laugh as you tell it, as if something amusing hadhappened to you. You are so strange sometimes. --Tell me, dearest, WHYdid you go out? When I asked you, you wouldn't come. "

"No. Then I wasn't in the mood. " Her smile faded. 

"No. But after dark--and quite alone--then the mood takes you. "

"But I've done it hundreds of times before. I can take care of myself. "

"You are never to do it again--do you hear?--Why didn't you give thefellow in charge?" he asked a moment later, in a burst of distrust. 

Again Louise laughed. "Oh, a German policeman would find that ratherfunny than otherwise. It's the rule, you know, not the exception. Andthe same thing has happened to me before. So often that it's literallynot worth mentioning. I shouldn't have spoken of it to-night if youhadn't been so persistent. Besides, " she added as an afterthought--and, in the face of his grave displeasure, she found herself wilfullyexaggerating the levity of her tone--"besides, this wasn't the kind ofman one gives in charge. Not the usual commercial-traveller type. AGraf, or Baron, at least. "

He was as nettled as she had intended him to be. "You talk just as ifyou had had experience in the class of man. --Do you really think itmakes things any better? To my mind, it's a great deal worse. --But thething is--you don't know how . .. You're not to go out alone again atnight. I forbid it. This is the first time for weeks; and see whathappens! And it's not you may well say it has happened to you before. Idon't know what it is, but--The very cab-drivers look at you as they'veno business to--as they don't look at other women!"

"Well, can I help that?--how men look at me?" she asked indignantly. "Do you wish to say it's my fault? That I do anything to make them?"

"No. Though it might be better if you did, " he answered gloomily. "Theunpleasant thing is, though you do nothing . .. That it's there all thesame . .. Something . .. I don't know what. "

"No, I don't think you do, and neither do I. But I do know that you arebeing very rude to me. " As he made no reply, she went on: "You will, however, at least give me credit for knowing how to keep men at adistance, though I can't hinder them from looking at me. --And, for yourown comfort, remember in future that I'm not an inexperienced child. There's nothing I don't know. "

"You needn't throw that up at me. "

"--I at YOU?" she laughed hotly. "That's surely reversing the order ofthings, isn't it? It ought to be the other way about. "

"Unfortunately it isn't. " The look he gave her was made up of mingledanger and entreaty; but as she took no notice of it, he turned away, and going to the window, leaned his forehead against the glass. Whataffected him so disagreeably was not the incident of the man followingher, but her light way of regarding it. And as the knowledge of thiscame home to him, he was impelled to go on speaking. "It's a trifle tomake a fuss about, I know, " he said. "And I shouldn't give it a secondthought, if I could ONLY feel, Louise, that you looked at it as I do. .. And felt about it as I do. You seem so indifferent to what itreally means--it's almost as if you enjoyed it. Other women aredifferent. They resent such a thing instinctively. While you don't eventake offence. And men feel that in you, somehow. That's what makes themlook at you and follow you about. That's what attracts them and alwayshas done--far too easily. "

"You among the rest!"

"For God's sake, hold your tongue! You don't know what you're saying. "

"Oh, I know well enough. " She put her hair back from her forehead, andpassed her handkerchief over her lips. "Instead of lecturing me in thisway, you might be grateful, I think, that I didn't accept the man'soffer and go somewhere to supper with him. It's dull enough here. Youdon't make things very gay for me. To-day, altogether, you are treatingme as if I were a criminal. "

He did not answer; the words "You among the rest!" went on sounding inhis ears. Yes, there was truth in them, a horrible truth. Who was he tosit in judgment?--either on her, or on those others who yielded to theattraction that went out from her. Had not he himself been in love withher before he even knew her name. Had he then accused her?--laid theblame at her door?

She caught a moth that was fluttering round the lamp, and carried it tothe window. When, a moment later, he turned and gave her anotherunhappy look, she felt a kind of pity for him, forced as he was, by hisnature, to work himself into unhappiness over such a trivial matter. 

"Don't let us say unkind things to each other, " she said slowly. "I'msorry. If I had known it would worry you so much, I shouldn't have saida word about it. That would have been easy. "

He felt her touch on his arm. As it grew warm and close, he, too, wasfilled with the wish to be at one with her again--to be lulled intosecurity. He pressed her hand. 

"Forgive me! To-day I've been bothered--pestered with black thoughts. Or else I shouldn't go on like this. "

Now she was silent; both stared out into the night. And then a strangething happened. He began to speak again, and words rose to his lips, ofwhich, a moment before, he had had no idea, but which he now knew forabsolute truth. He said: "I don't want to excuse myself; I'm jealous, Iadmit it. And yet there IS an excuse for me, Louise. For saying suchthings to you, I mean. To-night I--Have you ever thought, dear, what adifference it would make to us, if you had . .. I mean if I knew . .. That you had never cared for anyone . .. If you had never belonged toanyone but me? That's what I wish now more than anything else in theworld. If I could just say to myself: no one but me has ever held herin his arms; and no one ever will. Do you think then, darling, I couldspeak as I have to-night?"

A moment back, he had had no thought of such a thing; now, here it was, expressed, over his lips--another of those strange, inlying truths, which were existent in him, and only waited for a certain moment tocome to light. Strangest of all, perhaps, was the manner in which itimpressed itself on him. In it seemed to be summed up his trouble ofthe afternoon, his suspense and irritation of the later hours. It wasas if he had suddenly found a formula for them, and, as he stated it, he was dumbfounded by its far-reaching significance. 

A church-clock pealed a single stroke. 

"Oh, yes, perhaps, " said Louise, in a low voice. She could not rouseherself to a very keen interest in his feelings. 

"No, not perhaps. Yes--a thousand times yes! Everything would bechanged by it. Then I couldn't torment you. And our love would have acertainty such as it can now never have. "

"But you knew, Maurice! I told you--everything! You said it didn'tmatter. "

"And it doesn't, and never shall. But to make it undone, I wouldcheerfully give years of my life. You're a woman--you can't understandthese things--or know what we miss. You mine only--life wouldn't be thesame. "

For a moment she did not answer. Then the same toneless voice came outof the darkness at his side. "But I AM yours only--now. And it's afoolish thing to wish for the impossible. "

VII. 

It was, indeed, a preposterous thought to have at this date: no oneknew that better than himself. And as long as he was with Louise, hekept it at bay; it was a fatuous thing even to allow himself to think, considering the past, and considering all he knew. 

But next morning, as he sat with busy fingers, and a vacant mind, itreturned. He thrust it angrily away, endeavouring to concentrate hisattention on his music open before him. For a time, he believed he hadsucceeded. Then, the idea was unexpectedly present to him again, andthis time more forcibly than before; it came like a sharp, swift stabof remembrance, and forced an exclamation over his lips. Discouraged, he let his hands drop from the keys of the piano; for now he knew thathe would probably never be rid of it again. This was always the waywith unpleasant thoughts and impressions: if they returned, after hehad resolved to have done with them, they were henceforth part andparcel of himself, fixed ideas, against which his will was powerless. 

In the hope of growing used to the haunting reflection, and to theunhappiness it implied, he thought it through to the end--this strange, unsought knowledge, which had lain unsuspected in him, and now becamearticulate. Once considered, however, it made many things clear. Hecould even account to himself now, for the blasphemous suggestions thathad plagued him not twenty-four hours ago. If he had then not, allunconsciously, had the feeling that Louise had known too long and toowell what love was, to be willing to live without it, such thoughts asthose would never have risen in him. 

In vain he asked himself, why he should only now understand thesethings. He could find no answer. Throughout the time he had knownLouise, he had been better acquainted with her mode of life than anyoneelse: her past had lain open to him; she had concealed nothing, hadbeen what she called "brutally frank" with him. And he had protested, and honestly believed, that what had preceded their intimacy did notmatter to him. Who could foresee that, on a certain day, an idea ofthis kind would break out in him--like a canker? But this query tookhim a step further. Was it not deluding himself to say break out? Hadnot this shadow lurked in their love from the very beginning? Had itnot formed an invisible barrier between them? It was possible no, itwas true; though he only recognised its truth at the present time. Ithad existed from the first: something which each of them, in turn, hadfelt, and vaguely tried to express. It had little or nothing to do withthe fact that they had defied convention. That, regrettable though itmight be, was beside the mark. The confounding truth was, that, in anemotional crisis of an intensity of the one they had come through, itwas imperative to be able to say: our love is unparalleled, unique; or, at least: I am the only possible one; I am yours, you are mine, only. That had not been the case. What he had been forced to tell himselfwas, that he was not the first. And now he knew that, for some timepast, he had been aware that he would always occupy the second place;she was forced to compare him with another, to his disadvantage. And heknew more. For the first time, he allowed his thoughts to rove, unchecked, over her previous life, and he was no longer astonished atthe imperfections of the present. To him, the gradual unfolding oftheir love had been a wonderful revelation; to her, a repetition, and apaler and fainter one, of a tale she already knew by heart. And theknowledge of this awakened a fresh distrust in him. If she had lovedthat first time, as she had asserted, as he had seen with his own eyesthat she did, desperately, abandonedly, how had it been possible forher to change front so quickly, to turn to him and love anew? Was sucha thing credible? Was a woman's nature capable of it? And had it notbeen this constant fear, lest he should never be able to efface theimage of his predecessor, which, yesterday, had boldly stalked out as adread that what had drawn her to him, had not been love at all?

But this mood passed. He himself cared too well to doubt, for long, that in her own way she really loved him. What, however, he was obligedto admit was, that what she felt could in no way be counted the equalof his love for her: that had possessed a kind of primeval freshness, which no repetition, however passionately fond, could achieve. And yet, in his mind, there was still room for doubt--eager, willing doubt. Itwas due to his ignorance. He became aware of this, and, while broodingover these things, he was overmanned by the desire to learn, from herown lips, more about her past, to hear exactly what it had meant toher, in order that he might compare it with her present life, and withher feelings for him. Who could say if, by doing this, he might notdrive away what was perhaps a phantom of his own uneasy brain?

He resolved to make the endeavour. But he was careful not to let hersuspect his intention. First of all, he was full of compunction for hisbad temper of the night before; he was also slightly ashamed of what hewas going to do; and then, too, he knew that she would resent hisprying. What he did must be done with tact. He had no wish to make herunhappy over it. And so, when he saw her again, he did his best to makeher forget how disagreeable he had been. 

But the desire to know remained, became a morbid curiosity. If thiswere satisfied, he believed it would make things easier for both ofthem. But he was infinitely cautious. Sometimes, without a word, hetook her face between his hands and looked into her eyes, as if to readin them an answer to the questions he was afraid to put--looked rightinto the depth of her eyes, where the pupils swam in an oval of bluishwhite, overhung by lids which were finely creased in their folds, andnetted with tiny veins. But he said not a word, and the eyes remainedunfathomable, as they had always been. 

Meanwhile, he did what he could to set his life on a solid basis again. But he was unable to arouse in himself a very vital interest in hiswork; some prompter-nerve in him seemed to have been injured. Andoften, he was overcome by the feeling that this perpetual preoccupationwith music was only a trifling with existence, an excuse for not facingthe facts of life. He would sometimes rather have been a labourer, wornout with physical toil. He was much alone, too; when he was not withLouise, he was given over to his own thoughts, and, day by day, fostered by the long, empty hours of practice, these moved more andmore steadily in the one direction. The craving for a knowledge of thefacts, for certainty in any form--this became a reason for, a plea inextenuation of, what he felt escaping him. 

Louise did not help him; she assented to what he did without comment, half sorry for him in what seemed to her his wilful blindness, halfdisdainful. But she, too, made a discovery in these tame, flat days, and this was, that it was one thing to say to herself: it is over anddone with, and another to make the assertion a fact. Energy for theeffort was lacking in her; for the short, sharp stroke, which with hermeant action, was invariably born of intense happiness or unhappiness. Now, as the days went by, she asked herself why she should do it. Itwas so much easier to let things slide, until something happened ofitself, either to make the break, or to fill up the still greateremptiness in her life which a break would cause. And if he were contentwith what she could give him, well and good; she made no attempt todeceive him. And it seemed to her that he was content, though in asomewhat preoccupied way. But a little later, she acknowledged toherself that this was not the whole truth. There was habit to fightagainst--habit which could still give her hours ofself-forgetfulness--and one could not forgo, all at once, and under nopressing necessity to do so, this means of escape from thecheerlessness of life. 

But not for long did matters remain at this negative stage. Whereas, until now, the touch of her lips had been sufficient to chase away theshadows, the moment came, when, as he held her in his arms, Maurice wasparalysed by the abrupt remembrance: she has known all this before. Howwas it then? To what degree is she mine, was she his? What fine, ultimate shade of feeling is she keeping back from me?--His ardour wasdamped; and as Louise also became aware of his sudden coolness, theirhands sank apart, and had no strength to join anew. 

Thus far, he had gone about his probings with skill, questioning her ina roundabout way, trying to learn by means of inference. But afterthis, he let himself go, and put a barefaced question. The subject oncebroached, there was no further need of concealment, and he flung tactand prudence to the winds. He could not forget--he was goaded onby--the look she had given him, as the ominous words crossed his lips:it made him conscious once more of the unapproachable nature of thatfirst love of hers. He grew reckless; and while he had hitherto onlysought to surprise her and entrap her, he now began to try to wormthings out of her, all the time spying on her looks and words, ready totake advantage of the least slip on her part. 

At first, before she understood what he was aiming at, Louise had beenas frank as usual with him--that somewhat barbarous frankness, whichtook small note of the recipient's feelings. But after he had put adirect question, and followed it up with others, of which she tooclearly saw the drift, she drew back, as though she were afraid of him. It was not alone the error of taste he committed, in delving in matterswhich he had sworn should never concern him; it was his manner of doingit that was so distasteful to her--his hints and inuendoes. She grewvery white and still, and looked at him with eyes in which a nascentdislike was visible. 

He saw it; but it was now too late. Day by day, his preoccupation withthe man who had preceded him increased. The thought that continued toharass him was: if she had never known the other, all would now bedifferent. With jealousy, his state of mind had only as yet, in common, a devouring curiosity and a morbid imagination, which allowed him topicture the two of them in situations he would once have blushed tothink of. For the one thing that now mattered to him, what he wouldhave given his life to know, and would probably never know, wasconcerned with the ultimate ratification of love. What had she had forthe other that she could not give him?--that she wilfully refrainedfrom giving him? For that she did this, and always had refused him partof herself, was now as plain to him as if it had been branded on herflesh. And the knowledge undermined their lives. If she was gentle andkind, he read into her words pity that she could give him no more; ifshe were cold and evasive, she was remembering, comparing; if shereturned his kisses with her former warmth--well, the thoughts which inthis case seized him were the most murderous of all. 

His mental activity ground him down. But it was not all unhappiness;the beloved eyes and hands, the wilful hair, and pale, sweet mouth, could still stir him; and there came hours of wishless well-being, whenhis tired brain found rest. As the days went by, however, these grewrarer; it also seemed to him that he paid dearly for them, by beingafterwards more miserable, by suffering in a more active way. 

At times, he knew, he was anything but a pleasant companion. But he waslosing the mastery over himself, and often a trifle was sufficient tostart him off afresh on the dreary theme. Once, in a fit ofhopelessness, he made her what amounted to reproaches for her past. 

"But you knew!--everythinging!--I told you all, " Louise expostulated, and there were tears in her eyes. 

"I know you did. But Louise"--he hesitated, half contrite in advance, for what he was going to say--"it might have been better if you hadn'ttold me--everything, I mean. Yes, I believe it's better not to know. "

She did not reply, as she might have done, that she had forewarned him, afraid of this. She looked away, so that she should not be obliged tosee him. 

Another day, when they were walking in the ROSENTAL, she made himextremely unhappy by disagreeing with him. 

"If one could just take a sponge and wipe the past out, like figuresfrom a slate!" he said moodily. 

But, jaded by his persistency, Louise would not admit it. "We shouldhave nothing to remember. "

"That's just it. "

"But it belongs to us!" She was roused to protest by the under-meaningin his words. "It's as much a part of ourselves as our thoughts are--orour hands. "

"One is glad to forget. You would be, Louise? You wouldn't care if yourpast were gone? Say you wouldn't. "

But she only threw him a dark side-glance. As, however, he would notrest content, she flung out her hands with an impatient gesture. "HowCAN you torment yourself so! If you insist on knowing, well, then, Iwouldn't part with an hour of what's gone--not an hour! And you knowit. "

She caught at a few vivid leaves that had remained hanging on a barebranch, and carried them with her. 

He took one she held out to him, looked at it without seeing it, andthrew it away. "Tell me, just this once, something about your lifebefore I knew you. Were you very happy?--or were you unhappy? Do youknow, I once heard you say you had never known a moment'shappiness?--yes, one summer night long ago, over in the NONNE. How Ihoped then it was true! But I don't know. You've never told meanything--of all there must be to tell. "

"What you may have chanced to hear, by eavesdropping, doesn't concernme now, " Louise answered coldly. And then she shut her lips, and wouldsay no more. She was wiser than she had been a week ago: she refused tohand her past over to him in order that he might smirch it with histhoughts. 

But she could not understand him--understand the motives that made himwant to unearth the past. If this were jealousy, it was a kind she didnot know--a bloodless, bodiless kind, of which she had had noexperience. 

But it was not jealousy; it was only a craving for certainty in anyguise, and the more surely Maurice felt that he would never gain it, the more tenaciously he strove. For certainty, that feeling of utterreliance in the loved one, which sets the heart at rest and leaves themind free for the affairs of life, was what Louise had never given him;he had always been obliged to fall back on supposition with regard toher, equally at the height of their passion, and in that first andstretch of time, when it was forbidden him to touch her hand. The realtruth, the last-reaching truth about her, it would not be his to know. Soul would never be absorbed in soul; not the most passionate embracescould bridge the gulf; to their last kiss, they would remain separatebeings, lonely and alone. 

As this went on, he came to hate the vapidities of the concerto in Gmajor. Mentally to be stretched on a kind of rack, and, at the sametime, to be forced to reiterate the empty rhetoric of this music! Fromthis time forward, he could not hear the name of Mendelssohn without ashiver of repugnance. How he wished now, that he had been content withthe bare sincerity of Beethoven, who at least said no note more than hehad to say. 

One day, towards the end of November, he was working with even greaterdistaste than usual. Finally, in exasperation, he flapped the music to, shut the piano, and went out. A stroll along the muddy little railed-inriver brought him to the PLEISSENBURG, and from there he crossed theKONIGSPLATZ to the BRUDERSTRASSE. He had not come out with theintention of going to Louise, but, although it was barely four o'clock, the afternoon was drawing in; an interminable evening had to be gotthrough. He had been walking at haphazard, and without relish; now hispace grew brisker. Having reached the house, he sprang nimbly up thestairs, and was about to insert his key in the little door in the wall, when he was arrested by a muffled sound of voices. Louise was talkingto some one, and, at the noise he made outside, she raised hervoice--purposely, no doubt. He could not hear what was being said, butthe second voice was a man's. For a minute he stood, with his keysuspended, straining his cars; then, afraid of being caught, he wentdownstairs again, where he hung about, between stair and street-door, in order that anyone who came down would be forced to pass him. At theend of five minutes, however, his patience was spent: he remembered, too, that the person might be as likely to go up as down. He mountedthe stairs again, rang the bell, and had himself admitted by thelandlady. 

He thought she looked significantly at him as, with her usual pantomimeof winks and signs, she whispered to him that a gentleman was withFraulein--EIN SCHONER JUNGER MANN! Maurice pushed her aside, and openedthe sitting-room door. Two heads turned at his entrance. 

On the sofa, beside Louise, sat Herries, the ruddy little student ofmedicine with whom she had danced so often at the ball. He sat there, smiling and dapper, balancing his hard round hat on his knee, andholding gloves in his hand. 

Louise looked the more untidy by contrast: as usual, her hair was halfuncoiled. Maurice saw this in a flash, saw also the look of annoyancethat crossed her face at his unceremonious entry. She raised astonishedeyebrows. Then, however, she shook hands with him. 

"I think you know Mr. Herries. "

Maurice bowed stiffly across the table; Herries replied in kind, without discommoding himself. 

"How d'ye do? I believe we've met, " he said carelessly. 

As Maurice made no rejoinder, but remained standing in anuncompromising attitude, Herries turned to Louise again, and went onwith what he had been saying. He was talking of England. 

"I went back to Oxford after that, " he continued. "I've diggings there, don't you know? An old chum of mine's a fellow of Magdalen. I was justin time for eights' week. A magnificent walk-over for our fellows. Everseen the race? No? Oh, I say, that's too bad. You must come over forit, next year. "

"Mr. Herries only returned from England a few days ago, " explainedLouise, and again raised warning brows. "Do sit down. There's a chair. "

"Yes. I was over for the whole summer. Didn't work here at all, infact, " added Herries, once more letting his bright eyes snapshot theyoung man, who, on sitting down, laid his shabby felt hat in the middleof the table. 

"But now you intend to stay, I think you said?" Louise threw in atrandom, after they had waited for Maurice to fill up the pause. 

"Yes, for the winter semester, anyhow. And I've got to tumble to, witha vengeance. But I mean to have a good time all the same. Even thoughit's only Leipzig, one can have a jolly enough time. "

Again there was silence. Louise flushed. "I suppose you're hard at workalready?"

"Yes. Got started yesterday. Frogs, don't you know?--the effect of arare poison on frogs. "

This trivial exchange of words stung Maurice. Herries's manner seemedto him intolerably familiar, lacking in respect; and he kept tellinghimself, as he listened, that, having returned from England, thefellow's first thought had been of her. He had not opened his lipssince entering; he sat staring at them, forgetful of good manners; and, after a little, both began to feel ill at ease. Their eyes met for amoment in this sensation, and Herries cleared his throat. 

"What did you do with yourself in summer?" he queried, and could notrestrain a smile, at the fashion in which the other fellow was givinghimself away. "You weren't in England at all, I think you said? Wehoped we might meet there, don't you remember? Too bad that I had to gooff without saying good-bye. "

"No, I changed my mind and stayed here. But I shouldn't do it again. Itwas so hot. "

"Must have been simply beastly. "

Maurice jerked his arm; a vase which was standing at his elbow upset, and the water trickled to the floor. Neither offered to help him; hehad to stoop and mop it up with his handkerchief. 

For a few moments longer, the conversation was eked out. Then Herriesrose. With her hand in his, he said earnestly: "Now you must bemerciful and relent. I shan't give up hope. Any time in the nextfortnight is time enough, remember. 'Pon my word, I've dreamt of thosewaltzes of ours ever since. And the floor at the PRUSSE is stillbetter, don't you know? You won't have the heart not to come. "

From under her lids, Louise shot a rapid glance at Maurice. He, too, had risen; he was standing stiff, pale, and solemn, visibly waitingonly till Herries had gone, to make himself disagreeable. She smiled. 

"Don't ask me to give an answer to-day. I'll let you know--will thatdo? A fortnight is such a long time. And then you've forgotten thechief thing. I must see if I have anything to wear. "

"Oh, I say! . .. If that's all! Don't let that bother you. That blackthing you had on last time was ripping--awfully jolly, don't you know?"

Louise laughed. "Well, perhaps, " she said, as she opened the door. 

"Good business!" responded Herries. 

He nodded in Maurice's direction, and they went out of the roomtogether. Maurice heard their voices in laughing rejoinder, heard themtake leave of each other at the halldoor. After that there was a pause. Louise lingered, before returning, to open a letter that was lying onthe hall-table; she also spoke to Fraulein Grunhut. When she did comeback, all trace of animation had gone from her face. She busied herselfat once with the flowers he had disarranged, and this done, ordered herhair before the hanging glass. Maurice followed her movements with asarcastic smile. 

Suddenly she turned and confronted him. 

"Maurice! . .. For Heaven's sake, don't glare at me like that! If you'veanything to say, please say it, and be done with it. "

"You know well enough what I have to say. " His voice was husky. 

"Indeed, I don't. "

"Well you ought to. "

"Ought to?--No: there's a limit to everything! Take your hat off thattable!--What did you mean by bursting into the room when you heard someone was here? And, as if that weren't enough--to let everybody see howmuch at home you are--your behaviour--your unbearable want ofmanners. .. " She stopped, and pressed her handkerchief to her lips. 

"I believed you didn't care what people thought, " he threw in, moroselydefiant. 

"That's a poor excuse for your rudeness. "

"Well, at least tell me what that fool wanted here. "

"Have you no ears? Couldn't you hear that he has just come back fromEngland, and is calling on his friends?"

"Do you expect me to believe that?"

"Maurice!"

"Oh, he has always been after you--since that night. It's only becausehe wasn't here long enough . .. And his manner shows what he thinks ofyou . .. And what he means. "

"What do YOU mean? Do you wish to say it's my doing that he came hereto-day?--Don't you believe me?" she demanded, as he did not answer. 

"And you in that half-dressed condition!"

"Could I dress before him? How abominable you are!"

He tried to explain. "Yes. Because . .. I hate the sight of thefellow. --You didn't know he was coming, did you, or you wouldn't haveseen him?"

"Know he was coming!" She wrenched her hands away. "Oh! . .. "

"Say you didn't!"

"Maurice!--Be jealous, if you must! But surely, surely you don'tbelieve----"

"Oh, don't ask me what I believe. I only know I won't have that manhanging about. It was by a mere chance to-day that I came roundearlier; he might have been here for hours, without my suspecting it. Who knows if you would have told me either?--Would you have told me, Louise?"

"Oh, how can you be like this! What is the matter with you?"

He put his arms round her, with the old cry. "I can't bear you even tolook at another man. For he's in love with you, and has been, eversince you made him crazy by dancing with him as you did. "

With his hands on her shoulders, he rested his face on her hair. "Promise me you won't see him again. "

Wearily, Louise disengaged herself. "Oh there's always something freshto promise. I'm tired of it--of being hedged in, and watched, and nevertrusted. "

"Tired of me, you mean. "

She looked bitterly at him. "There you are again?"

"Just this once--to set my mind at rest. Just this once, Louise!--darling!"

But she was silent. 

"Then you'll let him come here again?"

"How do I know?--But if I promised what you ask, I should not be ableto go with him to the HOTEL DE PRUSSE on the fifteenth. "

"You mean to go to that dance?"

"Why not? Would there be any harm in my going?"

"Louise!"

"Maurice!" She mocked his tone, and laughed. "Oh, go at once, " shebroke out the next moment, "and order Grunhut never to let anothervisitor inside the door. Make me promise never to cross the thresholdalone--never to speak to another mortal but yourself! Cut off everypleasure and every chance of pleasure I have; and then you may be, butonly may be, content. "

"You're trying how far you can go with me. "

"Do you want me to tell you again that dancing is one of the things Ilove best? Not six months ago you knew and helped me to it yourself. "

"Yes, THEN, " he answered. "Then I could refuse you nothing. "

She laughed in an unfriendly way. He pressed her hand to his forehead. "You won't be so cruel, I know. "

"You know more than I do. "

"Do you realise what it means if you go?" In fancy, he was present, andsaw her passed from one pair of arms to another. 

"I realise nothing--but that I am very unhappy. "

"Have I no influence over you any more--none at all?"

"Can't you come, too, then?--if you are afraid to let me out of yoursight?"

"I? To see you----" He broke off with wrathful abruptness. "Thanks, Iwould rather be shot. " But at the mingled anger and blankness of herface, he coloured. "Louise, put an end to all this. Marry me--now, atonce!"

"Marry you? I? No, thank you. We're past that stage, I think. --Besides, are you so simple as to believe it would make any difference?"

"Oh, stop tormenting me. Come here!"--and he pulled her to him. 

From this day forward, the direction of his thoughts was changed. Theincident of Herries's visit, her refusal to promise what he asked, and, above all, the matter of the coming ball, with regard to which he couldnot get certainty from her: these things seemed to open up nightmaredepths, to which he could see no bottom. Compared with them, the vaguefears which had hitherto troubled him were only shadows, and likeshadows faded away. He no longer sought out superfine reasons for theirlack of happiness. The past was dead and gone; he could not alter jotor tittle of what had happened; he could only make the best of it. Andso he ceased to brood over it, and gave himself up to the present. Thefuture was a black, unknown quantity, but the present was his own. Andhe would cling to it--for who knew what the future held in store forhim? In these days, he began to suspect that it was not in the natureof things for her always to remain satisfied with him; and, ever moredaring, the horrid question reared its head: who will come after me?Another blind attraction only needed to seize her, and what, then, would become of constancy and truth? If he had doubted her before, hewas now suspicious from a different cause, and in quite a differentway. The face of the trim little man who had sat beside her, and smiledat her, was persistently present to him. He did not question herfurther; but the poison worked the more surely in secret; he never foran instant forgot; and jealousy, now wide awake, had at last a definiteobject to lay hold of. 

In his lucid moments, he knew that he was making her life a burden toher. What wonder if she did, ultimately, turn from him? But his evilmoods were now beyond command. He began to suspect deceit in heractions as well as in what she said. The idea that this other, thissmirking, wax-faced man, might somehow steal her from him, hung overhim like a fog, obscuring his vision. It necessitated continuedwatchfulness on his part. And so he dogged her, mentally, and in factuntil his own heart all but broke under the strain. 

One afternoon they walked to Connewitz. It had rained heavily duringthe night, and the unpaved roads were inchdeep in mud. The sky was alevel sheet of cloud, darker and more forbidding in the east. 

Their direction was Maurice's choice. Louise would have liked better tokeep to the town: for, though the streets, too, were mud-bespattered, there would soon be lights, and the reflection of lights in damppavements. She yielded, however, without even troubling to express herwish. But just because of the dirt and naked ugliness which met her, atevery turn, she was voluble and excited; and an exaggerated hilarityseized her at trifles. Maurice, who had left the house in a morecomposed frame of mind than usual, gradually relapsed, at her want ofrestraint, into silence. He suffered under her looseness of tongue andlaughter: her sallow, heavy-eyed face was ill-adapted to such moods;below her feverish animation there lurked, he was sure of it, a deadlymelancholy. He had always been rendered uneasy by her spurts of gaiety. Now in addition, he asked himself: what has happened to make her likethis?

Feeling his hostility, Louise grew quieter, and soon she, too, wassilent. Having gained his end, Maurice wished to atone for it, andslipping his arm through hers, he took her hand. For a few steps theywalked on in this fashion. Then, he received one of those suddenimpressions which flash on us from time to time, of having seen or donea certain thing before. For a moment, he could not verify it; then heknew, just in this way, arm in arm, hand in hand, had she come towardshim with Schilsky, that very first day. It was no doubt a habit ofhers. Like this, too, she would, in all probability, walk with the onewho came after. And the picture of Herries, in the place he nowoccupied, was photographed on his brain. 

He withdrew his arm, as if hers had burnt him: his mind was off againon its old round. But she, too, had to suffer for it. As he stood backto let her pass before him, on a dry strip of the path, his eye caughta yellow rose she was wearing at her belt. Till now he had seen itwithout seeing it. 

"Why are you wearing that rose?"

Louise looked down from him to the flower and back again. "Why?--youknow I like to wear flowers. "

"Where did you get it?"

She foresaw what he was driving at, and did not reply. 

"You were wearing a rose like that the first time I saw you. Do youremember?"

"How should I remember? It's so long ago. "

"Where had you got that one from, then?"

She repeated the same words. "How should I know now?"

"But I know. It was from him--he had given it to you. "

She raised her shoulders. "Perhaps. "

"Perhaps? No. For certain. "

"Well, and if so--was there anything strange in that?"

They walked a few paces without speaking. Then he asked: "Who has givenyou this one?"

"Maurice!" There was a note of warning in her voice. He heard it invain. "Give it to me, Louise. "

"No--let it be. It will wither soon enough where it is. "

"Please give it to me, " he urged, rendered the more determined by herrefusal. 

"I wish to keep it. "

"And I mean to have it. "

To avoid the threatening scene, she took the rose from her belt andgave it to him. He fingered it indecisively for a moment, then threw itover the bridge they were crossing, into the river. It struggled, filled with muddy water, and floated away. 

In the next breath, however, he asked himself ruefully what he hadgained by his action. She had given him the rose, and he had destroyedit; but he would never know how she had come by it, and what it hadbeen to her. 

He was incensed with himself and with her for the whole length of theSCHLEUSSIGER WEG. Then the inevitable regret for his hastinessfollowed. He took her limply hanging hand and pressed it. But there wasno responsive pressure on her part. Louise looked away from him, beyondthe woods, as far as she could see, in the vain hope of therediscovering some means of escape. 

VIII. 

In descending one evening the broad stair of the Gewandhaus, andforced, by reason of the crowd, to pause on every step, Madeleineoverheard the talk of two men behind her, one of whom, it seemed, hadall the gossip of the place at his fingertips. From what she caught upgreedily, as soon as Maurice's name was mentioned, she learnt asurprising piece of news. "A cat and dog life, " was the phrase used bythe speaker. As she afterwards picked her way through snow and slush, Madeleine confessed to herself that it was impossible to feel regret atwhat she had heard. Perhaps, after all, things would come right ofthemselves. In order to recover from his infatuation, to learn whatLouise really was, it had only been necessary for Maurice to beconstantly at her side. --Was it not Goethe who said that the way tocure a bad habit was to indulge it?

But a few days afterwards, her satisfaction was damped. Late oneafternoon she had entered Seyffert's Cafe, to drink a cup of chocolate. At a table parallel with the one she chose, two fellow-students wereplaying draughts. Madeleine had only been there for a few minutes, whentheir talk, which went on unrestrainedly between the moves of the game, leapt, with a witticism, to the unlucky pair in whom she wasinterested. To her astonishment, she now heard Louise's name, coupledwith that of another man. 

"Well, I never!" said the second of the two behind her. "I say it'syour move. --That's rough on Guest, isn't it?"

Madeleine turned in her chair and faced the man who had spoken. 

"Excuse me, who is Herries?" she asked without ceremony. 

In her own room that evening, she pondered long. It was one thing forthe two to drift naturally apart; another for Maurice to see himselfsuperseded. If this were true, jealousy, and nothing else, would be atthe root of their disunion. Madeleine felt very unwilling to mixherself up in the affair: it would be like plunging two clean handsinto dirty water. But then, you never could tell how a man would act ina case like this: the odds were ten to one he did something foolish. 

And so she wrote to Maurice, making her summons imperative. Thisfailing, she tried to waylay him going to or from his classes; but theonly satisfaction she gained, was the knowledge of his irregularity:during the week she waited she did not once come face to face with him. Next, she looked round her for some common friend, and found that hehad not an intimate left in all Leipzig. She wrote again, still moreplainly, and again he ignored her letter. 

One Saturday afternoon, she was walking along the crowded streets ofthe inner town. She had been to the MOTETTE, in the THOMASKIRCHE, andwas now on her way home, carrying music from the library. The snow hadmelted to mud, and sleet was falling. Madeleine had no umbrella; thecollar of her cloak was turned up round her ears, and her small felthat covered her head like an extinguisher. 

On entering the PETERSTRASSE, she was jostled together with Dove. Itwas impossible to beat a retreat. 

Dove seldom hurried. On this day, as on any other, he walked with asomewhat pompous emphasis through slush and stinging rain, holding hisumbrella straight aloft over him, as he might have carried a banner. Hewas shocked to find Madeleine without one, at once took her under his, and loaded himself with her music--all with that air ofmatter-of-course-ness, which invariably made her keen to decline hisaid. Dove was radiant; he prospered as do only the happy few; and hissatisfaction with himself, and with the world in general, was somehowexpressed even through the medium of his long neck and gently slopingshoulders. He greeted Madeleine with an exaggerated pleasure, accompanying his words by the slow smile which sometimes set herwondering if he were not, perhaps, being inwardly satirical at theexpense of other people, fooling them by means of his own foolishness. But, however this might be, the cynical feelings that took her in hispresence, mounted once more; she knew his symptoms, and an excess ofcontent was just as distasteful to her as gluttony, or wine-bibbing, orany other self-indulgence. 

However, she checked the desire to snub him--to snub until she hadsucceeded in raising that impossible ire, which, she believed, MUSTlurk somewhere in Dove--for, as she plodded along at his side, sheltered from the brunt of the weather, it occurred to her that herewas some one whom she might tap on the subject of Maurice. She openedfire by congratulating her companion on his recent performance in anABENDUNTERHALTUNG; at the time, even she had been forced to admit it acreditable piece of work. Dove, who privately considered itepochmaking, was outwardly very modest. He could not refrain fromletting fall that the old director had afterwards thanked him inperson; but, in the next breath, he pointed out a slip he had made in aparticular passage of the sonata. It had not, it was true, beenobserved, he believed, by anyone except Schwarz and himself; still ithad caused him considerable annoyance; and he now related how, as faras he could judge, it had come about. 

The current inquiries concerning the PRUFUNGEN then passed between them. 

"Poor old Schwarz!" said Madeleine. "We shall be few enough, this year. Tell me, what of Heinz? I haven't seen him for an age. "

"I regret to say that Krafft is making an uncommon donkey of himself, "said Dove. "He had another shocking row with Schwarz last week. "

"Tch, tch, tch!" said Madeleine. "Heinz is a freak. --And Maurice Guest, what about him?"

"I haven't seen him lately. "

"Indeed? How is that?"

"I'm not in the same class with him now. His hour has been changed. "

"Has it indeed?" said Madeleine thoughtfully. This accounted for herhaving been unable to meet Maurice. "What's he playing, do you know?"

"The G major Mendelssohn, I understand;" and Dove looked at her out ofthe corner of his eye. 

"How's he getting on with it?" she queried afresh, in the sameindifferent tone. 

"I really couldn't say. As I mentioned, he's in another class. "

"Oh, but you must have heard!" said Madeleine. "It's no use putting meoff, " she added, with determination. "I want to find out about Maurice. "

"And I fear I can't assist you. All I HAVE chanced to hear--mererumour, of course--is that . .. Well, if Guest doesn't pull himselftogether, he won't play at all. --By the way, what did you think ofJames the other night, in the LISZTVEREIN?"

"Oh, that his octaves were marvellous, of course!" said Madeleinetartly. "But I warn you, " she continued, "it's of no use changing thesubject, or pretending you don't know. I intend to speak of Maurice. "

"Then it must be to some one else, Miss Madeleine, not to me. "--Dovecould never be induced to call her Madeleine, as her other friends did. 

"And why, pray, are you to be the exception?"

"Because, as I've already mentioned, I don't see any more of Guest. Hemixes in a different set now. --And as for me, well, my thoughts areoccupied with, I trust, more profitable things. "

"What? You have thoughts, too?"

"I hope you don't claim a monopoly of them?" said Dove, and smiled inhis imperturbable way. As, however, Madeleine persisted, he grew grave. "It's not a pleasant subject. I should really rather not discuss it, Miss Madeleine. "

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, don't let us play the prudish or sentimental!"cried Madeleine, in a burst of impatience. "Of course, it isn'tpleasant. Do you think I should "--"bother with you, " was on hertongue. She checked herself, and substituted--"trouble you about it, ifit were? But Maurice was once a friend of ours--you don't deny it, Ihope?" she threw in challengingly; for Dove muttered something tohimself. "And I want to get at the truth about him. I'm sorrier than Ican say, to hear, on all sides, what a fool he's making of himself. "

Dove was suavely silent. 

"Of course, " continued Madeleine with a sarcastic inflection--"ofcourse, I can't expect you to see it as I do. Men look at these thingsdifferently, I know. Possibly if I were a man, I, too, should stand by, with my hands in my pockets, and watch a friend butt his head against astone wall--thinking it, indeed, rather good fun. "

She had touched Dove on a tender spot. "I can assure you, MissMadeleine, " he said impressively, as they picked their steps across adirty road--"I can assure you, you are mistaken. I think just asstrictly in matters of this kind as you yourself. --But as tointerfering in Guest's . .. In his private affairs, well, frankly, Ishouldn't care to try it. He was always a curiously reserved fellow. "

"Reserved--obstinate-pig-headed!--call it what you like, " saidMadeleine. "But don't imagine I'm asking you to interfere. I only wantyou to tell me, briefly and simply, what you know about him. And tomake it easier for you, I'll begin by telling you what I know. --It's anold story, isn't it, that Maurice once supplanted some one else in acertain young woman's favour? Well, now I hear that he, in turn, is tobe laid on the shelf. --Is that true, or isn't it?"

"Really, Miss Madeleine!--that's a very blunt way of putting it, " saidDove uncomfortably. 

"Oh, when a friend's at stake, I can't hum and haw, " said Madeleine, who could never keep her temper with Dove for long. "I call a spade aspade, and rejoice to do it. What I ask you to tell me is, whether I'vebeen correctly informed or not. Have you, too, heard Louise Dufrayer'sname coupled with that of a man called Herries?"

But Dove was stubborn. "As far as I'm concerned, Miss Madeleine, thetruth is, I've hardly exchanged a word with Guest since spring. Intohis . .. Friendship with Miss Dufrayer, I have never felt it my businessto inquire. I believe--from hearsay--that he is much changed. And Ifeel convinced his PRUFUNG will be poor. Indeed, I'm not sure that heshould not be warned off it altogether. "

"Could that not be laid before him?"

"I should not care to undertake it. "

There was nothing to be done with Dove; Madeleine felt that she waswasting her breath; and they walked across the broad centre of theROSSPLATZ in silence. 

"Do you never think, " she said, after a time, "how it would simplifylife, if we were able to get above it for a bit, and see things withoutprejudice?--Here's a case now, where a little real fellowship andsympathy might work wonders. But no!--no interference!--that's thechief and only consideration!"

It had stopped raining. Dove let down his umbrella, and carried itstiffly, at some distance from him, by reason of its dampness. "Believeme, Miss Madeleine, " he said, as he emerged from beneath it. "Believeme, I make all allowance for your feelings, which do you credit. Awoman's way of looking at these things is, thank God, humaner thanours. But it's a man's duty not to let his feelings run away with him. I agree with you, that it's a shocking affair. But Guest went into itwith his eyes open. And that he could do so--but there was alwayssomething a little . .. A little peculiar about Guest. "

"I suppose there was. One can only be thankful, I suppose, that he'smore or less of an exception--among his own countrymen, I mean, ofcourse. Englishmen are not, as a rule, given to that kind of thing. "

"Thank God they're not!" said Dove with emotion. 

"We'll, our ways part here, " said Madeleine, and halted. As she tookher music from him, she asked: "By the way, when shall we be at libertyto congratulate you?"

It was not at all "by the way" to Dove. However, he only smiled; for hehad grown wiser, and no longer wore his heart on his coat-sleeve. "Youshall be one of the first to hear, Miss Madeleine, when the news ismade public. "

"Thanks greatly. Good-bye. --Oh, no, stop a moment!" cried Madeleine. Itwas more than she could bear to see him turn away thus, beaming withself-content. "Stop a moment. You won't mind my telling you, I'm sure, that I've been disappointed with you this afternoon. For I've alwaysthought of you as a saviour in the hour of need, don't you know? Onedoes indulge in these fancy pictures of one's friends--a strong man, helping with tact and example. And here you go, toppling my pictureover, without the least remorse. --Well, you know your own businessbest, I suppose, but it's unkind of you, all the same, to destroy anillusion. One has few enough of them in this world. --Ta-ta!"

She laughed satirically, and turned on her heel, regardless of theeffect of her words. 

But Dove was not offended; on the contrary, he felt rather flattered. He did not, of course, care in the least about what Madeleine calledher illusions; but the mental portrait she had drawn of himcorresponded exactly to that attitude in which he was fondest ofcontemplating himself. For it could honestly be said that, hitherto, noone had ever applied to him for aid in vain: he was always ready, bothwith his time and with good advice. And the idea that, in the presentinstance, he was being untrue to himself, in other words, that he wasletting an opportunity slip, ended by upsetting him altogether. 

Until now, he had not regarded Maurice and Maurice's doings from thispoint of view. By nature, Dove was opposed to excess of any kind; hiswas a clean, strong mind, which caused him instinctively to draw backfrom everything, in morals as in art, that passed a certain limit. Nothing on earth would have persuaded him to discuss his quondamfriend's backsliding with Madeleine Wade; he was impregnated with thebelief that such matters were unfit for virtuous women's ears, and heapplied his conviction indiscriminately. Now, however, the notion ofMaurice as a Poor erring sheep, waiting, as it were, to be saved--thisidea was of undeniable attractiveness to Dove, and the more he revolvedit, the more convinced he grew of its truth. 

But he had reasons for hesitating. Having valiantly overcome his owndisappointments, first in the case of Ephie, then of pretty Susie, henow, in his third suit, was on the brink of success. The object of hispresent attachment was a Scotch lady, no longer in her first youth, andseveral years older than himself but of striking appearance, vivaciousmanners, and, if report spoke true, considerable fortune. Herappearance in Leipzig was due to the sudden burst of energy which ofteninspires a woman of the Scotch nation when she feels her youth escapingher. Miss MacCallum, who was abroad nominally to acquire the language, was accompanied by her aged father and mother; and it was with thesetwo old people that it behoved Dove to ingratiate himself; for, according to the patriarchal habits of their race, the former stillguided and determined their daughter's mode of life, as though she werethirteen instead of thirty. Dove was obliged to be of the utmostcircumspection in his behaviour; for the old couple, uprooted violentlyfrom their native soil, lived in a mild but constant horror at theiniquity of foreign ways. They held the profession of music to be anunworthy one, and threw up their hands in dismay at the number of youngpeople here complacently devoting themselves to such a frivolousobject. It was necessary for Dove to prove to them that a student ofmusic might yet be a man of untarnished principles and blame lesshonour. And he did not find the task a hard one; the whole bent of hismind was towards sobriety. He frequented the American church with hisnew friends on Sunday after noon; gave up skating on that day; wentwith the old gentleman to Motets and Passions; and eschewed the opera. 

But now, his ambition had been insidiously roused, and day by day itgrew stronger. If only the affair with Maurice had not been of sounsavoury a nature! Did he, Dove, become seriously involved, it mightbe difficult to prove to judges so severe as his future parents-in-law, that he had acted out of pure goodness of heart. For, that he would beembroiled, in other words, that he would have success in his mission, there was no manner of doubt in his mind--a conviction he shared withthe generality of mankind: that it is only necessary for an offender'seyes to be opened to the enormity of his wrongdoing, for him to bereasonable and to renounce it. 

While Dove hesitated thus, torn between his reputation on the one hand, his missionary zeal on the other; while he hesitated, an incidentoccurred, which acted as a kind of moral fingerpost. In thepiano-class, one day, just as Dove was about to leave the room, Schwarzasked him if he were not a friend of Herr Guest's. The latter had beenabsent now from two lessons in succession. Was he ill? Did no one knowwhat had happened to him? Dove made light of the friendship, butvolunteered his services, and was bidden to make inquiries. 

He went that afternoon. 

Frau Krause looked a little gruffer than of old; and left him to findhis own way to Maurice's room. In accordance with the new state ofthings, Dove knocked ceremoniously at the door. While his knucklesstill touched the wood, it was flung open, and he stood face to facewith Maurice. For a moment the latter did not seem to recognise hisvisitor; he had evidently been expecting some one else. 

Then he repaired his tardiness, ceased to hold the door, and Doveentered, apologising for his intrusion. 

"Just a moment. I won't detain you. As you were absent from the classall last week, Schwarz asked to-day if you were ill, and I said I wouldstep round and see. "

"Very good of you, I'm sure. Sit down, " said Maurice. His face changedas he spoke; a look of relief and, at the same time, of disappointmentflitted across it. 

"Thanks. If I am not disturbing you, " answered Dove. As he said thesewords, he threw a glance, the significance of which might have beengrasped by a babe, at the piano. It had plainly not been opened thatday. 

Maurice understood. "No, I was not practising, " he said. "But I have togo out shortly, " and he looked at his watch. 

"Quite so. Very good. I won't detain you, " repeated Dove, and sat downon the proffered chair. "But not practising? My dear fellow, how isthat? Are you so far forward already that it isn't necessary? Or is ita fact that you are not feeling up to the mark?"

"Oh, I'm all right. I get my work over in the morning. "

Now he, too, sat down, at the opposite side of the table. Clearing histhroat, Dove gazed at the sinner before him. He began to see that hiserrand was not going to be an easy one; where no hint was taken, it wasdifficult to insert even the thinnest edge of the wedge. He resolved touse finesse; and, for several of the precious moments at his disposal, he talked, as if at random, of other things. 

Maurice tapped the table. He kept his eyes fixed on Dove's face, asthough he were drinking in his companion's solemn utterances. Inreality, whole minutes passed without his knowing what was said. AtDove's knock, he had been certain that a message had come fromLouise--at last. This was the night of the ball; and still she hadgiven him no promise that she would not go. They had parted, theevening before, after a bitter quarrel; and he had left her, vowingthat he would not return till she sent for him. He had waited the wholeday, in vain, for a sign. What was Dove with his pompous twaddle tohim? Every slight sound on the stairs or in the passage meant more. Hewas listening, listening, without cessation. 

When he came back to himself, he heard Dove droning on, like a machinethat has been wound up and cannot stop. 

"Now, I hope you won't mind my saying so, " were the next words thatpierced his brain. "You must not be offended at my telling you; but youare hardly fulfilling the expectations we, your friends, you know, hadformed of you. My dear fellow, you really must pull yourself together, or February will find you still unprepared. "

Maurice went a shade paler; he was clear, now, as to the object ofDove's visit. But he answered in an off-hand way. "Oh, there's timeenough yet. "

"No. That's a mistaken point of view, if I may say so, " replied Dove inhis blandest manner. "Time requires to be taken by the forelock, youknow. "

"Does it?" Maurice allowed the smile that was expected of him to crosshis face. 

"Most emphatically--And we fellow-students of yours are not the onlypeople who have noticed a certain--what shall I say?--a certainabatement of energy on your part. Schwarz sees it, too--or I am muchmistaken. "

"What?--he, too?" said Maurice, and pretended a mild surprise. For someseconds now he had been mentally debating with himself whether heshould not, there and then, show Dove the door. He decided against it. A "Damn your interference!" meant plain-speaking, on both sides; itmeant a bandying of words; and more expenditure of strength than he hadto spare for Dove. Once more he drew out and consulted his watch. 

"Unfortunately, yes, " said Dove, ignoring the hint. "I assume it, fromsomething he let drop this afternoon. Now, you know, your Mendelssohnought to have been a brilliant piece of work--yes, the expression isnot too strong. And it still must be. My dear Guest, what I came to sayto you to-day--one, at any rate, of the reasons that brought me--was, that you must not allow your interest in what you are doing to flag atthe eleventh hour. "

Maurice laughed. "Oh, certainly not! Most awfully good of you totrouble. "

"No trouble at all, " Dove assured him. He flicked some dust from histrouser-knee before he spoke again. "I . .. Er . .. That is, I had sometalk the other day with Miss Wade. "

"Indeed!" replied Maurice, and was now able accurately to gauge themotor origin of Dove's appearance. "How is she? How is Madeleine?"

"She was speaking of you, Guest. She would, I think, like to see you. "

"Yes. I've rather neglected her lately, I'm afraid. --But when there'sso much to do, you know . .. "

"It's a pity, " said Dove, passing over the last words, and nodding hishead sagaciously. "She's a staunch friend of yours, is Miss Madeleine. I think it wouldn't be too much to say, she was feeling a little hurtat your neglect of her. "

"Really? I had no idea so many people took an interest in me. "

"That is just where you are mistaken, " said Dove warmly. "We all do. And for that very reason, I said to myself, I will be spokesman for therest: I'll go to him and tell him he must pull through, and do himselfcredit--and Schwarz, too. We are so few this year, you know. "

"Yes, poor old man! He has got badly left. "

"Yes. That was one reason. And then . .. But you assure me, don't you, that you will not take what I am going to say amiss?"

"Not in the least. It's awfully decent of you. But I'm sorry to say mytime's up. And every minute is precious just now--as you know yourself. "

He rose, and, for the third time, referred to his watch. After anineffectual attempt to continue, Dove was also forced to rise, with thebest part of his message unuttered. And Maurice hurried him, glum andcrestfallen, to the door, for fear of the still worse tactlessness ofwhich he might make himself guilty. 

They groped in silence along the dark lobby. For the sake of partingwith a friendly and neutral word, Maurice said, as he opened the door:"By the way, I hear we shall soon have to offer congratulations andgood wishes. "

To his surprise, Dove, who had already crossed the threshold, lookedblank, and drew himself up. 

"Indeed?" he said, and the tone was, for him, quite short. "I . .. Thefact is . .. I've no idea of what you are referring to. "

On re-entering his room, Maurice went back to the window, and taking uphis former attitude, began to beat anew that tattoo on the panes, whichhad been his chief employment during the day. His eyes were sore withstraining at the corner of the street, tired of looking at his watch tosee how the time passed. He had steadfastly believed that Louise wouldyield in this matter, and, at the last, recall him in a burst ofimpulsive regret. But, as the day crawled by without a word from her, his confident conviction weakened; and, at the same time, his resolvenot to go back till she sent for him, failed. He repeated, in memory, some of the bitter things they had said to each other, to see if he hadnot left himself a loophole of escape; but only with one half of hisbrain: the other was persistently occupied with the emptiness of thestreet below. When a clock struck half-past seven, he could bear thesuspense no longer: he put on his hat and coat, and went out. He felttired and unslept, and dragged along as if his body were a weight tohim. A fine snow was falling, which froze into icicles on the beards ofthe passers-by, and on the glistening pavements. The distance had neverseemed so long to him; it had also never seemed so short. 

A faint and foolish hope still refused to be extinguished. But it wentout directly he had unlocked the door; and he learned what he had cometo learn, without the exchange of a word. The truth met him, that heshould have been here hours ago, commanding, imploring; instead ofwhich he had sat at home, nursing a futile and paltry pride. 

The room was warm, and bright with extra candles. It was also in thatstate of confusion which accompanied an elaborate toilet on the part ofLouise. Fully dressed, she stood before the console-glass, and arrangedsomething in her hair. She did not turn at his entrance, but she raisedher eyes and met his in the mirror, without pausing in what she wasdoing. 

He looked over her shoulder at her reflected face. The cold steadiness, the open hostility of her look, took his strength away. He sat down onthe foot-end of the bed, and put his head in his hands. Minutes passed, and still he remained in this position. For what was the use of hisspeaking? Her mind was made up; nothing would move her now. 

Then came the noise of wheels in the street below. Uncovering his eyes, Maurice looked at her again; and, as he did so, his feelings which, until now, had had something of the nature of a personal wound, gaveplace to others with the rush of a storm. She wore the same sparkling, low-cut dress as on the previous occasion; arms and shoulders were asruthlessly bared to view. He remembered what he had heard said of herthat night, and felt that his powers of endurance were at an end. Witha stifled exclamation, he got up from the bed, and going past her, intothe half of the room beyond the screen, caught up the first object thatcame to hand, and threw it to the floor. It was a Dresden-china figure, and broke to pieces. 

Louise gave a cry, and came running out to see what he had done. "Areyou mad? How dare you! . .. Break my things. "

She held a candle above her head, and by its light, he saw, in the skinof neck and shoulder, all the lines and folds that were formed by theraising of her arm. He now saw, too, that her hair was dressed in adifferent way, that her dark eyebrows had been made still darker, andthat she was powdered. This discovery had a peculiar effect on him: itrendered it easier for him to say hard things to her; at the same time, it strengthened his determination not to let her go out of the house. Moving aimlessly about the room, he stumbled against a chair, andkicked it from him. 

"A month ago, if some one had sworn to me that you would treat me asyou are doing to-night, I should have laughed in his face, " he said atlast. 

Louise had put the candle down, and was standing with her back to him. Taking up a pair of long, black gloves, she began to draw one over herhand. She did not look up at his words, but went on stroking the kid ofthe glove. 

"You're only doing it to revenge yourself--I know that! But what have Idone, that you should take less thought for my feelings than if I werea dog?"

Still she did not speak. 

"You won't really go, Louise?--you won't have the heart to. --I say youshall not go! It will be the end--the end of everything!--if you leavethe house to-night. "

She pulled her dress from his hand. "You're out of your senses, Ithink. The end of everything! Because, for once, I choose to have somepleasure on my own account! Any other man would be glad to see thewoman he professes to care for, enjoy herself. But you begrudge it tome. You say my pleasures shall only come through you--who have taken tomaking life a burden to me! Can't you understand that I'm glad to getaway from you, and your ill-humours and mean, abominable jealousy. You're not my master. I'm not your slave. " She tugged at a recalcitrantglove. "It is absurd, " she went on a moment later. "All because I wishto go out alone for once. --But did I even want to? Why, if it means somuch to you, couldn't you have bought a ticket and come too? But no!you wouldn't go yourself, and so I was not to go either. It's on alevel with all your other behaviour. "

"I go!" he cried. "To watch you the whole evening in that man'sarms!--No, thank you! It's not good enough. --You, with your indecentstyle of dancing!"

She wheeled round, as if the insult had struck her; and for a momentfaced him, with open lips. Then she thought better of it: she laughedderisively, with a wanton undertone, in order to hurt him. 

"You would at least have had me under your own eyes. "

As she spoke, she nodded to the old woman who opened the door to saythat the droschke waited below. A lace scarf was lying on the table;Louise twisted it mechanically round her head, and began to strugglewith an evening cloak. Just as she had succeeded in getting it over hershoulders, Maurice took her by the arms and bent her backwards, so thatthe cloak fell to the floor. 

"You shall not go!"

She stemmed her hands against him, and determinedly, yet with caution, pushed herself free. 

"My dress--my hair! How dare you!"

"What do I care for your dress or your hair? You make me mad!"

"And what do I care whether you're mad or not? Take your hands away!"

"Louise! . .. For God's sake! . .. Not with that man. At least, not withhim. He has said infamous things of you. I never told you--yes, I heardhim say--heard him compare you with . .. Soiled goods he calledyou. --Louise! Louise!"

"Have you any more insults for me?"

"No, no more!" He leaned his back against the door. "Only this: if youleave this room to-night, it's the end. "

She had picked up her cloak again. "The end!" she repeated, and lookedcontemptuously at him. "I should welcome it, if it were. --But you'rewrong. The end, the real end, came long ago. The beginning was theend!--Open that door, and let me out!"

He heard her go along the hall, heard the front door shut behind her, and, after a pause, heard the deeper tone of the house door. Thedroschke drove away. After that, he stood at the window, looking outinto the pitch-dark night. Behind him, the landlady set the room inorder, and extinguished the additional candles. 

When she had finished, and shut the door, Maurice faced the empty room. His eyes ranged slowly over it; and he made a vague gesture thatsignified nothing. A few steps took him to the writing-table, on whichher muff was lying. He lifted it up, and a bunch of violets fell intohis hand. They brought her before him as nothing else could have done. Beside the bed, he went down on his knees, and drawing her pillow tohim, pressed it round his head. 

The end, the end!--the beginning the end: there was truth in what shehad said. Their love had had no stamina in it, no vital power. He waslosing her, steadily and surely losing her, powerless to helpit--rather it seemed as if some malignant spirit urged him to hasten onthe crisis. Their thoughts seemed hopelessly at war. --And yet, how heloved her! He made himself no illusions about her now; he understoodjust what she was, and what she would always be; the many conflictingimpulses of her nature lay bare to him. But he loved her, loved her:all the dead weight of his physical craving for her was on him again, confounding, overmastering. None the less, she had left him; she had noneed for him; and the hours would come, oftener and oftener, when shecould do without him, when, as now, she voluntarily sought the companyof other men. The thought suffocated him; he rose to his feet, andhastened out of the house. 

A little before one o'clock, he was stationed opposite the sideentranceto the HOTEL DE PRUSSE. He had a long time to wait. As two o'clockapproached, small batches of people emerged, at first at intervals, then more and more frequently. Among the last were Herries and Louise. Maurice remained standing in the shadow of some houses, until they hadparted from their companions. He heard her voice above all the rest; itrang out clear and resonant, just as on that former occasion when shehad drunk freely of champagne. 

With many final words and false partings, she and Herries separatedfrom the group, and turned to walk down the street. As they did so, Maurice sprang out from his hiding-place, and was suddenly in front ofthem, blocking their progress. 

At his unexpected apparition, both started; and when he roughly tookhold of her arm, Louise gave a short cry. Herries put out his hand, andsmacked Maurice's down. 

"What are you doing there? Take your hands off this lady, damn you!" hecried in broken German, not recognising Maurice, and believing that hehad to deal with an ordinary NACHTSCHWARMER. 

The savageness with which he was turned on, enlightened him. "Damnyou!" retorted Maurice in English. "Take your hands off her yourself IShe belongs to me--to me, do you hear?--and I intend to keep her. "

"You drunken cur!" said Herries. He had instinctively allowed Louise towithdraw her arm; now he stood irresolute, uncertain how she would wishhim to act. She had gone very pale; he believed she was afraid. "Isn'tthere a droschke anywhere?" he said, and looked angrily round. "Ireally can't see you exposed to this . .. This sort of thing, you know. "

Louise answered hurriedly. "No, no. And please go! I shall be allright. I'm sorry. --I had enjoyed it so much. I will tell you anothertime, how much. Good night, and thank you. No . .. PLEASE!> . .. Yes, adelightful evening. " Her words were almost inaudible. 

"Delightful indeed!" said Herries with warmth. Then he stood aside, raised his hat, and let them pass. 

Maurice had his hand on her wrist, and he dragged her after him, overthe frozen pavements, far more quickly than she could in comfort go, hampered as she was by snow-boots and by her heavy cloak. But shefollowed him, allowed herself to be drawn, without protest. She feltstrangely will-less. Only sometimes, when the thought of the indignityhe had laid upon her came over her anew, did she whisper: "How dareyou! . .. Oh, how dare you!"

He did not look at her, or answer her, and all might have gone well, sooddly did this treatment affect her, had he only persisted in it. Butthe mere contact of her hand softened him towards her; her nearnessworked on him as it never failed to do. He was exhausted, too, mentallyand physically, and at the thought that, for this night at least, hissufferings were over, he could have shed tears of relief. Slackeninghis pace, he began to speak, began to excuse and exculpate himselfbefore ever she had blamed him, endeavouring to make her understandsomething of what he had gone through. In advance, and before she hadexpressed it, he sought to break down her spirit of animosity. 

The longer he spoke, the harder she felt herself grow. He was at itagain, back at his eternal self-justification. Oh, why, for this oneevening at least, could he not have enforced his will, and have madeher do what he wished, without explanation! But the one plain, simpleway was the only way he never thought of taking. "I hate you anddespise you! I shall never forgive you for your behaviourto-night!--never!" And now it was she who pressed forward, to get awayfrom him. 

He turned the key in the house-door. But before he could open the door, Louise, pushing in front of him, threw it back, entered the house, and, the next moment, the door banged in his face. He had just time towithdraw his hand. He heard her steps on the stair, mounting, growingfainter; he heard the door above open and shut. 

For a second or two, he stood listening to these sounds. But when itdawned on him that she had shut him out, he pressed both hands againstthe wood of the heavy door, and tried to shake it open. He even beathis fist against it, and only desisted from this when his knucklesbegan to smart. 

Then, on looking down, he saw that the key was still in the lock. Hestared at it, stupidly, without understanding. But, yes--it was his ownkey; he himself had put it in. He took it out again, and holding it inhis hand, looked at it, after the fashion of a drunken man, who doesnot recognise the object he holds. And even while he did this, he burstinto a peal of laughter, which made him lean for support against thewall of the house. The noise he made sounded idiotic, sounded mad, inthe quiet street; but he was unable to contain himself. She had lefthim the key--had left the key! Oh, what a fool he was!

His laughter died away. He opened the door, noiselessly, as he hadlearned by practice to do, and as noiselessly entered the vestibule andwent up the stairs. 

IX. 

Several versions of the contretemps with Herries were afloatimmediately. All agreed in one point: Maurice Guest had been in anadvanced stage of intoxication. A scuffle was said to have taken placein the deserted street; there had been tears, and prayers, and shrillaccusing voices. In the version that reached Madeleine's cars, blowswere mentioned. She stood aghast at the disclosures the story made, andat all these implied. Until now, Maurice had at least striven topreserve appearances. If once you became callous enough not to carewhat people said of you, you wilfully made of yourself a social outcast. 

That same afternoon, as she was mounting the steps of theConservatorium, she came face to face with Krafft. They had not met forweeks; and Madeleine remarked this, as they stood together. But she wasnot thinking very deeply of him or his affairs; and when she asked himif he would go across to her room, and wait for her there, she wasfollowing an impulse that had no connection with him. As usual, Kraffthad nothing particular to do; and when she returned, half an hourlater, she found him lying on her sofa, with his arms under his head, his knees crossed above him. The air of the room was grey with smoke;but, for once, Madeleine set no limit to his cigarettes. Sitting downat the table, she looked meditatively at him. For some moments neitherspoke. 

But as Krafft drew out his case to take another cigarette, a tatteredvolume of Reclam's UNIVERSAL LIBRARY fell from his pocket, and spreaditself on the floor. Madeleine stooped and pieced it together. 

"What have we here?--ah, your Bible!" she said sarcastically: it was anovel by a modern Danish poet, who died young. "You carry it about withyou, I see. "

"To-day I needed STIMMUNG. But don't say Bible; that's an error oftaste. Say 'death-book. ' One can study death in it, in all its forms. "

"To give you STIMMUNG! I can't understand your love for the book, Heinz. It's morbid. "

"Everything's morbid that the ordinary mortal doesn't wish to bereminded of. Some day--if I don't turn stoker or acrobat beforehand, and give up peddling in the emotions--some day I shall write music toit. That would be a melodrama worth making. "

"Morbid, Heirtz, morbid!"

"All women are not of your opinion. I remember once hearing a womansay, had the author still lived, she would have pilgrimaged barefoot tosee him. "

"Oh, I dare say. There are women enough of that kind. "

"Fools, of course?"

"Extravagant; unbalanced. The class of person that suffers from adiseased temperament. --But men can make fools of themselves, too. Thereare specimens enough here to start a museum with. "

"Of which you, as NORMALMENSCH, could be showman. "

Madeleine pushed her chair back towards the head of the sofa, so thatshe came to sit out of the range of Krafft's eyes. 

"Talking of fools, " she said slowly, "have you seen anything of MauriceGuest lately?"

Krafft lowered a spike of ash into the tray. "I have not. "

"Yes; I heard he had got into a different hour, " she saiddisconnectedly. As, however, Krafft remained impassive, she took theleap. "Is there--can nothing be done for him, Heinz?"

Here Krafft did just what she had expected him to do: rose on hiselbow, and turned to look at her. But her face was inscrutable. 

"Explain, " he said, dropping back into his former position. 

"Oh, explain!" she echoed, firing up at once. "I suppose if afellow-mortal were on his way to the scaffold, you men would still askfor explanations. Listen to me. You're the only man here Maurice was atall friendly with--I shouldn't turn to you, you scoffer, you may besure of it, if I knew of anyone else. He liked you; and at one time, what you said had a good deal of influence with him. It might stillhave. Go to him, Heinz, and talk straight to him. Make him think of hisfuture, and of all the other things he has apparently forgotten. --Youneedn't laugh! You could do it well enough if you chose--if you weren'tso hideously cynical. --Oh, don't laugh like that! You're loathsome whenyou do. And there's nothing natural about it. "

But Krafft enjoyed himself undisturbed. "Not natural? It ought to be, "he said when he could speak again. "Oh, you English, you English!--wasthere ever a people like you? Don't talk to me of men and women, Mada. Only an Englishwoman would look at the thing as you do. How you wouldlove to reform and straitlace all us unregenerate youths! You've doneyour best for me--in vain!--and now it's Guest. Mada, you have thePuritan's watery fluid in your veins, and Cain's mark on your brow: themark of the raceace that carries its Sundays, its--language, itsdrinks, its dress, and its conventions with it, whereever it goes, andis surprised, and mildly shocked, if these things are not instantlyadopted by the poor, purblind foreigner. --You are the missionaries ofthe world!"

"Oh, I've heard all that before. Some day, Heinz, you really must cometo England and revise your impressions of us. However, I'm not going tolet you shirk the subject. I will tell you this. I know the MILIEUMaurice Guest has sprung from, and I can judge, as you never can, howtotally he is unfitting himself to return. The way he's going on--Ihear on all sides that he'll never 'make his PRUFUNG, ' now, and youyourself know his certificate won't be worth a straw. "

"There's something fascinating, I admit, " Krafft went on, "about apeople of such a purely practical genius. And it follows, as a matterof course, that, being the extreme individualists you are, you shouldquestion the right of others to their particular mode of existence. Forindividualism of this type implies a training, a culture, a grandstyle, which it has taken centuries to attain--WE have still centuriesto go, before we get there. If we ever do! For we are the artists amongnations--waxen temperaments, formed to take on impressions, to bemoulded this way and that, by our age, our epoch. You are themoralists, we are the . .. "

"The immoralists. "

"If you like. In your vocabulary, that's a synonym for KUNSTLER. "

"You make me ill, Heinz!"

"KUSS' DIE HAND!" He was silent, following a smoke-ring with his eyes. "Seriously, Mada, " he said after a moment--but there was no answeringseriousness in his face, which mocked as usual. "Seriously, now, Isuppose you wouldn't admit what this DRESSUR, this HOHE SCHULE Guest isgoing through, might be of service to him in the end?"

"No, indeed, I wouldn't, " she answered hotly. "You talk as if he were acircus-horse. Think of him now, and think of him as he was when hefirst came here. A good fellow--wasn't he? And full to the brim ofplans and projects--ridiculous enough, some of them--but the greatthing is to be able to make plans. As long as a man can do that, he'son the upward grade. --And he had talent, you said so yourself, andunlimited perseverance. "

"Good God, Madeleine" burst out Krafft. "That you should have been inthis place as long as you have, and still remain so immaculate!--Surelyyou realise that something more than talent and perseverance isnecessary? One can have talent as one has a hat . .. Use it or not asone likes. --I tell you, the mill Guest is going through may be hissalvation--artistically. "

"And morally?" asked Madeleine, not without bitterness. "Must one givethanks then, if one's friend doesn't turn out a genius?"

Krafft shrugged his shoulders. "As you take it. The artist has as muchto do with morality, as, let us say, your musical festivals have to dowith art. --And if his genius isn't strong enough to float him, he goesunder, UND DAMIT BASTA! The better for art. There are bunglersenough. --But I'll tell you this, " he rose on his elbow again, and spokemore warmly. "Since I've seen what our friend is capable of; how he hasallowed himself to be absorbed; since, in short, he has behaved In sucha highly un-British way--well, since then, I have some hope of him. Heseems open to impression. --And impressions are the only things thatmatter to the artist. "

"Oh, don't go on, please! I'm sick to death of the very words art andartist. "

"Cheer up, Mada! You've nothing of the kind in your blood. " Hestretched himself and yawned. "Nor has he, either, I believe. A facemay deceive. And a clear head, and unlimited perseverance, andintelligence, and ambition--none of these things is enough. The Lordasks more of his chosen. "

Madeleine clasped her hands behind her head, and tilted back her chair. 

"So you couldn't interfere, I see? Your artistic conscience wouldforbid it. "

"Why don't you do it yourself?" He scrutinised her face, with asarcastic smile. 

"Oh, say it out! I know what you think. "

"And am I not right?"

"No, you're not. How I hate the construction you put on things! In youreyes, nothing is pure or disinterested. You can't even imagine toyourself a friendship between a man and a woman. Such a thing isn'tknown here--in your nation of artists. Your men are too inflammatory, and too self-sufficient, to want their calves fatted for any but theone sacrifice. Girls have their very kitchen-aprons tied on them withan undermeaning. And poor souls, who can blame them for submitting!What a fate is theirs, if they don't manage to catch a man! Gossip andneedlework are only slow poison. "

"Now you're spiteful. But I'll tell YOU something. Such friendships asyou speak of are only possible where the woman is old--or ugly--orabnormal, in some way: a man-woman, or a clever woman, or some otherfreak of nature. Now, our women are, as a rule, sexually healthy. Theyknow what they're here for, too, and are not ashamed of it. Also, theystill have their share of physical attraction. While yours--good God! Iwonder you manage to keep the breed going!"

"Stop, Heinz!" said Madeleine sternly. "You are illogical, andindecent; and you know there's a limit I don't choose to let youpass. --You're wrong, too. You've only to look about you, here, withunbiassed eyes, to see which race the prettiest girls belong to. --Butnever mind! You only launch out in this way that you may not be obligedto discuss Maurice Guest. I know you. I can read you like a book. "

"You are not very old . .. Or ugly . .. Or abnormal, Mada. "

She smiled in spite of herself. "And are we not friends, pray?"

"Something that way. --But in all you say about Guest, the impersonalnote is wanting. You're jealous. "

"I'm nothing of the sort!--But you'll at least allow me to resentseeing a friend of mine in the claws of this . .. This vampire?"

Krafft laughed. "Vampire is good!--A poor, distraught--"

"Spare your phrases, Heinz. She's bad through and through, and stupidinto the bargain. "

"Lulu stupid? EI, EI, Mada! Your eyes are indeed askew. She has a touchof the other extreme--of genius. "

"NA!--Well, if this is another of your manifestations of genius, thenpermit me to hate--no, to loathe it, in all its forms. "

"GANZ NACH BELIEBEN! It's a privilege of your sex, you know. Therenever was a woman yet who didn't prefer a good, square talent. "

"A crack this way, and it's madness; that, and the world says genius. And some people have a peculiar gift for discovering it. Those who setthemselves to it can find genius in a flea's jump. "

"But has it never occurred to you, that the power of loving--that somewomen have a genius for loving?--No, why do I ask! For if I am a book, you are a poster--a placard. "

"What a people you are for words! You make phrases about everything. That's a ridiculous thing to say. If every fickle woman--"

"Fickle woman! fickle fiddle-sticks!" he interrupted. "That's only atag. The people whose business it is to decide these things--DIE HERRENDICHTER--are not agreed to this day whet it's man who's fickle orwoman. In this mood it's one, in that, the other; and the silly worldbleats it after them, like sheep. "

"Well, if you wish me to put it more plainly: if what you say weretrue, vice would be condoned. "

"Vice!!" he cried with derision, and sat up and faced her. "Vice!--mydear Mada!--sweet, innocent child! . .. No, no. A special talent isneeded for that kind of thing; an unlimited capacity for suffering; anentire renunciation of what is commonly called happiness! You hold thegood old Philistine opinions. You think, no doubt, of two lovers livingtogether in delirious pleasure, in SAUS UND BRAUS. --Nothing could befalser. A woman only needs to have the higher want in her nature, andthe suffering is there, too. She's born gifted with the faculty. And awoman of the type we're speaking of, is as often as not the flower ofher kind. --Or becomes it. --For see all she gains on her way: the merepassing from hand to hand; the intense impressionable nature; theprocess of being moulded--why, even the common prostitute gets acertain manly breadth of mind, such as you other women never arrive at. Each one who comes and goes leaves her something: an experience--a turnof thought--it may be only an intuition--which she has not had before. "

"And the contamination? The soul?" cried Madeleine; two red spots hadcome out on her cheeks. 

"As you understand it, such a woman has no soul, and doesn't need one. All she needs is tact and taste. "

"You are the eternal scoffer. "

"I never was more serious in my life. --But let us put it another way. What does a--what does any beautiful woman want with a soul, or brains, or morals, or whatever you choose to call it? Let her give thanks, night and day, that she is what she is: one of the few perfect thingson this imperfect earth. Let her care for her beauty, and treasure it, and serve it. Time enough when it is gone, to cultivate the soul--if, indeed, she doesn't bury herself alive, as it's her duty to do, insteadof decaying publicly. Mada! do you know a more disgusting, morehumiliating sight than the sagging of the skin on a neck that was oncelike marble?--than a mouth visibly losing its form?--the slendershoulders we have adored, broadening into massivity?--all the finespiritual delicacy of youth being touched to heaviness?--all thebarbarous cruelty, in short, with which, before our eyes, time treatsthe woman who is no longer young. --No, no! As long as she has herbeauty, a woman is under no necessity to bolster up her conscience, orto be reasonable, or to think. --Think? God forbid! There are plainwomen enough for that. We don't ask our Lady of Milo to be witty forus, or to solve us problems. Believe me, there is more thought, moreeloquence, in the corners of a beautiful mouth--the upward look of twodark eyes--than in all women have said or done from Sappho down. Springy colour, light, music, perfume: they are all to be found in thecurves of a perfect throat or arm. "

Madeleine's silence bristled with irony. 

"And that, " he went on, "was where the girl you are blaspheming hadsuch exquisite tact. She knew this. Her instinct taught her what wasrequired of her. She would fall into an attitude, and remain motionlessin it, as if she knew the eye must feast its full. Or if she did move, and speak--for she, too, had hours of a desperate garrulity--then onewas content, as well. Her vitality was so intense that her whole bodyspoke when her lips did; she would pass so rapidly from one position toanother that you had to shut your eyes for fear that, out of all thismultitude, you would not be able to carry one away with you. --If someof her ways of expressing herself in motion could be caught and fixed, a sculptor's fame would be made. --A painter's, if he could reproducethe trick she has of smiling entirely with her eyes and eyebrows. --Andthen her hands! Mada, I wonder you other women don't weep for envy ofthem. She has only to raise them, to pass them over her forehead, or tofinger at her hair, and the world is hers. --Do you really think a manasks soul of a woman with such eyes and hand as those?--Good God, no!He worships her and adores her. Were is only one place for him, andthat's on his knees before her. "

"Well, really, Heinz!" said Madeleine, and the spots on her cheeksburnt a dull red. "In imagination, do you know, I'm carried just threeyears backwards? Do you remember that spring evening, when you camerushing in here to me? 'I've seen the most beautiful woman in theworld, and I'm drunk with her. ' And how I couldn't understand? For Ithought her plain, just as I still do. --But then, if I remember aright, your admiration was by no means the platonic, artistic affair it . .. Hm! . .. Is now. "

"It was not. --But now, you understand, Mada, that I think a man makes agood exchange of career, and success, and other such accidents of hismaterial existence, for the right to touch these hands at will. The onething necessary is, that he be fit for the post. I demand of him thathe be a gourmand, a connoisseur in beauty. And it's here, mind you, that I have doubts of our friend. --Is it clear to you?"

"As clear as day, thanks. And you may be QUITE sure: of me neverapplying to you for help again. I shall respect your principles. "

"And mind you, I don't say Guest may not come out of the affair allright--enriched for the rest of his life. "

"Very good. And now you may go. I regret that I ever bothered with you. "

Krafft went across to where Madeleine was standing, put his hands onher two shoulders, and laid his head on his right arm, so that she, whowas taller than he was, looked down on the roundnesses of his curlyhair. "You're a good fellow, Mada--a good fellow! JA, JA--who knows! Ifyou had had just a little more of the EWIGWEIBLICHE about you!"

"Too much honour . .. But you don't expect Englishwomen to join yourharem, do, you?"

"There would have been a certain repose in belonging to a woman of yourtype. But it's the charm--physical charm--we poor wretches can't dowithout. "

"Upon my word, it's almost a declaration!" cried Madeleine, notunnettled. "Take my advice, Heinz. Hie you home, and marry the personyou ought to. Take pity on the poor thing's constancy. Unless, " sheadded, a moment later, with a sarcastic laugh, "since you're still soinfatuated with Louise, you persuade her to transfer her favours toyou. That would solve all difficulties in the most satisfactory way. She would have the variety that seems necessary to her existence; youcould lie on your knees before her all day long; and our friend wouldbe restored to sanity. Think it over, Heinz. It's a good idea. "

"Do you think she'd have me?" he asked, as he shook himself into hiscoat. 

"Heaven knows and Heaven only! Where Louise is concerned, nothing'simpossible--I've always maintained it. "

"Well, ta-ta!--You shall have early news, I promise you. "

Madeleine heard him go down the stair, whistling the ROSE OF SHARON. But he could not have been half-way to the bottom, when he turned andcame back. Holding her door ajar, he stuck a laughing face into theroom. 

"Upon my word, Mada, I congratulate you! It's a colossal idea. "

But Madeleine had had enough of him. "I'm glad it pleases you. Now go, go! You've played the fool here long enough. "

When he emerged from the house, Krafft had stopped whistling. He walkedwith his hands in his pockets, his felt hat pulled down over his eyes. At the corner, he was so lost in thought as to be unable to guide hisfeet: he stood and gazed at the pavement. Still on the same spot, hepushed his hat to the back of his head, and burst into such an eeriepeal of laughter that some ladies, who were coming towards him, startedback, and, picking up their skirts, went off the pavement, in order toavoid passing him too nearly. 

The following afternoon, at an hour when Maurice was safely out of theway, Krafft climbed the stair to the house in the BRUDERSTRASSE. 

The landlady did not know him. Yes, Fraulein was at home, she said;but-- Krafft promptly entered, and himself closed the door. 

Outside Louise's room, he listened, with bent head. Having satisfiedhimself, he turned the handle of the door and went in. 

Louise stood at the window, watching the snow fall. It had snoweduninterruptedly since early morning; out of the leaden sky, flake afterflake fluttered down, whirled, spun, and became part of the fallenmass. At the opening of the door, she did not stir; for it would onlybe Maurice coming back to ask forgiveness; and she was too unspeakablytired to begin all over again. 

Krafft stood and eyed her, from the crown of her rough head, to thebedraggled tail of the dressing-gown. 

"GRUSS' GOTT, LULU!"

At the sound of his voice, she jumped round with a scream. 

"You, Heinz! YOU!"

The blood suffused her face a purplish red; her voice was shrill withdismay; her eyes hung on the young man as though he were a returningspirit. 

With an effort, she got the better of her first fright, and took a steptowards him. "How DARE you come into this room!"

Krafft hung his wet coat over the back of a chair, and wiped his facedry of the melted snow. 

"No heroics, Lulu!"

But she could not contain herself. "Oh, how dare you, It's a mean, dishonourable trick--only you would do it!"

"Sit down and listen to what I have to say. It won't take long. Andit's to your own advantage, I think, not to make a noise. --May I smoke?"

She obeyed, taking the nearest chair; for she had begun to tremble; herlegs shook under her. But when he held out the case of cigarettes toher, she struck it, and the contents were spilled on the floor. 

"Look here, Lulu, " he said, and crossing his legs, put one hand in hispocket, while with the other he made gestures suitable to his words. "I've not come here to-day to rake up old sores. Time has gone overthem and healed them, and it's only your--NEBENBEI GESAGT, extremelybad-conscience that makes you afraid of me. I'm not here for myself, but--"

"Heinz!" The cry escaped her against her will. "For him? You've comefrom him!"

He removed his cigarette and smiled. "Him? Which? Which of them do youmean?"

"Which?" It was another uncontrollable exclamation. Then the expressionof almost savage joy that had lighted up her face, died out. "Oh, Iknow you! . .. Know you and hate you, Heinz! I've never hated anyone asmuch as you. "

"And a woman of your temperament hates uncommonly well. --No, all jokesaside, "--the word cut her; he saw this, and repeated it. "Joking apart, I've come to you to-day, merely to ask if you don't think your presentlittle affair has gone far enough?"

She was as composed as he was. "What business is it of yours?"

"Oh, none. Except that the poor fool was once my friend. "

She gave a daring laugh, full of suggestion. 

But Krafft was not put out by it. "Don't do that again, " he said. "Itsounds ugly; and you have nothing to do with ugliness, you know. No, Irepeat once more: this is not a personal matter. "

"And you expect me to believe that?"

He shrugged his shoulders. 

It was now she who smiled derisively. "Have you forgotten a certainevening in this room, three years ago?"

But he did not flinch. "Upon my word, if you are bold enough to recallthat!--However, the reminder was unnecessary. Tell me now: aren't youabout done with Guest?"

For still a moment, she fought to keep up her show of dignity. Then shebroke down. "Heinz!--oh, I don't know! Oh, yes, yes, yes--a thousandtimes, yes! Oh, I'm so tired--I can't tell you how tired I am--of thevery sight of him! I never wanted him, believe me, I didn't! He thrusthimself on me. It was not my doing. "

"Oh, come now! Tell that to some one else. "

"Yes, I know: you only think the worst of me. But though I was weak, and yielded, anyone would have done the same. He gave me no peace. --ButI've been punished out of all proportion to the little bit of happinessit brought me. There's no more miserable creature alive than I am. "

"What interests me, " continued Krafft, in a matter-of-fact tone, "is, how you came to choose so far afield from your particular type. It'swell enough represented here. "

She saw the folly of wasting herself upon him, and gave a deep sigh. Then, however, the same wild change as before came over her face. Stooping, she took his hand and fondled it. 

"Heinz! Now that you're here, do one thing--only one--for me! Have pityon me! I've gone through so much--been so unhappy. Tell me--there'sonly one thing I want to know. Where is he? Will he NEVER come back?For you know. You must know. You have seen him. "

She had sunk to her knees; her head was bent over his hand; she laidher cheek against it. Krafft considered her thoughtfully; his eye dweltwith approval on the broad, slender shoulders, the lithe neck--all thesure grace of the crouching body. 

"Will you do something for me, Lulu?"

"Anything!"

"Then let your hair down. "

He himself drew out the pins and combs that held it, and the black massfell, and lay in wide, generous waves round face and neck. 

"That's the idea! Now go on. "

Louise kissed his hand. "Tell me; you must know. "

"But is it possible that still interests you?"

"Oh, no! My life depends on it, that's all. You are cruel and bad; butstill I can speak to you--for months now, I haven't had a soul to speakto. Be kind to me this once, Heinz. I CAN'T go on living without him. Ihaven't lived since he left me--not an hour!--Oh, you're my last hope!"

"You'll have plenty of hopes in your life yet. "

"In those old days, you hated me, too. But don't bear malice now. There's nothing I won't do for you, if you tell me. I'll never speakto--never even think of you again. "

"I'm not so long-suffering. "

"Then you won't tell me?"

"I didn't say that. "

She crushed his hand between hers. "Here's the chance you asked for--tosave your friend! Oh, won't you understand?"

An inward satisfaction, of which only he himself knew the cause, warmedKrafft through at seeing her prostrate before him. But as he continuedto look at her, a thought crossed his mind, and quickly resolved, helaid his cigarette on the table, and put his hands, first on her head, amid the tempting confusion of her hair, which met them like a thickstuff pleasant to the touch, and from there to her shoulders, incliningher towards him. She looked up, and though her eyes were full of tears, her white face was alight in an instant with hope again, as he said:"Would you do something else for me if I told you?"

She strained back, so that she might see his face. "Heinz!--what isit?" And then, with a sudden gasp of comprehension:

"Oh, if that's all!--I will never see Maurice Guest again. "

"That's not it. "

"What is it then?"

"Will you listen quietly?"

"Yes, yes. " She ceased to draw back, let herself be held. But he felther trembling. 

He whispered a few words in her ear. Almost simultaneously she jerkedher head away, and, turning a dark red, stared incredulously at him. Then she sprang to her feet. 

"Oh, what a fool I am! To believe, for one instant, there was a humanspot in you I could get at!--Take your hands away--take them off me!Because I've had no one to speak to for so long: because I know YOUcould understand if you would--Oh, when a woman is down, anyone may hither. "

"Gently, gently!--You're too good for such phrases. "

"I'm no different from other women. It's only you--with your horriblethoughts of me. YOU! Why, you're no more to me than the floor I standon. "

"And matters are simplified by that very fact. --I can give you hisaddress, Lulu. "

"Go away! I may hurt you. I could kill you. --Go away!"

"And this, " said Krafft, as he put on his coat again, "is how a womanlistens quietly. Well, Lulu, think it over. A word at any time willbring me, if you change your mind. "

One evening, about a week later, Maurice entered Seyffert's Cafe. Theheavy snowfall had been succeeded by a period of thaw--of slush andgloom; and, on this particular night, a keen wind had risen, making thestreets seem doubly cheerless. It was close on nine o'clock, andSeyffert's was crowded with its usual guests--young people, who hadescaped from more or less dingy rooms to the warmth and light of thecafe, where the yellow blinds were drawn against the inclement night. The billiard table in the centre was never free; those players whoseturn had not yet come, or was over, stood round it, cigarette or largeblack cigar in hand, and watched the game. 

Maurice had difficulty in finding a seat. When he did, it was at atable for two, in a corner. A youth who had already eaten his supper, sat alone there, picking his teeth. Maurice took the opposite chair, and made his evening meal with a languid appetite. At the other side ofthe room was a large and boisterous party, whose leader wasKrafft--Krafit in his most outrageous mood. Every other minute, hissallies evoked roars of laughter. Maurice refrained from glancing inthat direction. When, however, his VIS-A-VIS got up and went away, hewas startled from his conning of the afternoon paper by seeing Krafftbefore him. The latter, who carried his beer-mug in his hand, took thevacated scat, nodded and smiled. 

Maurice was on his guard at once; for it seemed to him that they werebeing watched by the party Krafft had left. Putting down the newspaper, he wished his friend good-evening. 

"I've something to say to you, " said Krafft without responding, and, having drained his glass, he clapped the lid to attract the waiter'sattention. 

With the over-anxious readiness to oblige, which was becoming one ofhis most marked traits, and, in reality, cloaked a deathlyindifference, Maurice hung up his paper, and sat forward to listen. Crossing his arms on the table, Krafft began to speak, meanwhile fixinghis companion with his eye. Maurice was at first too bewildered by whathe heard to know to whom the words referred. Then, the colour mountedto his face; the nerves in his temples began to throb; and his handmoved along the edge of the table, in search of something to which itcould hold fast. --It was the first time the name of Louise had beenmentioned between them--and in what a tone!

"Heinz!" he said at last; his voice seemed not to be his own. "How dareyou speak of Miss Dufrayer like that!"

"PARDON!" said Krafft; his flushed, transparent cheeks were aglow, hislimpid eyes shone like stars. "Do you mean Lulu?"

Maurice grew pale. "Mind what you're saying!"

Krafft took a gulp of beer. "Are you afraid of the truth?--But just oneword, and I'm done. You no doubt knew, as every one else did, that Luluwas Schilsky's mistress. What you didn't know, was this;" and now, without the least attempt at palliation, without a single extenuatingword, there fell from his lips the quick and witty narration of anepisode in which Louise and he had played the chief parts. It was thekeynote of their relations to each other: the story, grossly told, of awoman's unsatisfied fancy. 

Before the pitiless details, not one of which was spared him, werechecked off, Maurice understood; half rising from his chair, he struckKrafft a resounding blow in the face. He had intended to hit the mouth, but, his hand remaining fully open, caught on the cheek, and with suchforce that the delicate skin instantly bore a white imprint of all fivefingers. 

Only the people in their immediate neighbourhood saw what had happened;but these sprang up; a girl gave a nervous cry; and in a minute, thefurther occupants of the room had gathered round them, thebilliard-players with their cues in their hands. Two waiters, napkin onarm, hastened up, and the proprietor came out from an inner room, andrubbed his hands. 

"MEINE HERREN! MEINE HERREN!"

Krafft had jumped to his feet; he was also unable to refrain fromputting his hand to his tingling face. Maurice, who was very pale, stood staring, like a person in a trance, at the mark, now deep red, which his hand had left on his friend's cheek. There was a solemnpause; all eyes were fixed on Krafft; and the stillness was only brokenby the proprietor's persuasive: "MEINE HERREN! MEINE HERREN!"

In half a minute Krafft had collected himself. Turning, he jauntilywaved his hand to those pressing up behind; though one side of his facestill blazed and burned. 

"Don't allow yourselves to be disturbed, gentlemen. The incident isclosed--for the present, at least. My friend here was carried away by amomentary excitement. Kindly resume your seats, and act as if nothinghad happened. I shall call him to account at my own convenience. --Butjust one moment, please!"

The last words were addressed to Maurice. Opening a notebook, Kraffttore out one of the little pages, and, with his customary indolence ofmovement, wrote something on it. Then he folded it through the middle, and across again, and gave it to Maurice. 

Maurice took it, because there seemed nothing else for him to do; healso, for the same reason, took his coat and hat, which some one handedto him. He saw nothing of what went on--nothing but the five outspreadmarks, which had run together so slowly. He had, however, enoughpresence of mind to do what was evidently expected of him; and, in thehush that still prevailed, he left the cafe. 

The wind sent a blast in his face. Round the corners of the streets, which it was briskly scavenging, it swept in boisterous gusts, whichbeat the gas-flames flat as soon as they reared themselves, and madethem give a wavering, uncertain light. Not a soul was visible. But inthe moment that he stood hesitating outside the brilliancy of theyellow blinds, the hubbub of voices burst forth again. He moved hastilyaway, and began to walk, to put distance between himself and the place. He did not shrink before the wind-scourged meadows, but fought his wayforward, till he reached the woods. There he threw himself facedownwards on the first bench he came to. 

A smell of rotting and decay met his nostrils: as if, from thethousands of leaves, mouldering under the trees on which they had oncehung, some invisible hand had set free thousands of odours, theremounted to him, as he lay, all that rich and humid earthiness thatbelongs to sunless places. And for a time, he was conscious of littleelse but this morbid fragrance. 

An open brawl! He had struck a man in the face before a crowd ofonlookers, and had as good as been ejected from their midst. From nowon, he was an outcast from orderly society, was branded as one who wasnot wholly responsible for his actions--he, Maurice Guest, who had everbeen so chary of committing himself. What made the matter seem stillblacker, too, in his own eyes, was the fact of Krafft having once beenhis intimate, personal friend. Now, he could never even think of himagain, without, at the same time, seeing the mark of his hand onKrafft's cheek. If the blow had remained invisible, it might have beenmore easily forgotten; but he had seen it, as it were, taken shapebefore him. --Or, had it only been returned, it would have helped tolessen the weight of his present abasement--oh, he would have given allhe had to have felt a return blow on his own face! Even the smallestloss of selfcontrol on the part of Krafft would have been enough. Butthe latter was too proud to give himself away gratuitously: hepreferred to take his revenge in the more unconventional fashion ofleaving his friend to bear the ignominy alone. 

Maurice lay stabbing himself with these and similar thoughts. Onlylittle by little did the tumult that had been roused in him abate. Then, and just the more vividly for the break in his memory, the grosswords Krafft had said, came back to him. Recalling them, he felt anintense bitterness against Louise. She was the cause of all hissufferings; were it not for her, he might still be leading a quiet, decent life. It was her doing that he was compelled to part, bit bybit, with his selfrespect. Not once, in all the months they had beentogether, had the smallest good come to him through her. Nothing butmisery. 

Now, he had no further rest where he was. He must go to her, and taxher with it, repeat what Krafft had said, to her very face. She shouldsuffer, too--and the foretasted anguish and pleasure of hotrecriminations dulled all other feelings in him. 

He rose, chilled to the bone from his exposure; one hand, which hadhung down over the bench, was wet and sticky from grasping handfuls ofdead leaves. 

It was past eleven o'clock. Louise wakened with a start, and, at thesight of his muddy, dishevelled dress, rose to her elbow. 

"What is it? What's the matter? Where have you been?"

He stood at the foot of the bed, and looked at her. The loose masses ofher hair, which had come unplaited, arrested his attention: he hadnever seemed to know before how brutally black it was. With his eyesfixed on it, he repeated what Krafft had told him. 

Louise lay with the back of one hand on her forehead, and watched himfrom under it. When he had finished, she said: "So Heinz has raked upthat old story again, has he?"

Maurice had expected--yes, what had he expected?--anger, perhaps, ordenial, or, it might be, vituperation; only not the almost impartialcomposure with which she listened to him. For he had not spared her aword. 

"Is that all you've got to say?" he cried, suffocated with doubt. "Thenyou . .. You admit it?"

"Admit it! Maurice! Are you crazy?--to wake me up for this! It happenedYEARS ago!"

His recoil of disgust was too marked to be ignored. Louise half sat upin bed again, supporting herself on one hand. Her nightgown was notbuttoned; he saw to the waist a strip of the white skin beneath, saw, too, how a long black strand of her hair fell in and lay on it. 

"You won't tell me you didn't know from the first there had been . .. Something between Heinz and me?" she cried, roused to defendherself. --"And look here, Maurice, as he told you that, it's my turnnow. I'll tell you why!" And sitting still more upright, she gave areason which made him grasp the knob of the bed-post so fiercely thatit came away in his hand. He threw it into a corner. 

"Louise! . .. You! to take such words on your tongue! Is there no shameleft in you?" His throat was dry and narrow. 

"Shame! You only mean the need for concealment. Before you had got me, there was no talk of shame. "

"Do you know what you're saying?"

"Oh, that's your eternal cry!" and, suddenly spurred to anger, she roseagain. "I know--yes, I know! Do you think I'm a fool? Why must youalone be so innocent! Why should you alone not know that I was onlyjealous of a single person, and that was Krafft?"

Maurice turned away. In the comparative darkness behind the screen, hesat down on the sofa, put his arms on the table, and his head on hisarms. He was exhausted, and found he must have slept as he sat; forwhen he lifted his head again, the hands of the clock had moved forwardby several hours. 

X. 

One morning towards the end of January, Krafft disappeared fromLeipzig, and some days later, the body of Avery Hill was found in asecluded reach of the Pleisse, just below Connewitz. Some workmen, tramping townwards soon after dawn, noticed a strip of light stufftwisted round a snag, which projected slightly above the surface of thewater. It proved to be the skirt of her dress, which had been caughtand held fast. Ambulance and police were summoned, and the body wasrecovered and taken to the police-station. 

The last of his friends to see Krafft was Madeleine, and the number ofthose interested in his departure, and in Avery's quick suicide, was solarge that she several times had to repeat her lively account of thelast visit he paid her. He had come in, one afternoon, and settlinghimself on the sofa, refused to be dislodged. As he was in one of hismost ambiguous moods, she left him to himself, and went on with herwork. 

On rising to go, he had stood for a moment with his hands on hershoulders. 

"Well, Mada, whatever happens, remember I was sorry you wouldn't haveme. "

"Oh, come now, Heinz, you never really asked me!"

It was snowing hard that night, a moist, soft snow that melted as ittouched the ground, and Krafft borrowed her umbrella. As usual, however, he returned before he could have got half-way down the stairs, to say that he had changed his mind and would not take it. 

"But you'll get wet through. "

"I don't want your umbrella, I tell you. --Or have you two?"

"No; but I'm not going out. --Oh, well, leave it then. And may you reapa frightful rheumatism!"

As he went down, for the second time, he whistled the ROSE OF SHARON:she listened to it grow fainter in the distance: and that was the lastshe or anyone had heard of Krafft. The following morning, his landladyfound a note on her kitchen-table, instructing her to keep hisbelongings for four weeks. If, by that time, they had not been claimed, she might sell them, and take the money obtained for herself. Only afew personal articles were missing, such as would be necessary for ahurried journey. --Of course, so Madeleine wound up the story, she hadnever expected Heinz to behave like a normal mortal, and to take leaveof his friends in the ordinary way, and she was also grateful to himfor not pilfering her umbrella, which was silvertopped. All the same, there was something indecent about his behaviour. It showed how littlehe had, at heart, cared for any of them. Only a person who thoroughlydespised others, would treat them in this way, playing with them up tothe last minute, as one plays with dolls or fools. 

Avery Hill was laid out in a small room adjoining the policestation. Itwas evening before the business of identification was over. Variousmembers of the American colony had to give evidence, and the servicesof the consul were called into play, for there were countlessdifficulties, formalities and ceremonies attached to this death byone's own hand in a foreign country. Before all the technical detailswere concluded, there were those who thought--and openly said so--thatan intending suicide might cast a merciful thought on the survivors. Only Dove made no complaint. He had been one of the first to learn whathad happened, and, in the days that followed, he ran to and fro, fromone BUREAU to another, receiving signatures, and witnessing them, bearing the whole brunt of surly Saxon officialdom on his own shoulders. 

Twenty-four hours later, it had been arranged that the body should beburied on the JOHANNISFRIEDHOF, and the consul was advised by cablegramto lay out the money for the funeral. Under the eyes of apolice-officer and a young clerk from the consul's office, Madeleine, assisted by Miss Jensen, went through the dead girl's belongings, andpacked them together. 

Miss Jensen kept up, in a low voice, a running commentary on thefalsity of men and the foolishness of women. But, at times, her naturalkindness of heart asserted itself, to the confusion of her theories. 

"Poor thing, poor young thing!" she murmured, gazing at a pair ofwell-patched boots which she held in her hand. "If only she had come tous!--and let us help her!"

"Help her?" echoed Madeleine in a testy way; she was one of those whothought that the dead girl might have shown more consideration for herfriends, standing, as they did, immediately before their PRUFUNGEN. "Could one help her ever having set eyes on that attractivescoundrel?-- And besides, it's easy enough thinking afterwards, onemight have been able to help, to do this and that. It's a mistake. People don't want help; and they don't give you a thank-you foroffering it. All they ask is to be let alone, to muddle and bungletheir lives as they like. "

As they walked home together, Miss Jensen returned once more to thesubject of Krafft's failings. 

"I've known many men, " she said, "one more credulously vain and stupidthan another; for unless a man is engaged in satisfying his bruteinstincts, he can be twisted round the finger of ANY woman. But Mr. Krafft was the only one I've met, who didn't appear to me to have asingle good impulse. "

The big woman's high-pitched voice grated on Madeleine. 

"You're quite wrong there, " she said more snappily than before. "Heinzhad as many good impulses as anyone else. But he had reduced theconcealing of them to a fine art. He was never happier than when he hadsucceeded in giving a totally false impression of himself. Take me forthis, for that!--just what I choose. Often it was as if he flung a boneto a dog: there! that's good enough for you. No one knew Heinz: each ofus knew a little bit of him, and thought it was all there was toknow. --He never showed a good impulse: that is as much as saying thathe swarmed with them. And no doubt he would have considered that, withregard to you, he had been entirely successful. You have the idea ofhim he meant you to have. "

"He was never her lover, " said Louise with a studied carelessness. 

Maurice, to whom nothing was more offensive than the tone of bravado inwhich she flaunted subjects of this nature, was stung to retaliation. 

"How do YOU know?"

"Well, if you wish to hear--from his own lips. "

"Do you mean to say you've spoken to Heinz about things of thatkind?--discussed his relations with other women?"

"Do you need reminding that I knew Heinz before I had ever heard ofyou?"

He turned away, too dispirited to cross words with her. The events ofthe past week had closed over his head as two waves Close over aswimmer, cutting off light and air. Since the night on which he hadleft his whilom friend the mark of his spread fingers as a partinggift, he had ceased to care greatly about anything. 

Compared with his pessimistic absorption in himself, Avery's suicideand Krafft's departure touched him lightly. For the girl, he had nevercared. As soon, though, as he heard that Krafft had disappeared, heturned out his pockets for the scrap of paper Heinz had given him thatevening in the cafe. But it threw no light on what had happened. It wasmerely an address, and, twist it as he would, Maurice could make nomore of it than the words: KLOSTERGASSE 12. He resolved to go throughthe street of that name in the afternoon; but, when the time came, heforgot about it, and it was not till next morning that he carried outhis intention. There was, however, nothing to be learned; number twelvewas a gunsmith's shop, and at his hesitating inquiry, if anything wereknown there of a music-student called Krafft, the owner of the shoplooked at him as if he were a lunatic, and answered rudely: was theHerr under the impression that the shop was an information BUREAU?

Louise was dressed to go out. Pressed as to her destination, she saidthat she was going to see the body. Maurice sought in vain to dissuadeher. 

"It's a perverse thing to do, " he cried. "You didn't care a fig for thegirl when she was alive. But now she can't forbid it, you go and stareat her, out of nothing but curiosity. "

"How do you know whether I cared for her or not?" Louise threw at him:she was tying on her' veil before the glass. "Do you think I tell youeverything?--And as for your 'perverse, ' it's the same with all I everdo. You have made it your business always to find my wishes absurd. "She took up her gloves and, holding them together, hit her muff withthem. "In this case, it doesn't concern you in the least. I don't askyou to come. I want to go alone. "

The more shattered and unsure he grew, the more self-assertive was she. There was an air of bravado in all she did, at this time--as in thematter of her determination to go to the dead-house--and she hurt him, with reckless cruelty, whenever a chance offered. Her pale mouth seemedonly to open to say unkind things, and her eyes weighed him with anironic contempt. To his jarred ears, her very laugh sounded less fine. At moments, she began almost to look ugly to him; but it was adangerous ugliness, more seductive than her beauty had ever been. Then, he knew that she was not too good for him, nor he for her, nor eitherof them for the world they lived in. 

They walked side by side to the mortuary. It was a very cold day, andLouise wore heavy furs, from which her face rose enticingly. Theattention she attracted was to Maurice like gall to a wound. 

There was not much difficulty in gaining admittance to the dead. Asmall coin changed hands, and a man in uniform opened the door. 

The post-mortem examination had been held that day, and the body wasswathed from head to foot in a white sheet. It lay on a long, projecting shelf, and a ticket was pinned on the wall at its head. Onthe opposite side of the room, on a similar shelf, was another shroudedfigure--the body of a workingman, found that morning on the outskirtsof the town, with an empty bottle which had contained carbolic acid byits side. The LEICHENFRAU, the public layer--out of the dead, told themthis; it was she, too, who drew back the sheet from Avery's face inorder that they might see it. She was a rosy, apple-cheeked woman, andher vivid colouring was thrown into relief by the long black cloak andthe close-fitting, black poke-bonnet that she wore. Maurice, for whomthe dead as such had no attraction, turned from his contemplation ofthe stark-stretched figure on the shelf, to watch the living woman. Theexuberance of her vitality had something almost insultant in thepresence of these two rigid forms, from whose faces the colour had fledfor ever. Her eyes were alert like those of a bird; her voice andmovements were loud and bustling. In thought he compared her to acarrion-crow. It was this woman's calling to live on the dead; shehastened from house to house to cleanse poor, inanimate bodies, whosedignity had departed from them. He wondered idly whether she gloatedover the announcements of fresh deaths, and mentally sped the dying. Did she talk of good seasons and of slack seasons, and look forward tothe spread of contagious disease?--Well, at least, she throve on hertrade, as a butcher thrives by continually handling meat. 

Louise had eyes only for the face of the dead girl. She stood gazing atit, with a curious absorption, but without a spark of feeling. TheLEICHENFRAU, having finished tying up a basket, crossed the room andjoined her. 

"EINE SCHONE LEICHE!" she said, and nodded, appreciating the fact thata stranger should admire what was partly her own handiwork. 

It was true; Avery's face looked as though it were modelled in wax. Shehad not been in the water for more than half an hour, had said thedoctor, not long enough to be disfigured in any way. Only her hairremained dank and matted, and, although it was laid straight out overthe bolster, it would probably never be quite dry again. No matter, continued the woman; on the morrow would come the barber, a good friendof hers, to dress it for the tomb; he would bring tongs and irons, andother heating-apparatus with him, and, for certain, would make a goodjob of it, so skilled was he: he had all the latest fashions inhair-dressing at his finger-ends. The face itself was as placid as ithad been in life; the lids were firmly closed--no peeping or squintinghere--and the lips met and rested on each other round and full. Seenlike this, it now became evident that his face was one of those whichare, all along, intended for death--intended, that is, to lie waxen andimmobile, to show to best advantage. In life, there had been too markeda discrepancy between the extreme warmth of the girl's colouring andthe extreme immobility of her expression. Now that the blood had, as itwere, been drained away to the last drop, now that temples and nostrilshad attained transparency, the fine texture of the skin and the beautyof the curves of lips and chin were visible to every eye. Only onehand, so the LEICHENFRAU babbled on, was convulsively closed, and couldnot be undone; and, as she spoke, she drew the sheet further down, anddisplayed the naked arm and hand: the long, fine fingers were clenched, the thumb inside the rest. Otherwise, Avery appeared to sleep, to sleepprofoundly, with an intensity such as living sleep never attainsto--the very epitome of repose. It seemed as if her eyelids werepressed down by some unseen force; and, in her presence, the feelinggained ground in one, that it was worth enduring much, to arrive at arest of this kind at last. 

"JA, JA, " said the woman, and rearranged the covering. "It's a pleasureto handle such a pretty corpse. That one there, now, "--with her chinshe pointed to the other figure, and made a face of disgust. "EINEKLIGER KERL! There was nothing to be done with him. "

"Let me see what he's like, " begged Louise. 

"It's an ugly sight, " said the woman. However, she pulled the sheetdown, and so far that not only the face, but also a part of the hairyblack breast was visible. 

Louise shuddered, yet the very horror of the thing fascinated her, andshe plied the woman with questions about the workings of the agonisingpoison that had been swallowed. After one hasty glance, Maurice hadturned away, and now stood staring out of the high, barred window intoa gloomy little courtyard, For him, the air of the room was hard tobreathe, owing to the faint, yet unmistakable odour, which even thewaxen figure of the girl had begun to exhale; and he marvelled howLouise, who was so sensitive, could endure it. 

Outside, both drew long breaths of the cold, evening air, and Louisebought a bunch of violets, which she pressed to nose and mouth. 

"Horrible, horrible!" she said, at the same time raising her shouldersin their heavy cape. "Oh, that man!--I shall never forget his face. "

"What do you go to such places for? You have only yourself to thank forit. " He, too, was aware that a needless and repellent memory had beenadded to their lives. 

"Oh, everything's my own fault--I know that. You are never to blame foranything!"

"Did I ask you to go there?--did I?"

But she only laughed in reply, through and through hostile to him; andthey walked for some distance in silence. 

"Why are you going this way?" he asked suspiciously, when she turnedinto a street that led in the opposite direction to that which theyshould have taken. 

"I'm not going home. I couldn't sit alone in the dark with that . .. That thing before my eyes. "

"Who asked you to sit alone?--Where are you going?"

"I don't know . .. Where I like. "

"That's no answer. "

"And if I don't choose to answer?--I don't want you. I want to bealone. I'm sick of your perpetual bad-temper, and your eternalself-righteousness. "

He laughed, just as she had done. The sound enraged her. 

"Oh, the dead at least are at peace!" she cried. 

"Yes! . .. Why don't you say it? You wish you were lying there--at peacefrom me!"

"Why should I say what you know so well?"

"Go and do it then!--who's hindering you?"

"For you?--kill myself for you?"

One word gave another; they pressed forward, in the falling dusk, liketwo distraught creatures, heedless of the notice they attracted, or ofwho should hear their bitter words. And because their gestures were, tosome extent, regulated by the conventions of the street, because theycould not face each other with flaming eyes, and throw out hands andarms to emphasise what they said, their words were all the more cruel. Louise made straight for home now; she escaped into the house, bangingthe door. Maurice strode down the street, in a tumult of resentment, vowing never to return. 

Avery Hill was buried the following afternoon. Maurice went to thefuneral, because, since he had seen the dead girl's body at themortuary, he had been invaded by a kind of pity for her, lying alone atthe mercy of barber and LEICHENFRAU. And so, towards three o'clock, hefought his way against a cutting wind to the JOHANNISFRIEDHOF. 

A mere handful of people stood round the grave. In addition to theEnglish chaplain, and a couple of diggers, there were present Dove, twoAmericans, and a young clerk from the consul's office, who was happy tobe associated, in any fashion, with the English residents. It was thecoldest day of that winter. Over the earth swept a harsh, dry wind, which cut like the blade of a knife, and forced stinging tears from theeyes. This wind had dried the frozen surface of the ground to theimpenetrability of iron; loose earth crumbled before it like powder. Grass and shrubs had shrivelled, blighted by its breath; the bare treeswere sooty-black against the sky. So intense was the prevailingsensation of icy dryness that it seemed as if the earth would neveragain know moisture. People's faces grew as wizened as the skins of oldapples; throats and lungs were choked by the grey dust, which whirledthrough the streets, and made breathing an effort. 

In the outlying cemetery it was still bleaker than in the shelter ofthe houses. Over this stretch of ground the wind swept as over thesurface of a sea. The grave-diggers related the extraordinarydifficulty they had had in digging the grave; the earth that had beenthrown up lay cracked into huge, frozen lumps. These two men stood inthe background while the service was going on, and stamped their feetand beat their hands, encased in monstrous woollen gloves, to keep theblood flowing. The English chaplain, a tall, cadaverous man, withsunken cheeks and a straw-coloured beard, had wound a red and whitecomforter over his surplice; the five young men pulled down theear-flaps of their caps, and stood, with high-drawn shoulders, burrowing their hands in their pockets. The chaplain gabbled the fewnecessary prayers: they were inaudible to his hearers; for the rushingwind carried them straight over his shoulder into space. He was notmore than a bare ten minutes over the service. Then the diggers cameforward to lower the coffin. Owing to the stiffness of their hands, theropes slid from their grasp, and the coffin fell forward into the hardyellow grave with a bump. The young men took the obligatory handfuls ofearth, and struck the side of the coffin with them as gently aspossible. With the last word still on his lips, the chaplain shut hisbook and fled; and the rest hastily dispersed. Maurice shook off theyoung clerk, who was murmuring unintelligible words of sympathy, andleft the cemetery in the wake of the two Americans, for whom a droschkewas in waiting to take them back to the town. 

"Waal, I'm sort o' relieved that wasn't MY funeral, " he heard one ofthem say. 

He walked at full speed to restore his famished circulation. When hewas in the heart of the town again, he entered a cafe; and there heremained, with his elbows on the little marble table, letting the scenehe had just come through pass once more before his mind. There had beensomething grotesquely indecent about the haste of every one concerned:the chaplain, gabbling like a parrot, out of regard for the safety ofhis own lungs; the hurry-skurry of the diggers, whose thoughts were nodoubt running on the size of their gratuities; the openly expressedsatisfaction of the few mourners, when they were free to hurry offagain, as in hurry they had arrived. Not one present but had countedthe minutes, at the expiry of which the dead girl would be consigned toher appointed hole. What an ending! All the talent, the incipientgenius, that had been in her, thrust away with the greatest possibledespatch, buried out of sight in the hideously hard, cold earth. Snuffed out like a candle, and with as little ceremony, was all thewarm, complex life that had made up this one, throbbing bit ofhumanity: for what it had been, not a soul alive now cared. And what anight, too, for one's first night underground! Brr!--At the thought ofit, he drank another cup of coffee, and a fiery, stirring liqueur. Butthe sense of depression clung to him, and, as he walked home, heregretted the impulse that had led him to attend the funeral. For allthe melancholy of valediction was his. The dead girl was free--and hehad a sudden vision of her, as she had lain in the mortuary, with thelook of superhuman peace on her face. Over the head of this, he wassarcastic at his own expense. For though she WERE being treated like apiece of lumber, what did it matter to her? Beneath the screening lid, she continued to sleep, tranquil, undisturbed. On the other hand, howabsurd it was that he, who had cared little for her in life, should inthis wise constitute himself her only mourner! And, mentally andphysically, he now jerked himself to rights, and even began to whistle, as he went, in an attempt to seem at harmony with himself. But the tunethat rose to his lips was Krafft's song, THE ROSE OF SHARON, and hestraightway broke off, in disgust and confusion. 

In his room, as soon as he had struck a match to light the lamp, he sawthat a letter was lying on the table. By the gradual spread of thelight, he made out that it bore an Austrian stamp, and directly he tookit in his hand, he recognised the writing. Heinz!--it was from Heinz!He tore open the envelope with unsteady fingers; what could Heinz haveto write to him about? Instinctively, he connected it in some way withthe events of the afternoon. But it was a very brief note, coveringhardly a page of the paper. Standing beside the lamp, Maurice held thesheet in the circle of light, and ran his eye over the few lines. Hetook them in, in a flash, that is to say, he read them automatically;but their sense did not penetrate his brain. He tried again, and stillhe could not grasp what they meant; still again, and slowly, word byword, till he could have repeated them by heart; but always withoutgetting at their inner meaning. Then, however, and all of a sudden, asif some inner consciousness had understood them, and now gave bodilywarning of it; suddenly, his knees began to shake, and he was forced tosit down. Sitting, he continued to stare at the page of writing beforehim, with contracted pupils. He commenced to read again, and even saidthe first line or two of the letter aloud, as if that might aid him. But the paper fell from his hand, and he gazed, instead, into the flameof the lamp, right into the inmost flame, till he was blind with it. His head fell forward, and lay on his hands, and on the rustling sheetof paper. 

"God in Heaven!"

He heard himself say it, and was even conscious of the fact that, likeevery mortal in the throes of a strong emotion, he, too, called on God. 

A long and profound silence ensued. It went on and on, persisted, wasabout to become eternal, when it was rudely broken by the sound of achild's cry. He raised his head. The walls swam round him: in spite ofthe coldness of the night and the fact that the room was unheated, hewas clammy with perspiration. The skin of his face, too, had apeculiar, drawn feeling, as if it were a mask that was too tight forit. He shivered. Then his eye fell on the letter lying open on thetable. Without a moment's hesitation, without waiting even to put thelamp out, he seized it, and went headlong from the house. 

But he was strangely unequal to exertion. He felt a craving forstimulant, and entering a wine-shop, drank a couple of cognacs. Hisstrength came back to him; people moved out of his way; he had energyenough to climb the stair, and to go through the business of unlockingthe door. 

At his abrupt entrance, Louise concealed something in a drawer, andturned the key on it. But Maurice was too self-absorbed to heed heraction, or consciously to hear her exclamation at his haggardappearance. He shut the door, crossed to where she was standing, and, without speaking, pulled her nearer to the lamp. By its light, hescanned her face with a desperate eagerness. 

"What is it? What's the matter?"

At the sound of her voice, the tension of the past hour relaxed. He lethis head fall on her shoulder, and shut his eyes, swaying as she swayedbeneath his weight. 

"Forgive me! . .. Forgive me!"

"You've been drinking, I think. " But she held still under his grasp. 

"Yes, I have. Louise! . .. Tell me it's a horrible mistake. Help me, youMUST help me!"

"How can I help you, if you won't tell me what the matter is?" Shebelieved him to be half drunk, and spoke as to a drunken person, without meaning much. 

"Yes, yes . .. I will. Only give me time. "

But he postponed beginning. Leaning more heavily on her, he pressed hislips to the stuff of her dress. He would have liked to sleep, justwhere he was; indeed, he was invaded by the desire to sleep, neveragain to unclose his eyes. But she grew restless, and tried to draw hershoulder away. Then he looked at her, and a feverish stream of words, half self-recriminative, half in self-defence, burst from his lips. Butthey had little to do with the matter in hand, and wereincomprehensible to her. "It has been a terrible nightmare. And onlyyou can drive it away. " As he spoke, he looked, with a suddensuspicion, right into her eyes. But they neither faltered nor grewuneasy. 

"It will turn out to be nothing, I know, " she said coldly. "You'realways devising some new way of tormenting me. "

Her words roused him. Fumbling in his pocket, he drew from it Krafft'sletter. "Is that nothing? Read it and tell me. I found it at home on mytable. "

Louise took it with unmoved indifference. But directly she saw whosehandwriting it was, her face grew grave and attentive. She looked backfrom the envelope to him, to see what he was thinking, to learn howmuch he knew. In spite of his roughness there was a hungry, imploringlook in his eyes, an appeal to her to put him out of misery, and in theway he desired. And, as always, before such a look, her own facehardened. 

"Read it! What he dares to write to me!"

Slowly, as if it were impossible for her to hurry, she drew the sheetfrom the crumpled envelope and smoothed it out. As she did so, she halfturned away. But not so far that he could not see the dark, disfiguringblood stain her neck and blotch her cheek--even her ear grew crimson. She read deliberately, lingering over each word, but the instant shehad finished, she crushed the paper to a ball, and threw it to theother end of the room. 

"The scoundrel!" she cried. "Oh, the scoundrel!" Clenching her twohands, she pressed them to her face. 

Maurice did not say a word; he hardly dared to draw breath, for fearsome sign of her guilt might escape him. Leaning against the table, hemarked each tell-tale quiver of lip or eyelid. 

"The blackguard!" she cried again, shaken by rage. "If I had him here, I'd strangle him with my own hands!"

He gloated over her anger. "Yes, " he said in a low voice. "I, too . .. Could kill him. "

There was a pause, in which each followed out a possible means ofrevenge. 

"Now you see, " he said. "When I got home--when I found that--I thoughtI should go mad. "

Reminded thus, of his share in the matter, Louise turned her head, andconsidered him. Her face was tense. 

"Forgive me!" said Maurice, and held out his hands to her. 

She gave him another look of the same kind. "I forgive YOU. What for?"

"Because . .. Since I got it, I've been thinking vile things. "

"Oh, that!" She moved away, and gave a curt laugh, which met him like astab. But she had no consideration for him: she had only room in hermind for Krafft's treachery. "I could kill him, " she said again. "Don't. .. . Leave me alone!"--this to Maurice, who was trying to takeher hand. "Don't touch me!"

"Not touch you!--why not?" In an instant his softness passed over intosuspicion: it was like a dry pile that had waited for the match. "I nottouch you?" he repeated. "Do you want to make me believe that what hesays there is true?"

"Believe what you like. "

"But that's just what I won't do. Turn here! Look me in the face! Nowtell me it's a lie. "

She struggled to free her hands. "You hurt me, Maurice! Let me go!"

"Be careful!--or I shall hurt you more than this. Now answer me!"

"You!--with your ridiculous heroics! Be careful yourself!"

His grip of her grew tighter. 

"For your precious peace of mind then--that you may not be kept insuspense: what Heinz says there is--true!"

He did not at once grasp what she meant. He stood staring stupidly ather, still clutching her hands. With a determined effort, Louisewrenched them away. 

"Don't you hear what I say? It's true--all true--every word of it!"

At the cruel repetition, he went pale, and after that, seemed to go ongrowing paler, until his face was like a sheet of paper. A horriblesilence ensued; neither dared to let go of the other's eyes. 

"My God!" he said at last. "My God!"

He sat down at the table, and buried his face in his arms. Louise didnot move; she stood waiting, her hands, which were red and sore, pressed against her sides. And as minutes passed, and he did not stir, she began in a vacant way to count the ticks of the clock. If he didnot speak soon, did not go on with what had to come, and get it over, she would be forced to scream. A scream was mounting in her throat. 

"When was it? . .. How? . .. Why?"

She made no answer. 

He straightened himself, holding on to the table. "And if that letterhadn't come, you wouldn't have told me?"

Again she did not reply. He sprang to his feet, interpreting herinability to bring forth a sound as mere contemptuous defiance. 

"WHY did you tell me? Did I need to know?" he cried, loudly, and, inthe confines of the room, his voice had the force of a shout. As shestill remained dumb, he leaned across the table and actually shouted ather. "Any more?--are there any more? He won't have been the only one. Tell me, I say! Good God! Don't you hear me?" The arteries in histemples were beating like two separate hearts. As nothing he said wouldmake her open her lips, he snatched up her hands again, and dragged hera few steps forward--this, to prove to himself that he had at leastbodily power over her. "How dare you stand there and say it's true! Youbrazen, shameless----!"

She thought he was going to strike her, and moved her head quickly toone side. The movement did not escape him; he was amazed at it, andhorrified by it. "You're afraid of me, are you? You expect to bebeaten, when you make a confession of that sort?" And as she kept herhead bent, in suspense, he shouted: "Very well, you shall havesomething to be afraid of . .. You--!" and lifting his hand, he struckher a blow on the shoulder. It was given with force, and she sank tothe floor, where she lay in a heap, screening her face with her arm. The first taste of his greater strength was like the flavour of bloodto a beast of prey. In her mind, she might defy him, physically he washer master; and he struck her, again and again. But he did not wringany sound from her. She lay face downwards, and let the blows fall. 

When his first onslaught of rage had spent itself, a glimmering ofreason returned to him. He staggered to his feet, and looked down withhorror at the prostrate figure. "My God, what am I doing?--what have Idone?" A sudden fear swept through him that he had killed her. 

But now, for the first time, she spoke. "It's true!" he heard her say. 

At these words, the desire actually to kill her was so overwhelmingthat he moved precipitately away, and, in order not to see her, pressedhis smarting hand to his eyes. But in the greater clearness of thoughtthis shutting off of externals brought with it, the ultimate meaning ofwhat she had done was revealed to him; he saw red through his closedlids, and, going back to her, he struck her anew. The knowledge that, under her dressing-gown, she had nothing on but a thin nightgown, gavehim pleasure; he felt each of the blows fall full and hard on her firmflesh. 

From time to time, she turned her face to cry: "It's true . .. It istrue!" deliberately inciting him to continue. 

But the moment came when his arm sank powerless to his side, when, ifhis life had depended on it, he could not have struck another blow. With difficulty, he rose to his feet; and such was the apathy that cameover him, that it was all he could do to drag himself to the sofa. Oncethere, he leaned back and closed his eyes. 

For half an hour or more, neither of them stirred. Then, when sheunderstood that he had done, that he was not coming back to her, Louisepulled herself into a sitting position, and from there to her feet. Shecould hardly stand; her head swam; not an inch of her body but achedand stung. Her exaltation had left her now; she began to feel sick, and, going over to the bed, she fell heavily upon it. 

Maurice heard her movements; but so incapable did he feel of furthereffort that lie remained sitting, with his eyes shut. A new soundroused him: she was shivering, and with such violence that the bedsteadwas shaken. After a crucial struggle with himself, he rose, and crossedthe room. She was lying outside the bedclothes. He pulled off aneider-down quilt, and spread it over her. As he did this, his arms wereround her, all the beloved body was in his grasp. When he had finished, he did not remove them, but, kneeling down beside the bed, pressed hisface to the quilt, and to the warm body below. 

And so the night wore away. 

XI. 

Throughout February, and the greater part of March, the HAUPTPRUFUNGENwere held in the Conservatorium: twice a week, from six to eighto'clock in the evening, the concert hall was crammed with an eagercrowd. To these concerts, the outside public was admitted, the criticswere invited, and the performances received notices in the newspapers;in short, the outgoing student was, for the first time, treated like areal debutant. Concerted music was accompanied by the full orchestra;the large gallery that ran round the hall was opened up; and the girls, whose eager faces hung over its edge, were more brightly decked thanusual, in ribbons and laces. Some of those who stepped down theplatform seemed thoroughly to relish their first taste of publicity;others, on the contrary, were awkward and abashed, and did not ventureto notice the encouragement that greeted their entrance. There wereplayers as composed as the most hardened virtuosi; others, again, whowere overcome by stage-fright to such an extent that they barelyescaped a total fiasco. 

The success of the year was Dove, in his performance of Chopin'sConcerto in E minor. Dove's unshakable self-possession was here ofimmense value to him. Not a note was missed, not a turn slurred; theruns and brilliant passage-work of the concerto left his fingers likeshowers of pearls; his touch had the necessary delicacy, and, inaddition to this, his reading was quite a revelation to his friends inthe matter of TEMPERAMENT. It is true that Schwarz prohibited anyundignified display of the emotional side of Chopin; the interpretationhad to be on classical lines; but even the most determined opponents ofSchwarz's method were forced to acknowledge that Dove made no mean showof the poetic contents of the music. The master himself, in hisimperturbable way--he chose to act as if, all along, he had had thissurprise for people up his sleeve--the master was in transports. Hisstern face wore an almost genial expression; he smiled, and talkedloudly, and, when the performance was over, hurried to and fro, full ofimportance, shaking hands and accepting congratulations, with a fineshade of reserve. Dove's fellow-pupils were enraptured for Schwarz'ssake; for, undeniably, the master's numbers this year were poor, compared with those of other teachers. It behoved the remainder to makethe most of this isolated triumph; they did so, and were entertained bySchwarz at a special dinner, where many healths were drunk. 

Those who had "made their PRUFUNG, " as the phrase ran, were, as a rule, glad to leave Leipzig when the ordeal was behind them. But Dove, who, on the day following his performance, when his name was to be read inthe newspapers accompanied by various epithets of praise, had proposedand been accepted, and was this time returning to England a solemnlyengaged man--Dove waited a week for his fiancee and her family, who hadnot been prepared for so sudden a move. He was the man of the hour. Asa response to the flattering notices, he had called on all his critics, and been received by several; and he could hardly walk a street-length, without running the gauntlet of some belated congratulation. Schwarzhad spoken seriously to him about prosecuting his studies for a furtheryear, with the not impossible prospect of a performance in theGewandhaus at the end of it; but Dove had laid before his master thereasons why this could not be: he was no longer a free man; there werenow other wishes to be consulted in addition to his own. Besides, ifthe truth must be told, Dove had higher aims, and these led himimperatively back to England. 

Madeleine was ready to leave a couple of days after her lastperformance. Her plans for the future were fixed and sure. She had longago given up making adventurous schemes for storming America: that hadmerely been her contribution to the romance of the place. Now she washastening away to spend the month of March in Paris; she was not due atthe school to which she was returning till the end of April; and, inParis, she intended to take a brief course of finishing lessons, to ruboff what she called "German thoroughness. " She, too, had made a highlysuccessful exit, though without creating a furore like Dove. Since allshe did was well done, it was not possible for her to be a surprise toanyone. 

And finally, the rush she had lived in for weeks past, was over, thelast afternoon had come, and, in its course, she went to the railwaystation to make arrangements about her luggage. On her way home, sheentered Klemm's music-shop, where she stood, for a considerable time, taking leave of one and another. When she emerged again, the town hadassumed that spectral look, which, towards evening, made the quaint oldgabled streets so attractive. 

For the first time, Madeleine felt something akin to regret at havingto leave. She had enjoyed, and made the most of, her years of study;but she was now quite ready to advance, curious to attack the future, and to dominate that also. Still, the dusk on the familiar streetsinclined her to feel sentimental. "This time tomorrow, I'll be hundredsof miles away, " she said to herself, "and probably shall never see theold place again. " As she walked, she looked back upon her residencethere--already somewhat in the light of a remembrance--weighing what ithad been worth to her. Part of it was intimately associated withMaurice Guest, and thus she recalled him, too. Of late he had passedout of her life; she had been too busy to think of him. Now, however, that she was at the end of this period, the fancy seized her to see himagain; and she took a resolution which had, perhaps, been dormant inher for some time. 

"I don't see why I shouldn't, " she reasoned. "No one will know. Andeven if they do, I'm leaving, and it won't matter. "

And so she pulled her hat further over her face, and brisked up hersteps in the direction of the BRAUSTRASSE--a street which she disliked, and never entered if she could avoid it. If he had lived in a betterneighbourhood, things might have gone better with him, she mused; forMadeleine was a staunch believer in the influence of surroundings, andcould not, for instance, understand a person who lived in dirt anddisorder having any but a dirty or disorderly mind. She went from doorto door, scanning the numbers, with her head poked a little forward andto one side, like a bird's. As she ascended the stair, she raised herskirts, and her nostrils twitched displeased. 

Frau Krause held the door open by an inch, and looked at Madeleine withdistrust. 

"No, he's not, " she replied. "And what's more, I couldn't say, if youwere to pay me, when he will be. "

But Madeleine was not to be daunted by the arrogance of any landladyalive. "Why? Is he so irregular?" she asked. She had placed her foot inthe opening of the door, and now, by a skilful movement, insertedherself bodily into the passage. 

Frau Krause, baffled, could do no more than mumble a: "Well, if youlike to wait!" and point out the room. She followed Madeleine over thethreshold, drying her hands on her apron. 

"Are you a friend of his, may I ask?" she inquired. 

"Why? What do you want to know for? Do you think I'd be here if Iweren't?" said Madeleine, looking her up and down. 

"Why I want to know?" repeated Frau Krause, and tossed her head. "Why, because I think if Herr Guest has any friends left, they ought to knowhow he's going on--that's why, Fraulein!"

"How going on?" queried Madeleine with undisturbed coolness, and lookedround her for a chair. 

Throwing a cautious glance over her shoulder, Frau Krause said behindher hand: "It's my opinion there's a woman in the case. "

"You don't need to whisper; your opinion is an open secret, " answeredMadeleine drily. "There is a woman, and there she sits, as you no doubtvery well know. " As she spoke, she pointed to a photograph of Louise, which stood on the lid of the piano. 

"I thought as much, " exclaimed the landlady. "I thought as much. And abad, bold face it is, too. "

"Now explain, please, what you mean by his goings on. Is he in debt toyou?" Madeleine continued her interrogatory. 

"Well, I can't just say that, " replied the woman, with what seemed aspice of regret. "He's paid up pretty regular till now--though ofcourse one never knows how long he'll keep on doing it. But it goesagainst my heart to see a young man, who might be one's own son, actingas he does. When he first came here, there wasn't a decenter young mananywhere than Herr Guest--if I had a complaint, it was that he was toomuch of a steady-goer. I used to tell him he ought to take more heedfor his health, not to mention the ears of the people that had to livewith him. He sat at that piano there all the blessed day. And now thereisn't a lazier, more cantankerous fellow in the place. You can't pleasehim anyhow. He never gives you a civil word. He doesn't work, hedoesn't cat, and he's getting so thin that his clothes just hang onhim. "

"Is he drinking?" interrupted Madeleine in the same matter-of-fact way, with her eye on the main points of probable offence. 

"Well, I can't just say that, " answered Frau Krause. "Not but what itmightn't be better if he was. It's the ones as don't drink who are thehard ones to get on with, in my experience. Young gentlemen who liketheir liquor, are of the goodnatured, easy-going sort. Now I once had ayoung fellow here----"

"But I don't see in the least what you've got to complain of!" saidMadeleine. "He pays you for the room, and you no doubt have free use ofit. --A very good bargain!"

She sat back and stared about her, while Frau Krause, recognising thatshe had met her match in this sharp-tongued young lady, curbed hertemper, and launched out into the history of a former lodger. 

It was a dingy room, long and narrow, with a single window. Against thedoor that led into an adjoining room, stood a high-backed, uninvitingsofa, with a table in front of it. Between this and the window was thewriting-bureau, a flat, man-high piece of furniture, with drawers andpigeon-holes, and a broad flap that let down for writing purposes. Against the opposite wall stood the neglected piano, and, towards thedoor, on both sides, were huddled bed, washstand, and the iron stove. Everything was of an extreme shabbiness: the stuffing was showingthrough holes in the sofa, the strips of carpet were worn threadbare. Acouple of photographs and a few books were ranged in line on thebureau--that was all that had been done towards giving the place ahomely air. It was like a room that had never properly been lived in. 

While Madeleine sat thinking this, the sound of a key was heard in thefront door, and Frau. Krause, interrupted in her story, had just timeto tap Madeleine on the arm, exclaim: "Here he is!" and dart out of theroom. Not so promptly, however, but what Maurice saw where she camefrom. Madeleine heard them bandying words in the passage. 

The door of the room was flung open, and Maurice, entering hotly, threwhis hat on the table. He did not perceive his visitor till it was toolate. 

"Madeleine! You here!" he exclaimed in surprise and embarrassment. "Ibeg your pardon. I didn't see you, " and he made haste to recover hishat. 

"Yes, don't faint, it's I, Maurice. --But what's the matter? Why are youso angry with the person? Does she pry on you?"

"Pry!" he echoed, and his colour deepened. "Pry's not the word for it. She ransacks everything I have. I never come home but what I find shehas overhauled something, though I've forbidden her to enter the room. "

"Why don't you--or rather, why didn't you move? It's not much of aplace, I'm sure. "

"Move?" he repeated, in the same tone as before, and, as he spoke, helooked incredulously at Madeleine. He had hung his coat and hat on apeg, and now came forward to the table. "Move?" he said once again, andprolonged the word as though the channel of thought it opened up wasnew to him. 

"Good gracious, yes!--If one's not satisfied with one's rooms, onemoves, that's all. There's nothing strange about it. "

He murmured that the idea had never occurred to him, and was about todraw up a chair, when his eye caught a letter that was lying on thelowered flap of the bureau. In patent agitation, and without excusinghimself, he seized it and tore it open. Madeleine saw his face darken. He read the letter through twice, from beginning to end, then tore itinto a dozen pieces and scattered them on the shelf. 

"No bad news, I hope?"

He turned his face to her; it was still contracted. "That depends onhow you look at it, Madeleine, " he said, and laughed in an unpleasantmanner. 

After this, he seemed to forget her again; he stood staring at thescraps of paper with a frown. For some minutes, she waited. Then shesaw herself forced to recall him to the fact of her presence. 

"Could you spare me a little attention now?" she asked. At her words, he jumped, and, with evident confusion, brought his wandering thoughtshome. "I can't sit here for ever you know, " she added. 

"I beg your pardon. " He came up to the table, and took the chair he hadpreviously had his hand on. "The fact is I--Can I do anything for you, Madeleine?"

"For me? Oh, dear, no!--You are surprised to find me here, no doubt!But as I'm leaving to-morrow morning, I thought I'd run up and saygood-bye to you--that's all. A case of Mohammed and the mountain, yousee. "

"Leaving? To-morrow?"

"Yes. --Goodness, there's nothing wonderful in that, is there? Mostpeople do leave some time or other, you know. " His reply was inaudible. "It was very good of you to look me up, " he threw in as an afterthought. 

Madeleine, watching him, with a thin, sarcastic smile on her lips, hadchanced to let her eyes stray to his hands, which he had laid on thetable, and she continued to fix them, fascinated in spite of herself bythe uncared-for condition of the nails. These were bitten, and broken, and dirty. Maurice, becoming aware of her intent gaze, looked down tosee what it was at, hastily withdrew his hands and hid them in hispockets. 

"This is the first time I've been in your den, you know, " she saidabruptly. "Really, Maurice, you might have done better. I don't knowhow you've managed to put up with it so long. "

"My dear Madeleine, do you think I could afford to live in a palace?"

"A palace?--absurd! You probably pay sixteen or seventeen marks forthis hole. Well, I could have found you any number of better places forthe same money--if you had come to me. "

"You're very kind. But it has done me well enough. "

"So it appears. "

Sitting back, she looked round her, in the hope of picking up someneutral subject. "Are those your people?" she asked, and nodded at thephotograph of a family-group, which stood on the top shelf of thebureau. "Three boys, are you not? You are like your mother, " and shestared, with unfeigned curiosity, at the provincial figures, dressedout in their best coats and silks, and in heavy gold jewellery. 

"Good God, Madeleine!" Maurice burst out at this, his loosely keptpatience escaping him. "You didn't come here, I suppose, to remark onmy family?"

"Well, I can't congratulate you on an improvement in your manners, since I saw you last. "

"I am not aware of having changed. "

"As well for you, perhaps. However, I'll tell you about myself, if itinterests you. " She turned her cool, judicial gaze on him again; andnow she set before him her projects for the future. But though he kepthis eyes fastened on her face, she saw that he was not listening towhat she said, or, at most, that he only half heard it; for, when sheceased to speak, he did not notice her silence. 

She waited, curious to see what would come next, and presently heechoed, in his vague way: "Paris, did you say?--Really?"

"Yes--Paris: the capital of France. --I said that, and a good deal more, which I don't think you heard. --And now I won't take up your precioustime any longer. --You've nothing new to tell me, I suppose? You stillintend staying on here, and fighting out the problem of existence?Well, when you have starved satisfactorily in a garret, I hope some onewill let me know. I'll come over for the funeral. "

She rose, and began to button her jacket. 

"And England has absolutely no chance? English music must continue tolanguish, without hope of reform?"

"How can you remember such rot! I was a terrible fool when I talkedlike that. "

"I liked you better as a fool than I do now, with your acquired wisdom. And I won't go from here without offering you congratulations, heartycongratulations, on the muddle you've made of things. "

"That's entirely my own affair. "

"You may be thankful it is! Do you think anyone else would want theresponsibility of it?"

She went out without a further word. But on the landing at the bottomof the first flight of stairs, she stood irresolute. She felt annoyedwith herself that she had allowed an unfriendly tone to dominate theirbrief interview. This was probably the last time she would see him; thelast chance she would have of telling him just what she thought of him. And viewed in that light, it seemed ridiculous to let any artificialdelicacy of feeling stand in her way. She blew her nose vigorously, and, not being used to indecision, turned as she did so, and began toascend the stairs again. Brushing past Frau Krause, she reopened, without knocking, the door of Maurice's room. 

He had moved the lamp from the table to the bureau, and at her entrancewas bending over something that lay there, so engrossed that he did notat once raise his head. 

"Good gracious! What are you doing?" escaped her involuntarily. 

At this, he spun round, and, leaning back against the writingtable, tried to screen it from her eyes. 

She regretted her impulsive curiosity, and did not press him. "Yes, it's me again, " she said with determination. "And I suppose you'll wantto accuse me of prying, too, like that female outside. --Look here: it'sludicrous for us who have been friends so long to part in this fashion. And I, for one, don't intend to do it. There's something I want to saybefore I go--you may be angry and offended if you like; I don'tcare"--for he frowned forbiddingly. "I'm no denser than other people;and I know just as well as every one else the wretched mess you've gotyourself into--one would have to be blind and deaf, indeed, not toknow. --Now, look here, Maurice! You once said to me, you may remember, that if you had a sister you'd like her to be something like me. Willyou look on me as that sister for a little, and let me give you somesound advice? I told you I was going to Paris, and that I had a clearmonth there. Well, now, throw your things together and come with me. You haven't had a decent holiday since you've been here. You needfreshening up. --Or if not Paris--Paris isn't a necessity--we'll go downby Munich and the Brenner to Italy, and I'll be cicerone. I'll act asbanker, too, and you can regard it as a loan in the meantime, and payme back when you're richer. --Now what do you say? Doesn't the plantempt you?"

"What I say?" he echoed, and looked round him a little helplessly. "Why, Madeleine . .. It seems you are determined to run off with me. Once it was America, and now it's Italy or Paris. "

"Come, say you'll consent, or at least consider it. "

"My dear Madeleine! You're all that is good and kind. But you knowyou're only talking nonsense. "

She did not answer him at once. "The thing is this, " she said with somehesitation. "I wasn't quite honest in what I said to you a few minutesago. I have the uncomfortable feeling that I am to a certain degreeresponsible, even to blame, for much of . .. What has happened here. Andit isn't a pleasant feeling, Maurice. "

"My dear girl!" he said again. "If it's any consolation to you to knowit, I owe you the biggest debt of my life. "

"Then you decline my proposal, do you?"

"You're the same good friend you always were. But you're making amountain out of a molehill. What's all this fuss about? Merely becauseI haven't chosen to work my fingers to the bone, and wear my nerves totatters over that old farce of a PRUFUNG. As for my choosing to stayhere, instead of going home like the rest of you--well, that's a matterof taste, too. Some people--like our friend Dove--want affluence, and afixed position in the provinces. Frankly, I don't. I'd rather scrapealong here, as best I can. That's the whole matter in a nutshell, andit's nothing to make a to-do about. For though you think I'm a fool, and can't help telling me so--that, too, is a matter of opinion. "

"Well, I don't intend to apologise for myself at this date, be sure ofthat! And now I'll go. For if you're resolved to hold me at arm'slength, there's nothing more to be said. --No, stop a minute, though. Here's my address in England. If ever you should return to join usbenighted ignorants, you might let me know. Or if you find you can'tget on here--I mean if it's quite impossible--I have money, you know. .. And should be glad--at a proper percentage, of course, " she addedironically. 

"That's hardly likely to happen. "

She laid the card on the table. "You never can tell. --Well, good-bye, then, and in spite of your obstinacy, I'll perhaps be able to do you agood turn yet, Maurice Guest. "

As soon as he heard the front door close, he returned to his occupationof piecing together the bits of the letter. Ever since he had torn itup--throughout her visit--his brain had been struggling to recall itsexact contents, and without success; for, owing to Madeleine'spresence, he had read it hastily. Otherwise, what he had done to-daydid not differ from his usual method of proceeding. This was not thefirst horrible unsigned letter he had received, and he could neverprevail on himself to throw them in the fire, unopened. He read themthrough, two or three times, then, angered by their contents and by hisown weakness, tore them to fragments. But the hints and aspersions theycontained, remained imprinted on his mind. In this case, Madeleine'sdistracting appearance had enfeebled his memory, and he worked long andpatiently until the sheet lay fitted together again before him. When heknew its contents by heart, he struck some matches, and watched thepieces curl and blacken. 

Then he left the house. 

Her room was in darkness. He stretched himself on the sofa to wait forher return. 

The words of the letter danced like a writing of fire before him; helay there and re-read them; but without anger. What they stated mightbe true, also it might not; he would never know. For these letters, which he was ashamed of himself for opening, and still more forremembering, had not been mentioned between them, but were added tothat category of things they now tacitly agreed to avoid. In his heart, he knew that he cherished the present state of uncertainty; it was atwilight state, without crudities or sharp outlines; and it was stillpossible to drift and dream in it. Whereas if another terriblecertainty, like the last, descended on him, he would be forced tomarshal his energies, and to suffer afresh. It was better not to know. As long as definite knowledge failed him, he could give her the benefitof the doubt. And whether what the letters affirmed was true or not, hours came when she still belonged wholly to him. Whatever happened onher absences from him, as soon as the four walls of the room shut themin again, she was his; and each time she returned, a burning gratitudefor the reprieve filled him anew. 

But there was also another reason why he did not breathe a word to herof his suspicions, and that was the slow dread that was laming him--thedread of her contempt. She made no further attempt to drape it; and hehad learned to writhe before it, to cringe and go softly. Weeks hadpassed now, since the night on which he had made his last stand againsther weeks of increasing torture. Just at first, incredible as it hadseemed, his horrible treatment of her had brought about a slackening ofthe tension between them. The worst that could happen had happened, andhe had survived it: he had not put an end either to himself or to her. On the contrary, he had accepted the fact--as he now saw that he wouldaccept every fact concerning her, whether for good or evil. And mattershaving reached this point, a kind of lull ensued: for a few days theyhad even caught a glimpse again of the old happiness. But the pause wasshort-lived: it was like the ripples caused by a stone thrown intowater, which continue just so long as the impetus lasts. Louise hadbeen a little awed by his greater strength, when she had lain coweringon the ground before him. But not many days elapsed before her eyeswere wide open with incredulous amazement. When she understood, as shesoon did, that her shameless admission, and still more, his punishmentof her for it, was not to be followed up by any new development; that, in place of subduing her mentally as well, he was going to be contentto live on as they had been doing; that, in fact, he had alreadydropped back into the old state of things, before she was well aware ofwhat was happening: then her passing mood of submission swept over intoher old flamboyant contempt for him. The fact of his having beaten herbecame a weapon in her hands; and she used it unsparingly. To hertaunts, he had no answer to make. For, the madness once passed, hecould not conceive how he had been capable of such a thing; in his sanemoments of dejection and self-distrust, he could not have raised hishand against her, though his life were at stake. 

He had never been able to drag from her a single one of the reasonsthat had led to her mad betrayal of him. On this point she wasinflexible. In the course of that long night which he had spent on hisknees by her bed, he had persecuted her to disclose her motive. But hemight as well have spoken to the wind; his questioning elicited noreply. . Again and again, he had upbraided her: "But you didn't care forHeinz! He was nothing to you!" and she neither assented nor gainsaidhim. Once, however, she had broken in on him: "You believed bad of melong before there was any to believe. Now you have something to go on!"And still again, when the sluggish dawn was creeping in, she hadsuddenly turned her head: "But now you can go away. You're free toleave me. Nothing binds you to a woman like me--who can't be contentwith one man. " Dizzy with fatigue, he had answered: "No--if you thinkthat--if you did it just to be rid of me--you're mistaken!"

From this night on, they had never reverted to the subject again--whichis not to say that his brain did not work furiously at it; the searchfor a clue, for the hidden motive, was now his eternal occupation. Butto her he was silent, sheerly from the dread of again receiving theanswer: take me as I am, or leave me! In hours such as the present, orin the agony of sleepless nights, these thoughts rent his brain. Thequestion was such an involved one, and he never seemed to come anynearer a solution of it. Sometimes, he was actually tempted to believewhat her words implied: that it had been wilfully done, with a view togetting rid of him. But against this, his reason protested; for, if theletter from Krafft had not arrived, he would have known nothing. He didnot believe she would have told him--would there, indeed, have been anyneed for her to do so? Nothing was changed between them; she lived athis side, just as before; and Krafft was out of the way. --At othertimes, though, he asked himself if he were not a fool to be surprisedat what had occurred. Had not all roads led here? Had he not, as shemost truly said, for long harboured the unworthiest suspicions ofher?--suspicions which were tantamount to an admission on his part thathis love was no longer enough for her. To have done this, andafterwards to behave as if she had been guilty of an unpardonablecrime, was illogical and unjust. --And yet again, there came momentswhen, in a barbarous clearness of vision, he seemed to get nearest tothe truth. Under certain circumstances, so he now told himself, hewould gladly and straightway have forgiven her. If she had been drawn, irresistibly, to another, by one of those sudden outbursts of passionbefore which she was incapable of remaining steadfast; if she had beenattracted, like this, more than half unwilling, wholly humiliated, penitent in advance, yet powerless--then, oh then, how willingly hewould have made allowance for her weakness! But Krafft, of allpeople!--Krafft, of whom she had spoken to him with derisivecontempt!--this cold and calculated deception of him with some one whomade not the least appeal to her!--Cold and calculated, did he say? No, far from it! What COULD it have been but the sensual caprice of amoment?--but a fleeting, manlike desire for the piquancy of change?

These and similar thoughts ran their whirling circles behind his closedeyes, as he lay in the waning twilight of the March evening, whichstill struggled with the light of the lamp. But they were hard pressedby the contents of the letter: on this night he foresaw that his fixedidea threatened to divide up into two branches--and he did not knowwhether to be glad or to regret it. But he admitted to himself that oneof these days he would be forced to take measures for preserving hissanity, by somehow dragging the truth from her; better still, byfollowing her on one of her evening absences, to discover for himselfwhere she went, and whether what the anonymous writer asserted wastrue. If he could only have controlled his brain! The perpetuallyrepeated circles it drove in--if these could once have been brought toa stop, all the rest of him infinitely preferred not to know. 

Meanwhile, the shadows deepened, and his subconsciousness never ceasedto listen, with an intentness which no whirligigs of thought coulddistract, for the sound of her step in the passage. When, at length, some short time after darkness had set in, he heard her at the door, hedrew a long, sighing breath of relief, as if--though this was unavowedeven to himself--he had been afraid he might listen in vain. And, asalways, when the suspense was over, and she was under the same roofwith him again, he was freed from so intolerable a weight that he wasready to endure whatever she might choose to put upon him, and for hispart to make no demands. 

Louise entered languidly; and so skilled had he grown at interpretingher moods that he knew from her very walk which of them she was in. Helooked surreptitiously at her, and saw that she was wan and tired. Ithad been a mild, enervating day; her hair was blown rough about herface. He watched her before the mirror take off hat and veil, withslow, yet impatient fingers; watched her hands in her hair, which shedid not trouble to rearrange, but only smoothed back on either side. 

She had not, even in entering, cast a glance at him, and, recognisingthe rasped state of her nerves, he had the intent to be cautious. Buthis resolutions, however good, were not long proof against herover-emphasised neglect of his 'presence. Her wilful preoccupation withherself, and with inanimate objects, exasperated him. Everything was ofmore worth to her than he was' and she delighted to show it. 

"Haven't you a word for me? Don't you see I'm here?" he asked at length. 

Even now she did not look towards him as she answered:

"Of course, I see you. But shall I speak next to the furniture of theroom?"

"So!--That's what I am, is it?--A piece of your furniture!"

"Yes. --No, worse. Furniture is silent. "

She was changing her walking-dress for the dressing-gown. This done, she dabbed powder on her face out of a small oval glass pot--a habit ofhers to which he had never grown accustomed. 

"Stop putting that stuff on your face! You know I hate it. "

Her only answer was to dab anew, and so thickly that the powder wasstrewn over the front of her dress and the floor. The clothes she hadtaken off were flung on a chair; as she brushed past them, they fell tothe ground. She did not stoop to pick them up, but pushed them out ofthe way with her foot. Sitting down in the rocking-chair, she closedher eyes, and spread her arms out along the arms of the chair. 

He could not see her from where he lay, but she was within reach ofhim, and, after a brief, unhappy silence, he put out his hand and drewthe chair towards him, urging it forward, inch by inch, until it wasbeside the sofa. Then he pulled her head down, so that it also lay onthe cushion, and he could feel her hair against his. 

"How you hate me!" he said in a low voice, and as though he werespeaking to himself. Laying her hand on his forehead, he made of it ascreen for his eyes. "Who could have foreseen this!" he said again, inthe same toneless way. 

Louise lay still, and did not speak. 

"Why do you stay with me?" he went on, looking out from under her hand. "I often ask myself that. For you're free to come and go as you choose. "

Her eyes opened at this, though he did not see it. "And I choose tostay here! How often am I to tell you that? Why do you come back on itto-night? I'm tired--tired. "

"I know you are. I saw it as soon as you came in. It's been a tiringday, and you probably . .. Walked too far. "

With a jerk, she drew her hand out of his, and sat upright in herchair. Something, a mere tone, the slight pause, in his apparentlyharmless words, incensed her. "Too far, did I?--Oh, to-night at least, be honest! Why don't you ask me straight out where I have been?--andwhat I have done? Can't you, for once, be man enough to put an openquestion?"

"Nothing was further from my mind than to make implications. It's youwho're so suspicious. Just as if you had a bad conscience--somethingreally to conceal. "

"Take care!--or I shall tell you--where I've been! And you might regretit. "

"No. For God's sake!--no more confessions!"

She laughed, and lay back. But a moment later, she cried out: "Whydon't you go away yourself? You know I loathe the sight of you; and yetyou stick on here like like a leech. Go away, oh, why can't you goaway!"

"To-day, I might have taken you at your word. "

At the mention of Madeleine's name, she pricked up her ears. "Oho!" shesaid, when lie had finished his story. "So Madeleine pays you visits, does she?--the sainted Madeleine! You have her there, and me here. --Apretty state of things!"

"Hold your tongue! I'm not in the mood to-night to stand your gibes. "

"But I'm in the mood to make them. And how is one to help it when onehears that that ineffable creature is no better than she ought to be?"

"Hold your tongue!" he cried again. "How dare you speak like that ofthe girl who has been such a good friend to me!"

"Friend!" she echoed. "What fools men are! She's in love with you, that's all, and always has been. But you were never man enough to knowwhat it was she wanted--your friend!"

"Ah, you----!" The nervous strain of the afternoon reached its climax. "You! Yes!--that's you all over! In your eyes nothing is good or pure. And you make everything you touch dirty. You're not fit to take adecent woman's name on your lips!"

She sprang up from her chair. "And that's my thanks!--for all I'vedone--all I've sacrificed for you! I'm not fit to take a decent woman'sname on my lips! For shame, for shame! For who has made me what I ambut you! Oh, what a fool I was, ever to let you cross this door!You!--a man who is content with other men's leavings!"

"It was the worst day's work you ever did in your life. Everything badhas come from that. --Why couldn't you have held back, and refused me?We might still have been decent, happy creatures, if you hadn't letyour vile nature get the better of you. You wouldn't marry me--no, no!You prefer to take your pleasure in other ways. --A man at any cost, Madeleine said once, and God knows, I believe it was true!"

She struck him in the face. "Oh, you miserable scoundrel! You!--whonever looked at me but with the one thought in your head! Oh, it's toomuch! Never, never while I live I would rather die first. --shall youever touch me again!"

She continued to weep, long after he had left her. Still crying, herhandkerchief pressed to her eyes, her body shaken by her sobs, shemoved blindly about the room, opening drawers and cupboards, andheaping up their contents on the bed. There was a limit to everything;she could bear her life with him no longer; and, with nervelessfingers, she strove to collect and pack her belongings, preparatory togoing away. 

XII. 

Easter fell early, and the Ninth Symphony had been performed in theGewandhaus before March was fairly out. Now, both Conservatorium andGewandhaus were closed, and the familiar haunts were empty. 

Hitherto, Maurice had made shift to preserve appearances: at intervals, not too conspicuously far apart, he had gone backwards and forwards tohis classes, keeping his head above water with a minimum of work. Now, however, there was no further need for deceiving people. Most of thosewho had been his fellow-students had left Leipzig; he could not put hisfinger on a single person remaining with whom he had had a neareracquaintance. No one was left to comment on what he did and how helived. And this knowledge withdrew the last prop from his sense ofpropriety. He ceased to face the trouble that care for his personimplied, just as he gave up raising the lid of the piano and making aneedless pretence of work. Openly now, he took up his abode in theBRUDERSTRASSE, where he spent the long, idle days stretched on thesofa, rolling cigarettes--in far greater numbers than he could smoke, and vacantly, yet with a kind of gusto, as if his fingers, so longaccustomed to violent exercise, had a relish for the task. He wasseldom free from headache; an iron ring, which it was impossible toloosen, bound his forehead. His disinclination to speech grew upon him, too; not only had he no thoughts that it was worth breaking the silenceto express; the effort demanded by the forming of words was too greatfor him. His feeling of indifference-stupefying indifference--grew sostrong that sometimes he felt it beyond his strength consciously totake in the shape of the objects about the room. 

The days were eventless. He lay and watched her movements, which werespiritless and hurried, by turns, but now seldom marked by the graciousimpulsiveness that had made up so large a part of her charm. He wascontent to live from hour to hour at her side; for that this was hislast respite, he well knew. And the further the month advanced, themore tenaciously he clung. The one thought which now had force to rousehim was, that the day would come on which he would see her face for thelast time. The fact that she had given herself to another, while yetbelonging to him, ceased to affect him displeasurably, as did also hisfixed idea that she was, at the present moment, deceiving him anew. Hissole obsession was now a fear of the inevitable end. And it was thisfear which, at rare intervals, broke the taciturn dejection in which hewas sunk, by giving rise to appalling fits of violence. But after ascene of this kind, he would half suffocate her with remorse. And this, perhaps, worked destruction most surely of all: the knowledge that, despite the ungovernable aversion she felt for him, she could stilltolerate his endearments. Not once, as long as they had been together, had she refused to be caressed. 

But the impossibility of the life they were leading broke over Louiseat times, with the shock of an ice-cold wave. 

"If you have any feeling left in you--if you have ever cared for me inthe least--go away now!" she wept. "Go to the ends of the earth--onlyleave me!"

He was giddy with headache that day. "To whom? Who is it you want now?"

One afternoon as he lay there, the landlady came in with a telegram forhim, which she said had been brought round by one of Frau Krause'schildren--she tossed it on the table, as she spoke, to express thecontempt she felt for him. Several minutes elapsed before he put outhis hand for it, and then he did so, because it required less energy toopen it than to leave it unopened. When he had read it, he gave a shortlaugh, and threw it back on the table. Louise, who was in the otherpart of the room, came out, half-dressed, to see what the matter was. She, tool laughed at its contents in her insolent way, and, on passingthe writing-table, pulled open the drawer where she kept her money. 

"There's enough for two. And you're no prouder in this, I suppose, thanin anything else. "

The peremptory summons home, and the announcement that no furtherallowance would be remitted, was not a surprise to him; he had knownall along that, sooner or later, he would be thrown on his ownresources. It had happened a little earlier than he had expected--thatwas all. A week had still to run till the end of the month. --Thatnight, however, when Louise was out, he meditated, in a desultoryfashion, over the likely and unlikely occupations to which he couldturn his hand. 

A few days later, she came home one evening in a different mood: foronce, no cruel words crossed her lips. They sat side by side on thesofa; and of such stuff was happiness now made that he was content. Chancing to look up, he was dismayed to see that her eyes were full oftears, which, as he watched, ran over and down her cheeks. He slid tohis knees, and laid his head in her lap. 

She fell asleep early; for, no matter what happened, how uneventful orhow tragically exciting her day was, her faculty for sleep remainedunchanged. It was a brilliant night; in the sky was a great, round, yellow moon, and the room was lit up by it. The blind of the windowfacing the bed had not been lowered; and a square patch of light fellacross the bed. He turned and looked at her, lying in it. Her face wastowards him; one arm was flung up above her head; the hand lay with thepalm exposed. Something in the look of the face, blanched by the unreallight, made him recall the first time he had seen it, and theimpression it had then left on his mind. While she played in Schwarz'sroom, she had turned and looked at him, and it had seemed to him then, that some occult force had gone out from the face, and struck home inhim. And it had never lessened. Strange, that so small a thing, hardlybigger than one's two closed fists, should be able to exert such aninfluence over one! For this face it was--the pale oval, in the darksetting, the exotic colouring, the heavy-lidded eyes--which held him;it was this face which drew him surely back with a vital nostalgia--ahomesickness for the sight of her and the touch of her--if he were toolong absent. It had not been any coincidence of temperament orsympathies--by rights, all the rights of their different natures, theyhad not belonged together--any more than it had been a mere blinduprush of sensual desire. And just as his feelings for her had hadnothing to do with reason, or with the practical conduct of his life sothey had outlasted tenderness, faithfulness, respect. What ever it wasthat held him, it lay deeper than these conventional ideas of virtue. The power her face had over him was undiminished, though he now foundit neither beautiful nor good; though he knew the true meaning of eachdeeply graven line. --This then was love?--this morbid possession by awoman's face. 

He laid his arm across his tired eyes, and, without waiting to considerthe question he had propounded, commenced to follow out a new train ofthought. No doubt, for each individual, there existed in one othermortal some physical detail which he or she could find only in thisparticular person. It might be the veriest trifle. Some found it, itseemed, in the colour of an eye; some in the modulations of a voice, the curve of a lip, the shape of a hand, the lines of a body in motion. Whatever it chanced to be, it was, in most cases, an insignificantcharacteristic, which, for others, simply did not exist, but which, tothe one affected by it, made instant appeal, and just to that corner ofthe soul which had hitherto suffered aimlessly for the want of it--asuffering which nothing but this intonation, this particular smile, could allay. He himself had long since learnt what it was, about herface, that made a like appeal to him. It was her eyes. Not their size, or their dark brilliancy, but the manner of their setting: the spaciouslid that fell from the high, wavy eyebrow, first sloping deeplyinwards, then curving out again, over the eyeball; this, and the cleansweep of the broad, white lid, which, when lowered, gave the face aninfantine look--a look of marble. He knew it was this; for, on thestrength of a mere hinted resemblance, he had been unable to take hiseyes off the face of another woman; the likeness in this detail had methis gaze with a kind of shock. But what a meaningless thing was life, when the way a lid drooped, or an eyebrow grew on a forehead, couldmake such havoc of your nerves! And more especially when, in the brainor soul that lay behind, no spiritual trait answered to thephysical. --Well, that was for others to puzzle over, not for him. Thestrong man tore himself away while there was still time, or savedhimself in an engrossing pursuit. He, having had neither strength norsaving occupation, had bartered all he had, and knowingly, for thebeauty of this face. And as long as it existed for him, his home wasbeside it. 

He turned restlessly. Disturbed in her dreams, Louise flung over on herother side. 

"Eugen!" she murmured. "Save me!--Here I am! Oh, don't you see me?"

He shook her by the arm. "Wake up!"

She was startled and angry. "Won't you even let me sleep?"

"Keep your dreams to yourself then!"

There was a savage hatred in her look. "Oh, if I only could! . .. Ifonly my hands were strong enough!--! I'd kill you!"

"You've done your best. "

"Yes. And I'm glad! Remember that, afterwards. I was glad!"

It had been a radiant April morning of breeze and sunshine, but towardsmidday, clouds gathered, and the sunlight was constantly intercepted. Maurice had had occasion to fetch something from his lodgings and wason his way back. The streets were thronged with people: business men, shop-assistants and students, returning to work from the restaurants inwhich they had dined. At a corner of the ZEITZERSTRASSE, a hand-carthad been overturned, and a crowd had gathered; for, no matter how busypeople were, they had time to gape and stare; and they were now aseager as children to observe this incident, in the development of whicha stout policeman was wordily authoritative. Maurice found that he hadloitered with the rest, to watch the gathering up of the spilt wares, and to hear the ensuing altercation between hawker and policeman. Onturning to walk on again, his eye was caught and held by the tallfigure of a man who was going in the same direction as he, but at abrisk pace, and several yards in front of him. This person must havepassed the group round the cart. Now, intervening heads and shouldersdivided them, obstructing Maurice's view; still, signs were not wantingin him that his subliminal consciousness was beginning to recognise theman who walked ahead. There was something oddly familiar in the gait, in the droop of the shoulders, the nervous movement of the head, theaimless motion of the dangling hands and arms--briefly, in all theloosely hung body. And, besides this, the broad-brimmed felt hat . .. Good God! He stiffened, with a sudden start, and, in an instant, hisentire attention was concentrated in an effort to see the colour of thehair under the hat. Was it red? He tried to strike out in lengthiersteps, but the legs of the man in front were longer, and his ownunruly. After a moment's indecision, however, he mastered them, andthen, so afraid was he of the other passing out of sight, that he allbut ran, and kept this pace up till he was close behind the man hefollowed. There he fell into a walk again, but a weak and difficultwalk, for his heart was leaping in his chest. He had not been mistaken. The person close before him, so close that he could almost have touchedhim, was no other than Schilsky--the Schilsky of old, with theinsolent, short-sighted eyes, and the loose, easy walk. 

Maurice followed him--followed warily and yet unreflectingly--rightdown the long, populous street. Sometimes blindly, too, for, when thestreet and all it contained swam before him, he was obliged to shut hiseyes. People looked with attention at him; he caught a glimpse ofhimself in a barber's mirror, and saw that his face had turned agreenish white. His mind was set on one point. Arrived at the cornerwhere the street ran out into the KONIGSPLATZ, which turning wouldSchilsky take? Would he go to the right, where lay the BRUDERSTRASSE, or would he take the lower street to the left? Until this question wasanswered, it was impossible to decide what should be done next. Butfirst, there came a lengthy pause: Schilsky entered a musicshop, andremained inside, leaning over the counter, for a quarter of an hour. Finally, however, the corner was reached. He appeared to hesitate: fora moment it seemed as if he were going straight on, which would meanfresh uncertainty. Then, with a sudden outward fling of the hands, hewent off to the left, in the direction of the Gewandhaus. 

Maurice did not follow him any further. He stood and watched, until hecould no longer see the swaying head. After that he had a kind ofcollapse. He leaned up against the wall of a house, and wiped theperspiration from his forehead. Passers by believed him to be drunk, and were either amused, or horrified, or saddened. He discovered, intruth, that his legs were shaking as if with an ague, and, stumblinginto a neighbouring wine-shop, he drank brandy--not enough to stupefyhim, only to give back to his legs their missing strength. 

To postpone her knowing! To hinder her from knowing at any cost!--hisblurred thoughts got no further than this. He covered the ground at amad pace, clinging fast to the belief that he would find her, as he hadleft her, in bed. But his first glimpse of her turned him cold. She wasstanding before the glass, dressed to go out. This in itself was badenough. Worse, far worse, was it that she had put on, to-day, one ofthe light, thin dresses she had worn the previous spring, and neversince. It was impossible to see her tricked out in this fashion, anddoubt her knowledge of the damning fact. He held it for proved that shewas dressed to leave him; and the sight of her, refreshed andrejuvenated, gave the last thrust to his tottering sense. He demandedwith such savageness the meaning of her adornment, that the indignantamazement with which she turned on him was real, and not feigned. 

"Take off that dress! You shan't go out of the house in it!--Take itoff!"

He raved, threatened, implored, always with icy fingers at his heart. He knew that she knew; he would have taken his oath on it; and he onlyhad room in his brain for one thought: to prevent her knowing. His ragespent itself on the light, flowery dress. As nothing he said moved her, he set his foot on the skirt, and tore it down from the waist. Shestruck at him for this, then took another from the wardrobe--a stilllighter and gaudier one. They had never yet gone through an hour suchas that which followed. At its expiry, clothes and furniture lay strewnabout the room. 

When Louise saw that he was not to be shaken off, that, wherever shewent on this day, he would go, too, she gave up any plan she might havehad, and followed where he led. This was, as swiftly as possible, bythe outlying road to the Connewitz woods. If he could but once get herthere, they would be safe from surprise. Once out there, in solitude, among the screening trees, something, he did not yet know what, butsomething would--must--happen. 

He dragged her relentlessly along. But until they got there! His eyesgrew stiff and giddy with looking before him, behind him, on all sides. And never had she seemed to move so slowly; never had she stared sobrazenly about her, as on this afternoon. With every step they took, certainty burned higher in him; the thin, fixed smile that disfiguredher lips said: do your worst; do all you can; nothing will save you! Hedid not draw a full breath till they were far out on the SCHLEUSSIGERWEG. Then he dropped her arm, and wiped his face. 

The road was heavy with mud, from rains of the preceding day. Louise, dragging at his side, was careless of it, and let her long skirt trailbehind her. He called her attention to it, furiously, and this was thefirst time he had spoken since leaving the house. But she did not evenlook down: she picked out a part of the road that was still dirtier, where her feet sank and stuck. 

They crossed the bridge, and joined the wood-path. On one of the firstseats they came to, Louise sank exhausted. Filled with the idea ofgetting her into the heart of the woods, he was ahead of her, urgingthe pace; and he had taken a further step or two before he saw that shehad remained behind. He was forced to return. 

"What are you sitting there for?" He turned on her, with difficultyresisting the impulse to strike her full in her contemptuous white face. 

She laughed--her terrible laugh, which made the very nerves twitch inhis finger-tips. "Why does one usually sit down?"

"ONE?--You're not one! You're you!" Now he wished hundreds of listenerswere in their neighbourhood, that the fierceness of his voice mightcarry to them. 

"And you're a madman!"

"Yes, treat me like the dirt under your feet! But you can't deceiveme. --Do you think I don't know why you're stopping here?"

She looked away from him, without replying. 

"Do you think I don't know why you've decked yourself out like this?"

"For God's sake stop harping on my dress!"

"Why you've bedizened yourself? . .. Why you were going out? . .. Whyyou've spied and gaped eternally from one side of the street to theother?"

As she only continued to look away, the desire seized him to saysomething so incisive that the implacability of her face would have tochange, no matter to what. "I'll tell you then!" he shouted, and struckthe palm of one hand with the back of the other, so that the bones inboth bit and stung. "I'll tell you. You're waiting here . .. Waiting, Isay! But you'll wait to no purpose! For you've reckoned without me. "

"Oh, very well, then, if it pleases you, I'm waiting! But you can atleast say for what? For you perhaps?--for you to regain your senses?"

"Stop your damned sneering! Will you tell me you don't knowwho's--don't know he's here?"

Still she continued to overlook him. "He?--who?--what?" She flung thelittle words at him like stones. Yet, in the second that elapsed beforehis reply, a faint presentiment widened her eyes. 

"You've got the audacity to ask that?" Flinging himself down on theseat, he put his hands in his pockets, and stretched out his legs. "Whobut your precious Schilsky!--the man who knew how you ought to betreated . .. Who gave you what you deserved!"

His first feeling was one of relief: the truth was out; there was anend to the torture of the past hour. But after this one flash ofsensation, he ceased to consider himself. At his words Louise turned sowhite that he thought she was going to faint. She raised her hand toher throat, and held it there. She tried to say something, and couldnot utter a sound. Her voice had left her. She turned her head andlooked at him, in a strange, apprehensive way, with the eyes of atrapped animal. 

"Eugen!--Eugen is here?" she said at last. "Here?--Do you know whatyou're saying?" Now that her voice had come, it was a little thinwhisper, like the voice of a sick person. She pushed hat and hair, bothsuddenly become an intolerable weight, back from her forehead. 

Still he was not warned. "Will you swear to me you didn't know?"

"I know? I swear?" Her voice was still a mere echo of itself. But nowshe rose, and standing at the end of the seat furthest from him, heldon to the back of it. "I know?" she repeated, as if to herself. Thenshe drew a long breath, which quivered through her, and, with it, voiceand emotion and the power of expression returned. "I know?" she criedwith a startling loudness. "Good God, you fool, do you think I'd behere with you, if I had known?--if I had known!"

A foreboding of what he had done came to Maurice. "Take care!--takecare what you say!"

She burst into a peal of hysterical laughter, which echoed through thewoods. 

"Take care!" he said again, and trembled. 

"Of what?--of you, perhaps? YOU!"

"I may kill you yet. "

"Oh, such as you don't kill!"

She lowered her veil, and stooped for her gloves. He looked up at herswift movement. There was a blueness round his lips. 

"What are you going to do?"

She laughed. 

"You're . .. You're going to him! Louise!--you are NOT going to him?"

"Oh, you poor, crazy fool, what made you tell me?"

"Stay here!" He caught her by the sleeve. But she shook his hand off asthough it were a poisonous insect. "For God's sake, think what you'redoing! Have a little mercy on me!"

"Have you ever had mercy on me?"

She took a few, quick steps away from the seat, then with an equallyimpulsive resolve, came back and confronted him. 

"You talk to me of mercy?--you!--when nothing I could wish you would bebad enough for you?--Oh, I never thought it would be possible to hateanyone as I hate you--you mean-souled, despicable dummy of a man!--Whycouldn't you have let me alone? I didn't care that much for you--notTHAT much! But you came, with your pretence of friendship, and yourflattery, and your sympathy--it was all lies, every word of it! Do youthink what has happened to us would ever have happened if you'd been adifferent kind of man?--But you have never had a clean thought ofme--never! Do you suppose I haven't known what you were thinking andbelieving about me in these last weeks?--those nights when I waitednight after night to see a light come back in his windows? Yes, and Ilet you believe it; I wanted you to; I was glad you did--glad to seeyou suffer. I wish you were dead!--Do you see that river? Go and throwyourself into it. I'll stand here and watch you sink, and laugh when Isee you drowning. --Oh, I hate you--hate you! I shall hate you to mylast hour!"

She spat on the ground at his feet. Before he could raise his head, shewas gone. 

He made an involuntary, but wholly uncertain, movement to follow her, did not, however, carry it out, and sank back into his former attitude. His cold hands were deep in his pockets, his shoulders drawn up; andhis face, drained of its blood, was like the face of an old man. He hadmade no attempt to defend himself, had sat mute, letting her vindictivewords go over him, inwardly admitting their truth. Now he closed hiseyes, and kept them shut, until the thudding of his heart grew lessforcible. When he looked up again, his gaze met the muddy, sluggishwater, into which she had dared him to throw himself. But he did noteven recall her taunt. He merely sat and stared at the river, amazed atthe way in which it had, as it were, detached itself from otherobjects. All at once it had acquired a life of its own, and it wasdifficult to believe that it had ever been an integral part of thelandscape. 

He remained sitting till the mists were breast-high. But even when, after more than one start--for his legs were stiff and numbed--he roseto go home, he did not realise what had happened to him. He was onlyaware that night had fallen, and that it would be better to get back inthe direction of the town. 

The twinkling street-lamps did more than anything towards rousing him. But they also made him long, with a sudden vehemence, for some warm, brightly lighted interior, where it would be possible to forget thenight--haunted river. He sought out an obscure cafe, and entering, called for brandy. On this night, he was under no necessity to limithimself; and he sat, glowering at the table, and emptying his glass, until he had died a temporary, and charitable, death. The delicioussensation of sipping the brandy was his chief remembrance of thesehours; but, also, like far-off, incorporate happenings, he wasconscious, as the night deepened, of women's shrill and lively voices, and of the pressure of a woman's arms. 

XIII. 

He wakened, the next morning, to strange surroundings. Half opening hiseyes, he saw a strip of drab wall-paper, besprinkled with crude pinkroses, and the black and gilt frame of an oblong mirror. He shut themagain immediately, preferring to believe that he was still dreaming. Somewhere in the back of his head, a machine was working, with slow, steady throbs, which made his body vibrate as a screw does a steamer. He lay enduring it, and trying to sleep again, to its accompaniment. But just as he was on the point of dozing off, a noise in the roomstartled him, and made him wide awake. He was not alone. Something hadfallen to the floor, and a voice exclaimed impatiently. Peering throughhis lids, he looked out beyond the will which had first chained hisattention. His eyes fell on the back of a woman, who was sitting infront of one of the windows, doing her hair. In her hand she held apair of curlingtongs, and, before her, on the foot-end of the sofa, ahand-glass was propped up. Her hair was thick and blond. She wore ablack silk chemise, which had slipped low on her plump shoulders; ashabby striped petticoat was bound round her waist, and her naked feetwere thrust into down-trodden, felt shoes. Maurice lay still, in orderthat she should not suspect his being awake. For a few minutes, therewas silence; then he was forced to sneeze, and at the sound the womanmuttered something, and came to the side of the bed. A curl wasimprisoned between the blades of the tongs, which she continued to holdaloft, in front of her forehead. 

"NA, KLEINER! . .. Had your sleep out?" she asked in a raucous voice. AsMaurice did not reply, but closed his eyes again, blinded by thesunshine that poured into the room, she laughed, and made a sound likethat with which one urges on a horse. "Don't feel up to much thismorning . .. Eh? HERRJE, KLEINER, but you were tight!" and, at someremembrance of the preceding night, she chuckled to herself. "And now, I bet you, you feel as if you'd never be able to lift your head again. Just wait a jiffy! I'll get you something that'll revive you. "

She waddled to the door and he heard her call: "JOHANN, EINEN SCHNAPS!"

Feet shuffled in the passage; she handed Maurice a glass of brandy. 

"There you are!--that'll pull you together. Swallow it down, " she said, as he hesitated. "You'll feel another man after it. --And now I'll dowhat I wouldn't do for every one--make you a coffee to wash down thenasty physic. "

She laughed loudly at her own joke, and laid the curlingtongs aside. Hewatched her move about the room in search of spirit-lamp andcoffee-mill. Beneath the drooping black chemise, her loose breastsswayed. 

"Not that I've much time, " she went on, as she ground the coffee. "It'sgone a quarter to twelve already, and I like fresh air. I don't miss aminute of it. --So up you get! Here, dowse your head in this water. "

Leaning against the table, Maurice drank the cup of black coffee, andconsidered his companion. No longer young, she was as coarsely haggardas are the generality of women of her class, scanned by cruel daylight. And while she could never have been numbered among the handsome ones ofher profession, there was yet a certain kindliness in the smallish blueeyes, and in her jocose manner of treating him. 

She, too, eyed him as he drank. 

"SAG''MAL KLEINER--will you come again?" she broke the silence. 

"What's your name?" he asked evasively, and put the cup down on thetable. 

"Oh . .. Just ask for Luise, " she said. On her tongue, the name hadthree long-drawn syllables, and there was a v before the i. 

She was nettled by his laugh. 

"What's wrong with it?" she asked. "GEH', KLEINER, SEI NETT!--won't youcome again?"

"Perhaps. "

"Well, ask for Luise, if you do. That's enough. "

He turned to put on his coat. As he did so, a disagreeable thoughtcrossed his mind; he coloured, and ran his hand through his pockets. 

"I've no money. "

"What?--rooked, are you? Well, it wasn't here, then. I'm an honestgirl, I am!"

She came over to him, not exactly suspicious, still with a slightdiminution of friendliness in eyes and tone; and, as, if there wereroom for a mistake on his part, herself went through the likely pocketsin turn. 

"Not a heller!"

Her sharp little eyes travelled over him. 

"That'd do. "

She laid her hand on his scarf-pin. He took it out and gave it to her. She stood on tip-toe, for she was dumpy, put her arms round his neck, and gave him a hearty kiss. 

"DU GEFALLST MIR!" she said. "I like you. Kiss me, too, can't you?"

He looked down on the plump, ungainly figure, and, without feelingeither satisfaction or repugnance, stooped and kissed the befringedforehead. 

"ADIEU, KLEINER! Come again. "

"ADIEU, LUISE!"

He was eyed--he felt it--from various rooms, the doors of which stoodajar. The front door was wide open, and he left it so. He descended thestairs with a sagging step. Half-way down, he stopped short. He hadspoken the truth when he said that he was without money; every pfennighe possessed, had been in his pocket the night before. Under thesecircumstances, he could undertake nothing. But, even while he thoughtit, his hand sought his watch, which he carried chainless in a pocketof his vest. It was there, and as his fingers closed on it, heproceeded on his way. 

The day had again set in brilliantly; the shadows on roads andpavements had real depth, and the outlines of the houses were hardagainst a cloudless sky. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground; for thecrudeness of the light made them ache. 

His feet bore him along the road they knew better than any other. Anduntil he had been in the BRUDERSTRASSE, he could not decide what was tocome next. He dragged along, with bowed head, and the distance seemedunending. Even when he had turned the corner and was in the streetitself, he kept his head down, and only when he was opposite the house, did he throw a quick glance upwards. His heart gave a terrifying leap, then ceased to beat: when it began again, it was at a mad gallop, whichprevented him drawing breath. All three windows stood wide open; thewhite window-curtains hung out over the sills, and flapped languidly inthe breeze. 

He crossed the road with small steps, like a convalescent. He pushedback the heavy house-door, and entered the vestibule, which was coldand shadowy. Step by step, he climbed to the first landing. The door ofthe flat was shut, but the little door in the wall stood ajar, and hecould see right into the room. 

He leaned against the banisters, where the shadow was deepest. Insidethe room that had been his world, two charwomen rubbed and scoured, talking as they worked in strident tones. The heavy furniture had beenpulled into the middle of the floor, and shrouded in white coverings;chairs were laid on the bed, with their legs in the air. There was notrace of anything that had belonged to Louise; all familiar objects hadvanished. It was a strange, unnatural scene: he felt as one might feelwho, by means of some mysterious agency, found it possible to bepresent at his own burial, while he was still alive. 

One of the women began to beat the sofa; under cover of the blows, which reverberated through the house, he slunk away. But he did not getfar: when he was recalled to himself by a new noise in one of the upperstoreys, he found that he was standing on the bottom step of thestairs, holding fast to the round gilt ball that surmounted the lastpost of the banisters. He moved from there to the warmth of thehouse-door, and, for some time before going out, stood sunning himself, a forlorn figure, with eyes that blinked at the light. He felt verycold, and weak to the point of faintness. This sensation reminded himthat he had had no solid food since noon the day before. His firstbusiness was obviously to eat a meal. Fighting a growing dizziness, hetrudged into the town, and, having pawned his watch, went to arestaurant, and forced himself to swallow the meal that was set beforehim--though there were moments when it seemed incredible that it wasactually he who plied knife and fork. He would have been glad to lingerfor a time, after eating, but the restaurant was crowded, and thewaiter openly impatient for him to be gone. As he rose, he saw the manflicking the crumbs off the cloth, and setting the table anew; some onewas waiting to take his place. 

When he emerged again into the thronged and slightly dusty streets, hisprevious strong impression of the unreality of things was upon himagain. Now, however, it seemed as though some submerged consciousnesswere at work in him. For, though he was not aware of having reviewedhis position, or of having cast a plan of action, he knew at once whatwas to be done; and, as before, his feet bore him, without bidding, where he had to go. 

He retraced his steps, and half-way down the KLOSTERGASSE, entered agunsmith's shop. The owner, an elderly man in a velvet cap andgold-rimmed spectacles, looked at him over the tops of these, then saidcurtly, he could not oblige him. What was more, he came out after him, and, standing in the shop-door, watched him go down the street. At hisrefusal, Maurice had hurriedly withdrawn: now, as he went, he wa'stroubled by the fact that the man's face was vaguely familiar to him. For the length of a street-block, he endeavoured to recollect where hehad seen the face before. And suddenly he knew: it was this very shophe had once been in to inquire after Krafft, and this was the same manwho had then been so uncivil to him. But as soon as he remembered, theknowledge ceased to interest him. 

Rendered cautious by his first experience, he went to anotherneighbourhood, and having sought for some time, found a smaller shop, in a side street. He had ready this time the fiction of a friend and acommission. But a woman regretted wordily that her husband had juststepped out; he would no doubt be back again immediately; if the Herrwould take a chair and wait a little?-- But the thought of waiting madehim turn on his heel. Finally, at his third attempt, a young lad gavehim what he desired, without demur; and, after he had known a quickfear lest he should not have sufficient money for the purchase, thematter was satisfactorily settled. 

On returning to his room, he found a letter lying on the table. Hepounced upon it with a desperate hope. But it was only the monthly billfor the hire of the piano. 

In entering, he had made some noise, and Frau Krause was in the roombefore he knew it. She was primed for an angry scene. But he made shortwork of her complaints and accusations. 

"To-morrow! I'll have time for all that to-morrow. "

He turned the key in the door, and sitting down before thewriting-table, commenced to go through drawers and pigeonholes. It hadnot been a habit of his to keep letters; but nevertheless a certainnumber had accumulated, and these he was averse to let fall into thehands of strangers. He performed his work coolly, with a pedanticthoroughness. He had no sympathy with those people, who, doing what hewas about to do, left ragged ends behind them. His mind had alwaysinclined to law and order. And so, having written a note authorisingFrau Krause to keep his books and clothes, in place of the outstandingrent, he put a match to the fire which was laid in the stove, and, onhis knees before it, burnt all such personal trifles as had value forhimself alone. He postponed, to the last, even handling the smallpacket made up of the letters he had had from Louise. Then their turncame, too. Kneeling before the stovedoor, he dropped them, one by one, into the flames. The last to burn was the first he had received--a merehastily scrawled line, a twisted note, which opened as it blackened. IMUST SPEAK TO YOU. WILL YOU COME TO ME THIS EVENING? As he watched itshrivel, he had a vivid recollection of that long past day. Heremembered how he had tried to shave, and how he had dressed himself inhis best, only to fling back again into his working-clothes, annoyedwith himself for even harbouring the thought. Yes; but that had alwaysbeen his way: he had expended consideration and delicacy where none wasnecessary; he had seen her only as he wished to see her. --After this, the photographs. They were harder to burn; he was forced to tear themacross, in two, three pieces. Even then, the flames licked slowly; hewatched them creep up--over her dress, her hands, her face. 

Afternoon had turned to evening. When, at length, everything was inorder, he lay down on the sofa to wait for it to grow quite dark. Butalmost at once, as if his back had been eased of a load, he fellasleep. When he opened his eyes again, the lamp had burned low, andfilled the room with a poisonous vapour. It was two o'clock. This wasthe time to go. But a boisterous wind had risen, and was blusteringround the house. He said to himself that he would wait still a littlelonger, to see if it did not subside. In waiting, he slept again, heavily, as he had not done for many a night, and when he wakened next, a clock was striking four. He rose at once, and with his boots in hishand, crept out of the house. 

Day was breaking; as he walked, a thin streak of grey in the eastwidened with extreme rapidity, and became a bank of pale grey light. Hemet an army of street-sweepers, indistinguishably male and female, returning from their work, their long brooms over their shoulders. Ithad rained a little, and the pavements were damp and shining. The windhad dropped to a mere morning breeze, which met him at street-corners. Before his mind's eye rose a vision of the coming day. He saw one ofthose early spring days of illimitable blue highness and white, woofyclouds, which stand stationary where the earth meets the sky; thebrightness of the sun makes the roads seem whiter and the grassgreener, bringing out new tints and colours in everything it touches. Over it all would run this light, swift wind, bending the buds, andeven, towards afternoon, throwing up a fine white dust. --And it was tothe thought of the dust that his mind clung most tenaciously, as tosome homely and familiar thing which he would never see again. 

He had made straight for the well-known seat with the bosky background. Arrived at it, he went a few steps aside, into an open space among theundergrowth, which was now generously sprinkled with buds. The leavesthat had fallen during the previous autumn made a carpet under hisfeet. Somewhere, in the distance, a band was playing: a body ofsoldiers was being marched out to exercise. He opened the case he wascarrying, and laid it on the seat. He was not conscious of feelingafraid; if he had a fear, it was only lest, in his inexperience, heshould do what he had to do, clumsily. In loosening the clothes at hisneck, however, he perceived that his hand was shaking, and this madehim aware that his heart also was beating unevenly. He stood andfumbled with his collar-stud, which he could not unfasten at once, and, while he was busied thus, the mists that blinded him fell away. Heceased, abruptly, to be the mere automaton that had moved and acted, without will of its own, for the past four-and-twenty hours. Standingthere, with his fingers at his neck, he was pierced by a sudden lucidperception of what had happened. An intolerable spasm of remembrancegripped him. With a rush of bitterness, which was undiluted agony, allthe shame and suffering of the past months swept over him once more, concentrated in a last supreme moment. And, as though this were notenough, while he still wrenched at his neck, tearing his shirt-collarin his desperation, her face rose before him--but not the face he hadknown and loved. He saw it as he had seen it for the last time, disfigured by hatred of him, horribly vindictive, as it had been whenshe spat on the ground at his feet. This vision gave him anunlooked-for jerk of courage. Without allowing himself another secondin which to reason or reflect, he caught up the revolver from the seat, and pressed the cold little nozzle to his chest. Simultaneously hereceived a sharp blow, and heard the crack of a report--but far away. .. In the distance. He was on his back, without knowing how he had gotthere; straight overhead waved the bare branches of a tree; behindthem, a grey morning cloud was sailing. For still the fraction of asecond, he heard the familiar melody, to which the soldiers marched;and the branch swayed . .. Swayed . .. 

Then, as suddenly as the flame of a candle is puffed out by the wind, his life went from him. His right hand twitched, made as if to open, closed again, and stiffened round the iron of the handle. His jaw fell, and, like an inner lid, a glazed film rose over his eyes, which forhours afterwards continued to stare, with an expression of horror andamaze, at the naked branches of the tree. 

* * * * *

One midday, a couple of years later, a number of those who had formedthe audience at one of the last rehearsals of the season, were gatheredround the back entrance to the Gewandhaus. It was a fresh spring day, gusty and sunny by turns: sometimes, there came a puff of wind thatdrove every one's hand to his hat; at others, the broad square baskedin an almost motionless sunshine. The small crowd lingered in order tosee, at close quarters, the violinist who had played there thatmorning. Only a few of those present had known Schilsky personally; butone and all were curious to catch a glimpse of the quondam Leipzigstudent, who, it was whispered, would soon return to the town to takeup a leading position in the orchestra. Schilsky was now KONZERTMEISTERin a large South German town; but it was rather as a composer that hisname had begun to burn on people's tongues. His new symphonic poem, UBER DIE LETZTEN DINGE, had drawn down on his head that mixture ofextravagant laudation and abusive derision which constitutes fame. 

"Take a look at his wife, if she's there, " said one American toanother, who was standing beside him. "She studied here same time hedid, and is said to have been very handsome. An English chap shothimself on her account. "

"You don't say!" drawled his companion. "It's a queer thing, how commonsuicide's getting to be. You can't pick up a noospaper, nowadays, without finding some fool or other has blown his brains out. "

"Look out!--here they come. "

Behind the thick glass doors, Schilsky became visible. He was talkingvolubly to a Jewish-looking stranger in a fur-lined coat. His hat waspushed far back on his forehead; his face was flushed with elation;and, consciously unconscious of the waiting crowd, he gesticulated ashe walked, throwing out the palms of his loosely dangling hands, andemphasising his words with restless movements of the head. He wasrespectfully greeted by those who had known him. A minute or two latercame Louise. At her side was a pianist with whom Schilsky had given aconcert earlier in the week--a shabbily dressed young man, with a worldof enthusiasm in his candid blue eyes. He, too, was talking withanimation. But Louise had no attention for anyone but her husband. 

"Well, not my taste . .. I must confess, " laughed the man who had beensevere on suicide. "Fine eyes, if you like--but give me somethingfresher. "

She was wearing a long cloak. The door, in swinging to, caught an endof this, and hindered her progress. Both she and her companion stoopedto free it; their hands met; and the bystanders saw the young mancolour darkly over face and neck. 

The others had got into one of the droschkes that waited in line besidethe building. The dark stranger put an impatient head out of thewindow. The two behind quickened their steps; the young man helpedLouise in, mounted himself, and slammed the door. 

The driver gathered up the reins, cracked his whip, and the big-bodieddroschke went swerving round the corner, clattering gutturally on thecobbled stone pavement. 

The group of loiterers at the door dispersed.