"I am not unaware," he began slowly, just as if he were making a campaign speech to his electors, "I am not unaware that our marriage has not been the source of wholesome blessings. To be convinced of this, your declamation was unnecessary. We married because the circumstances were favourable. We had cause to regret the decision. Is it worth while to investigate the cause now? I am quite devoid of sentimental needs. This is true of me to such an extent that any display of sympathy or exuberance or lack of harshness in other people fills me with mortal antipathy. Unfortunately, my political career obliged me to assume a favourable attitude toward this general tendency of the masses. I played the hypocrite with complete consciousness of what I was doing, and made so much the greater effort to conceal all feeling in my private life."

"It is easy to conceal something you do not have," replied the Baroness in a tone of intense bitterness.

"Possibly; but it is a poor display of tact for the rich man to irritate the poor man by flaunting his lavish, spendthrift habits in his face; and this is precisely what you have done. The emphasis you laid on a certain possession of yours, the value of which we will not dispute, provoked my contempt. It gave you pleasure to cry when you saw a cat eating a sparrow. A banal newspaper novel could rob you completely of your spiritual equanimity. You were always thrilled, always in ecstasy, it made not the slightest difference whether the cause of your ecstasy was the first spring violet or a thunder storm, a burnt roast, a sore throat, or a poem. You were always raving, and I became tired of your raving. You did not seem to notice that my distrust toward the expression of these so-called feelings was transformed into coldness, impatience, and hatred. And then came the music. What was at first a diversion for you, of which one might approve or disapprove, became in time the indemnity for an active life and all the defects of your character. You gave yourself up to music somewhat as a prostitute gives herself up to her first loyal lover"—the Baroness twitched as if some one had struck her across the back with a horsewhip—"yes, like a prostitute," he repeated, turning paler and paler, his eyes glistening. "Then it was that your whole character came to light; one saw how spoiled you were, how helpless, how undisciplined. You clung like a worm to uncertain and undetermined conditions. If I have become a devil in your eyes, it is your music that has made me so. Now you know it."

"So that is it," whispered the Baroness with faltering breath. "Did you leave me anything but my music? Have you not raged like a tiger? But it is not true," she exclaimed, "you are not so vicious, otherwise I myself would be a lie in the presence of the Eternal Judge, and that I had borne children by you would be contrary to nature. Leave me, go away, so that I may believe that it is not true!"

The Baron did not move.

In indescribable excitement, and as quickly as her obese body would permit, the Baroness leaped to her feet: "I know you better," she said with trembling lips, "I have been able to foreshadow what is driving you about; I have seen what makes you so restless. You are not the man you pretend to be; you are not the cold, heartless creature you seem. In your breast there is a spot where you are vulnerable, and there you have been struck. You are bleeding, man! If we all, I and your daughter and your brothers and your friends and your cowardly creatures, are as indifferent and despicable to you as so many flies, there is one who has been able to wound you; this fact is gnawing at your heart. And do you know why he was in a position to wound you? Because you loved him. Look me in the eye, and tell me that I lie. You loved him—your son—you idolised him. The fact that he has repudiated your love, that he found it of no value to him, the love that blossomed on the ruined lives of his mother and sister, this is the cause of your sorrow. It is written across your brow. And that you are suffering, and suffering for this reason, constitutes my revenge."

The Baron did not say a word; his lower jaw wagged from left to right as though he were chewing something; his face seemed to have dried up; he looked as though he had suddenly become older by years. The Baroness, driven from her reserve, stood before him like an enraged sibyl. He turned in silence, and left the room.

"My suffering is her revenge," he murmured on leaving the room. Once alone, he stood for a while perfectly absent-minded. "Am I really suffering?" he said to himself.

He turned off a gas jet that was burning above the book case. "Yes, I am suffering," he confessed reluctantly; "I am suffering." He walked along the wall with dragging feet, and entered a room in which a light was burning. He felt the same satiety and disgust at himself that he had experienced a few moments earlier. This time it was caused by the sight of the hand-carved furniture, the painted porcelain, the precious tapestries, and the oil paintings in their gold frames.

He longed for simpler things; he longed for barren walls, a cot of straw, parsimony, discipline. It was not the first time that his exhausted organism had sought consolation in the thought of a monastic life. This Protestant, this descendent of a long line of Protestants, had long been tired of Protestantism. He regarded the Roman Church as the more wholesome and merciful.

But the transformation of his religious views was his own carefully guarded secret. And secret it had to remain until he, the undisciplined son of his mother, could atone for his past misdeeds. He decided to wait until this atonement had been effected. Just as a hypnotist gains control of his medium by inner composure, so he thought he could hasten the coming of this event by conceding it absolute supremacy over his mind.

III

When Eberhard von Auffenberg left the paternal home to strike out for himself, he was as helpless as a child that has lost the hand of its adult companion in a crowd.

He put the question to himself: What am I going to do? He had never worked. He had studied at various universities as so many other young men have studied, that is, he had managed to pass a few examinations by the skin of his teeth.

He had had so little to do in life, and was so utterly devoid of ambition, that he looked upon a really ambitious individual as being insane. Anything that was at all practical was filled with insurmountable obstacles. His freedom, in other words, placed him in a distressing state of mind and body.

It would not have been difficult for him to find people who would have been willing to advance him money on his name. But he did not wish to incur debts of which his father might hear. If he did, his solemn solution of an unbearable relation would have amounted to nothing.

He could, of course, count on his share of the estate; and he did count on it, notwithstanding the fact that to do so was to speculate on the death of his own father. He stood in urgent need of a confidential friend; and this friend he thought he had found in Herr Carovius.

"Ah, two people such as you and I will not insist upon unnecessary formalities," said Herr Carovius. "All that I need is your face, and your signature to a piece of paper. We will deduct ten per cent at the very outset, so that my expenses may be covered, for money is dear at present. I will give you real estate bonds; they are selling to-day at eighty-five, unfortunately. The Exchange is a trifle spotty, but a little loss like that won't mean anything to you."

For the ten thousand marks that he owed, Eberhard received seven thousand, six hundred and fifty, cash. In less than a year he was again in need of money, and asked Herr Carovius for twenty thousand. Herr Carovius said he did not have that much ready money, and that he would have to approach a lender.

Eberhard replied sulkily that he could do about that as he saw fit, but he must not mention his name to a third party. A few days later Herr Carovius told a tale, of hair-splitting negotiations: there was a middleman who demanded immodest guarantees, including certified notes. He swore that he knew nothing about that kind of business, and that he had undertaken to supply the needed loan only because of his excessive affection for his young friend.

Eberhard was unmoved. The eel-like mobility of the man with the squeaking voice did not please him; not at all; as a matter of fact he began to dread him; and this dread increased in intensity and fearfulness in proportion to the degree in which he felt he was becoming more and more entangled in his net.

The twenty thousand marks were procured at an interest of thirty-five per cent. At first Eberhard refused to sign the note. He would not touch it until Herr Carovius had assured him that it was not to be converted into currency, that it could be redeemed with new loans at any time, and that it would lie in his strong-box as peacefully as the bones of the Auffenberg ancestors rested in their vaults. Eberhard, tired of this flood of words, yielded.

Every time he signed his name he had a feeling that the danger into which he was walking was becoming greater. But he was too lazy to defend himself; he was too aristocratic to interest himself in petty explanations; and he was simply not capable of living on a small income.

The endorsed notes were presented as a matter of warning; new loans settled them; new loans made new notes necessary; these were extended; the extensions were costly; an uncanny individual shielded in anonymity was taken into confidence. He bought up mortgages, paid for them in diamonds instead of money, and sold depreciated stocks. The debts having reached a certain height, Herr Carovius demanded that Eberhard have his life insured. Eberhard had to do it; the premium was very high. In the course of three years Eberhard had lost all perspective; he could no longer survey his obligations. The money he received he spent in the usual fashion, never bothered himself about the terms on which he had secured it, and had no idea where all this was leading to and where it was going to end. He turned in disgust from Herr Carovius's clumsy approaches, malicious gibes, and occasional threats.

What an insipid smile he had! How fatuous, and then again how profound, his conversation could be! He took upon himself the impudent liberty of running in and out at Eberhard's whenever he felt like it. He bored him with his discussion of philosophic systems, or with miserable gossip about his neighbours. He watched him day and night.

He followed him on the street. He would come up to him and cry out, "Herr Baron, Herr Baron!" and wave his hat. His solicitude for Eberhard's health resembled that of a gaoler. One evening Eberhard went to bed with a fever. Herr Carovius ran to the physician, and then spent the whole night by the bedside of the patient, despite his entreaties to be left alone. "Would it not be well for me to write to your mother?" he asked, with much show of affection on the next morning when he noticed that the fever had not fallen. Eberhard sprang from his bed with an exclamation of rage, and Herr Carovius left immediately and unceremoniously.

Herr Carovius loved to complain. He ran around the table, exclaiming that he was ruined. He brought out his cheque book, added up the figures, and cried: "Two more years of this business, dear Baron, and I will be ready for the poor house." He demanded security and still more securities; he asked for renewed promises. He submitted an account of the total sum, and demanded an endorsement. But it was impossible for any one to make head or tail out of this welter of interest, commissions, indemnities, and usury. Herr Carovius himself no longer knew precisely how matters stood; for a consortium of subsequent indorsers had been formed behind his back, and they were exploiting his zeal on behalf of the young Baron for all it was worth.

"What is this I hear about you and the women?" asked Herr Carovius one day. "What about a little adventure?" He had noticed that the Baron had a secret; and it enraged him to think that he could not get at the bottom of this amorous mystery.

He made this discovery one day as Eberhard was packing his trunk. "Where are you going, my dear friend?" he crowed in exclamatory dismay. Eberhard replied that he was going to Switzerland. "To Switzerland? What are you going to do there? I am not going to let you go," said Herr Carovius. Eberhard gave him one cold stare. Herr Carovius tried beseeching, begging, pleading. It was in vain; Eberhard left for Switzerland. He wanted to be alone; he became tired of being alone, and returned; he went off again; he came back again, and had the conversation with Eleanore that robbed him of his last hope. Then he went to Munich, and took up with the spiritists.

Spiritual and mental ennui left him without a vestige of the power of resistance. An inborn tendency to scepticism did not prevent him from yielding to an influence which originally was farther removed from the inclinations of his soul than the vulgar bustle of everyday life. Benumbed as his critical judgment now was, he went prospecting for the fountain of life in a zone where dreams flourish and superficial enchantment predominates.

Herr Carovius hired a spy who never allowed Eberhard to get out of his sight. He reported regularly to his employer on the movements of the unique scion of the Auffenberg line. If Eberhard needed money, he was forced to go to Carovius, who would stand on the platform for an hour waiting for the Baron's train to come in; and once Eberhard had got out of his carriage, Herr Carovius excited the laughter of the railroad officials by his affectionate care for his protege. Delighted to see him again, he would talk the sheerest nonsense, and trip around about his young friend in groundless glee.

It seemed after all this that Herr Carovius really loved the Baron; and he did.

He loved him as a gambler loves his cards, or as the fire loves the coals. He idealised him; he dreamt about him; he liked to breathe the air that Eberhard breathed; he saw a chosen being in him; he imputed all manner of heroic deeds to him, and was immeasurably pleased at his aristocratic offishness.

He loved him with hatred, with the joy of annihilation. This hate-love became in time the centre of his thoughts and feelings. In it was expressed everything that separated him from other men and at the same time drew him to them. It controlled him unconditionally, until a second, equally fearful and ridiculous passion became affiliated with it.

IV

Daniel had hesitated for a long while about making use of the letter of introduction from Frau von Erfft. Gertrude then took to begging him to go to the Baroness. "If I go merely to please you, my action will avenge itself on you," he said.

"If I understood why you hesitate, I would not ask you," she replied in a tone of evident discomfort.

"I found so much there in Erfft," said he, "so much human kindness that was new to me; I dislike the idea of seeing some ulterior motive back of it, or of putting one there myself. Do you understand now?" She nodded.

"But must is stronger than may," he concluded, and went.

The Baroness became quite interested in his case. The position of second Kapellmeister at the City Theatre was vacant, and she tried to have Daniel appointed to it. She was promised that it would be given to him; but the usual intrigues were spun behind her back; and when she urged that the matter be settled immediately and in favour of her candidate, she was fed on dissembling consolation. She was quite surprised to be brought face to face with hostile opposition, which seemed to spring from every side as if by agreement against the young musician. Not a single one of his enemies, however, allowed themselves to be seen, and no one heard from by correspondence. It was the first time that she had come in conflict with the world in a business way; there was something touching in her indignation at the display of cowardly fraud.

Finally, after a long, and for her humiliating, interview with that chief of cosmopolitan brokers, Alexander Doermaul, Daniel's engagement for the coming spring was agreed upon.

In the meantime the Baroness took lessons from Daniel. She expressed a desire to familiarise herself with the standard piano compositions, and to be given a really practical introduction to their meaning and the right method of interpreting them.

It was long before she became accustomed to his cold and morose sternness. She had the feeling that he was pulling her out of a nice warm bath into a cold, cutting draught. She longed to return to her twilights, her ecstatic moods, her melancholy reveries.

Once he explained to her in a thoroughly matter-of-fact way the movement of a fugue. She dared to burst out with an exclamation of joy. He shut the piano with a bang, and said: "Adieu, Baroness." He did not return until she had written him a letter asking him to do so.

"Ah, it is lost effort, a waste of time," he thought, though he did not fail to appreciate the Baroness's human dignity. The eight hours a month were a complete torture to him. And yet he found that twenty marks an hour was too much; he said so. The suspicion that she was giving him alms made him exceedingly disagreeable.

A servant became familiar with him. Daniel took him by the collar and shook him until he was blue in the face. He was as wiry as a jaguar, and much to be feared when angry. The Baroness had to discharge the servant.

Once the Baroness showed him an antique of glass work made of mountain crystal and beautifully painted. As he was looking at it in intense admiration, he let it fall; it broke into many pieces. He was as humiliated as a whipped school boy; the old Baroness had to use her choicest powers of persuasion to calm him. He then played the whole of Schumann's "Carneval" for her, a piece of music of which she was passionately fond.

Every forenoon you could see him hastening across the bridge. He always walked rapidly; his coat tails flew. He always had the corners of his mouth drawn up and his lower lip clenched between his teeth. He was always looking at the ground; in the densest crowds he seemed to be alone. He bent the rim of his hat down so that it covered his forehead. His dangling arms resembled the stumpy wings of a penguin.

At times he would stop, stand all alone, and listen, so to speak, into space without seeing. When he did this, street boys would gather about him and grin. Once upon a time a little boy said to his mother: "Tell me, mother, who is that old, old manikin over there?"

This is the picture we must form of him at this time of his life, just before his years of real storm and stress: he is in a hurry; he seems so aloof, sullen, distant, and dry; he is whipped about the narrow circle of his everyday life by fancy and ambition; he is so young and yet so old. This is the light in which we must see him.

V

The apartment of Daniel and Gertrude had three rooms. Two opened on the street, and one, the bed room, faced a dark, gloomy court.

With very limited means, but with diligence and pleasure, Gertrude had done all in her power to make the apartment as comfortable as possible. Though the ceilings were low and the walls almost always damp, the rooms seemed after all quite home-like and attractive.

In Daniel's study the piano was the chief object of furniture; it dominated the space. Fuchsias in the window gave a pleasing frame to the general picture of penury. His mother had given him the oil painting of his father. From its place above the sofa the stern countenance of Gottfried Nothafft looked down upon the son. It seemed at times that the face of the father turned toward the mask of Zingarella as if to ask who and what it was. The mask hung on the other side of the room from the oil painting; its unbroken smile was lost in the shadows.

Gertrude had to do all the household work; they could not afford a servant. In the years of Daniel's absence, however, she had learned to copy notes. Herr Seelenfromm, assistant to the apothecary Pflaum, had taught her. He was a cousin of Frau Ruebsam, and she had become acquainted with him through Eleanore. In his leisure hours he composed waltzes and marches, and dedicated them to the princes and princesses of the royal family. He also dedicated one to Gertrude. It was entitled "Feenzauber," and was a gavotte.

When Daniel learned of her accomplishment, he was so astonished that he threw his hands above his head. The rare being looked up at him intoxicated with joy. "I will help you," she said, and copied his notes for him.

When they walked along the streets she would close her eyes at times. A melody floated by her which she had never before been able to understand. As she bought her vegetables and tried to drive a bargain with the old market woman, her soul was full of song.

Certain tones and combinations of tones took on definite shapes in her mind. The bass B of the fourth octave appeared to her as a heavily veiled woman; the middle E resembled a young man who was stretching his arms. In chords, harmonies, and harmonic transformations these figures were set in motion, the motion depending on the character of the composition: a procession of mourning figures between clouds and stars; wild animals spurred on by the huntsmen who were riding them; maidens throwing flowers from the windows of a palace; men and women plunging into an abyss in one mass of despairing humanity; weeping men and laughing women, wrestlers and ball players, dancing couples and grape pickers. The pause appealed to her as a man who climbs naked from a deep subterranean shaft, carrying a burning torch in his hand; the trill seemed like a bird that anxiously flutters about its nest.

All of Daniel's compositions came close to her heart; all his pictures were highly coloured; his figures seemed to be full of blood. If they remained dead and distant, her sympathy vanished; her face became tired and empty. Without having spoken a word with each other, Daniel would know that he was on the wrong track. But all this bound him to the young woman with hoops of steel; he came to regard her as the creature given him of God to act as his living conscience and infallible if mute judge.

He hated her when her feelings remained unmoved. If he at last came to see, after much introspection, that she was right, then he would have liked to fall down and worship the unknown power that was so inexorable in pointing him the way.

Spindler had a beautiful harp which he had bequeathed to Daniel in his will. It had remained in Ansbach in the possession of the old lady who kept house for him. Daniel had forgotten all about the harp. After his marriage he had it sent to him.

He kept it in the living room; Gertrude was fond of looking at it. It enticed her. One day she sat down and tried to draw tones from its strings. She touched the strings very gently, and was charmed with the melody that came from them. Gradually she learned the secret; she discovered the law. An innate talent made the instrument submissive to her; she was able to express on it all the longings and emotions she had experienced in her dark and lonely hours.

She generally played very softly; she never tried intricate melodies, for the harp was adapted to the expression of simple, dream-like harmonies. The tones were wafted out into the hall and up the stairs; they greeted Daniel as he entered the old house.

When he came into the room, Gertrude was sitting in a corner by the stove, the harp between her knees. She smiled mysteriously to herself; her hands, like strange beings loosed from her body, sought chords and melodies that were his, and which she was trying to translate to her own world of dreams.

VI

Her command of language was more defective now than ever. She was seized with painful astonishment when she noticed that in matters of daily intercourse Daniel's mind was not able to penetrate the veil behind which she lived.

He said to himself: she is too heavy. He was dumbfounded at her conduct, and displeased with it.

"The gloomy house oppresses you," he said in a tone of ill humour, when she smiled in her helpless way.

"Let us run a race," he said to her one day as they were taking a walk through the country. An old tree in the distance that had been struck by lightning was to be their objective.

They ran as fast as their feet could carry them. At a distance of about ten metres from the tree, Gertrude collapsed. He carried her over to the meadow.

"How heavy you are," he said.

"Too heavy for you?" she asked with wide-opened eyes. He shrugged his shoulders.

Then she slipped out of his embrace, sprang to her feet, and ran with remarkable swiftness a distance that was twice as long as the one he had staked off; she did not fall; she did not want to fall; she dared not.

Breathing heavily and pale as a corpse, she waited until he came up. But he had no tenderness for her now; he merely scolded. Arm in arm they walked on. Gertrude felt for his hand; he gave it to her, and she pressed it to her bosom.

Daniel was terrified as he looked into her face, and saw her thoughts written there as if in letters of fire: We belong to each other for time and eternity.

That was her confession of faith.

VII

She lay wide awake until late at night. She heard him go into the kitchen and get a drink of water and then return to his room. He had forbidden her to come to the door and ask whether he was not going to bed soon: she was not to do this, it made no difference how late it was.

Then he lay beside her, his head on his arm, and looked at her with eyes that had lost their earthly, temporal glow. Man, where are your eyes anyway, she would have liked to exclaim. And yet she knew where they were; she knew, too, that it is dangerous to disturb a somnambulist by calling to him.

One night he had found it impossible to do his work. He sat down on the edge of the bed and stared into the light of the lamp for an hour or so, hating himself. Gertrude saw how he raged at himself; how he really fed, nourished his lack of confidence in himself. But she could not say anything.

A publisher had returned one of his manuscripts with a courteous but depressing conventional rejection slip. Daniel spoke disparagingly of his talents; he had lost hope in his future; he was bitter at the world; he felt that he was condemned to a life of unceasing obscurity.

The only thing she could do was look at him; merely look at him.

He became tired of having her look at him; a fresh, vigorous remark would have served his purpose much better, he thought.

She measured her work and his not in terms of reward; she did not seek for connection of any kind between privation and hope; nor did she measure Daniel's love in terms of tender expressions and embraces. She waited for him with much patience. In time her patience irritated him. "A little bit more activity and insistence would not hurt you," he said one day, and thrust her timid, beseeching hands from him.

He saw himself cared for: He had a home, a person who prepared his meals, washed his clothes, and faithfully attended to his other household needs. He should have been grateful. He was, too, but he could not show it. He was grateful when he was alone, but in Gertrude's presence his gratitude turned to defiance. If he was away from home, he thought with pleasure of his return; he pictured Gertrude's joy at seeing him again. But when he was with her, he indulged in silent criticism, and wanted to have everything about her different.

The judge's wife on the first floor complained that Gertrude did not speak to her. "Be kind to your neighbours," he remarked with the air of a professional scold. The next Sunday they took a walk, on which they met the judge's wife. Gertrude spoke to her: "Well, you don't need to fall on her neck," he mumbled. She thought for a long while of how she might speak to people without offending them and without annoying Daniel. She was embarrassed; she was afraid of Daniel's criticism.

On such days she would put too much salt in the soup, everything went wrong, and in her diligent attempt to be punctual she lost much time. She was fearfully worried when he got up from the table and went to his room without saying a word. She would sit perfectly still and listen; she was frightened when he went to the piano to try a motif. When he again entered her room, she looked into his face with the tenseness of a soul in utter anguish. Then it suddenly came about that he would sit down by her side and caress her. He told her all about his life, his home, his father, his mother. If she could only have heard each of his words twice! If she could only have drunk in the expression in his eyes! They were filled with peace; his nervous hands lay in quiet on his knees when he spoke to her in this way on these subjects. His twitching, angular face, weather-beaten by the storms of life, took on an expression of sorrow that was most becoming to it.

When she had a headache or was tired, he expressed his anxiety for her in touching tones. He would go about the house on tiptoes, and close the doors with infinite care. If a dog barked on the street, he rushed to the window and looked out, enraged at the beast. When she retired, he would help her undress, and bring her whatever she needed.

It was also strange that he disliked the idea of leaving her alone. There was something child-like in his restlessness when he was at home and she was out. He pictured her surrounded by grievous dangers; he would have liked to lock her up and hold her a captive, so as to be sure that she was quite safe. This made her all the weaker and more dependent upon him, while he was like a man who presses what he has to his heart, plagued with the thought that by some mischance it might escape, and yet clings to it also lest he be disturbed by the thought of another more precious possession he loved long since and lost a while.

Once he came to Gertrude while she was playing the harp, threw his arms about her, looked into her face with a wild, gloomy expression, and stammered: "I love you, I love you, I do." It was the first time he had spoken these eternal words. She grew pale, first from joy and then from fear; for there was more of hatred than of love in his voice.

VIII

He felt that association with congenial men would help him over many a dark hour. But when he set out to look for these men, the city became a desert and a waste place.

Herr Seelenfromm came to his house now and then. Daniel could not endure the timid man who admired him so profoundly, and who, in the bottom of his heart, had an equal amount of respect for Gertrude. The young architect who had been employed at the St. Sebaldus Church while it was being renovated, and who loved music, had won Daniel's esteem. But he had a repulsive habit of smacking his tongue when he talked. Daniel and he discussed the habit, and parted the worst of enemies. His association with a certain Frenchman by the name of Riviere was of longer duration. Riviere was spending some time in the city, looking up material for a life of Caspar Hauser. He had made his acquaintance at the Baroness von Auffenberg's, and taken a liking to him because he reminded him of Friedrich Benda.

M. Riviere loved to hear Daniel improvise on the piano. He knew so little German that he merely smiled at Daniel's caustic remarks; and if he became violently enraged, M. Riviere merely stared at his mouth. He had a wart on his cheek, and wore a straw hat summer and winter. He cooked his own meals, for it was an obsession of his that people wanted to poison him because he was writing a life of Caspar Hauser.

When Herr Seelenfromm and M. Riviere came in of a Sunday evening, Daniel would reach for a volume of E. T. A. Hoffmann or Clemens Brentano, and read from them until he was hoarse. He tried in this way to find peace in a strange world; for he did not wish to weep at the sight of human beings who seemed perfectly at ease.

Gertrude looked at him, and put this question to herself: How is it that a man to whom music is life and the paradise of his heart can allow himself to be so enveloped in sorrow, so beclouded by gloom? She understood the smarting pains in which he composed; she had a vague idea of the labyrinthine complications of his inner fate; these she grasped. But her own soul was filled with joyless compassion; she wished with all her power to plant greater faith and more happiness in his heart.

She meditated on the best means of carrying on her spiritual campaign. It occurred to her that he had had more of both faith and happiness at the time he was going with Eleanore. She saw Eleanore now in a quite different light. She recalled that Eleanore was not merely her sister but the creator of her happiness. Nor was she unmindful of the fact that through the transformation of her being, love and enlightenment had arisen to take the place of her former suspicion and ignorance.

She ascribed to Eleanore all those powers in which she had formerly been lacking: general superiority and stimulating vigour; an ability to play that lent charm to drudgery and made the hard things of life easy; brightness in conversation and delicacy of touch. In her lonely broodings she came to the conclusion that Eleanore was the only one who could help her. She went straightway to her father's house to find out why Eleanore so rarely came to see her.

"I don't like to come; Daniel is so unkind to me," said Eleanore.

Gertrude replied that he was unkind to everybody, including her herself, and that she must not pay any attention to this; for she knew full well that Daniel liked her—and perhaps he himself was offended because she never called.

Eleanore thought it all over, and from then on visited her sister more frequently. But if it did not look as though Daniel did everything in his power to avoid her, this much was certain: he never said a word to her more than human decency required, and was an expert at finding reasons why he had to leave the room when she was there. Eleanore was gainfully conscious of this; it hurt her.

IX

One morning Gertrude returned from the market, carrying a heavy basket full of things she had bought. As she came in the front door she heard Daniel playing. She noticed at once that he was not improvising; that he was playing a set piece, the tones of which were quite unfamiliar to her.

As she came up the steps, the basket no longer seemed like a burden. She went quietly into the living room and listened. Something drew her closer and closer to the piano. Daniel had not noticed that she had entered the room and sat down. He was wholly lost in what he was doing; he never took his rapt and wondering eyes from the music before him.

It was his draft of the "Harzreise im Winter." For a year and a half, since the time he had composed it in Ansbach, he had never again thought of it; it had lain untouched. Suddenly the fire of creation had flamed up in him; he could once more bind the incoherent, and make what had been merely implied or indicated take definite shape.

He would play a movement again and again, trying to connect it with what went before or came after; he would take his pencil and write in a few notes here or there; then he would try it again, and smile to himself in a strange, confused, and yet enchanted way, when he saw that the motif was complete, perfect. Gertrude was drawn still closer to him. In her awe-struck admiration she crouched on the floor beside him. She would have liked to creep into the piano, and give her soul the opportunity it sought to express itself in the tones that came from the strings. When Daniel had finished, she pressed her head to his hips, and reached her hot hands up to him.

Daniel was terrified; for he recalled instantaneously another occasion on which another woman had done precisely the same thing. His eye involuntarily fell on the mask of Zingarella. He was not conscious of the connection; there was no visible bridge between the two incidents; Gertrude's face was too unlike that of its momentary prototype. But with a feeling of awe he detected a mysterious liaison between then and now: he imagined he could hear a voice calling to him from the distant shores of yonder world.

He laid his hand on Gertrude's hair. She interpreted the gesture as a visible sign that his promise had been fulfilled; that this work belonged to her; that he had created it for her, had taken it from her heart, and was returning it to the heart from whence it came.

X

Zierfuss, the music dealer, had sent out invitations to a concert. Daniel did not feel like going. Gertrude asked Eleanore if she would not go with her. Daniel called for them after the concert.

Eleanore told him on the way home that she had received a letter for him that afternoon bearing a London stamp.

"From Benda?" asked Daniel quickly.

"It is Benda's handwriting," replied Eleanore. "I was going to bring it to you when Gertrude called for me. Wait out in the front of the house, and I'll go in and get it."

"Take dinner with us this evening, Eleanore," said Gertrude, looking rather uncertainly at Daniel.

"If it is agreeable to Daniel...."

"No nonsense, Eleanore, of course it is agreeable to me," said Daniel.

A quarter of an hour later Daniel was sitting by the lamp reading Benda's letter.

The first thing his friend told him was that he was to join a scientific expedition to the Congo, and that his party would follow almost exactly the same route that had been taken by the Stanley Expedition when it set out to look for Emin Pascha.

Benda wrote: "This letter then, my dear friend, is written to say good-bye for a number of years, perhaps forever. I feel as if I had been born anew. I have eyes again; and the ideas that fill my brain are no longer condemned to be stifled in the morass of imprisoned colleagues, loyal and inimical. To labour in nature's laboratory will make me forget the wrongs I have suffered, the injustice that has been done me. Hunger and thirst, disease and danger will of course have to be endured; they are the effects of those crimes of civilisation that spare the body while they poison the mind and soul."

Further on Benda wrote: "I am bound to my home by only two people, my mother and you. When I think of you, a feeling of pride comes over me; every hour we spent together is indelibly stamped on my heart. But there is one delicate point: it is a point of conscience. Call it, so far as I am concerned, a chip; call it anything you please. The fact is I have had a Don Quixotic run in, and I have got to defend myself."

Daniel shook his head and read on. Benda knew nothing of his marriage. He did not even seem to know that Daniel and Gertrude had been engaged. Or if he had known it he had forgotten it. Daniel could hardly believe his own eyes when he came to the following passage: "My greatest anxiety always lay in the fear that you would pass Eleanore by. I was too cowardly to tell you how I felt on this point, and I have reproached myself ever since for my cowardice. Now that I am leaving I tell you how I feel about this matter, though not exactly with the sensation of performing a belated task."

For Heaven's sake, thought Daniel, what is he trying to do to me?

"I have often thought about it in quiet hours; it gave me the same feeling of satisfaction that I have in a chemical experiment, when the reactions of the various elements take place as they should: what Eleanore says is your word; what you feel is Eleanore's law."

He is seeing ghosts, cried Daniel, he is tangling up the threads of my life. What does he mean? Why does he do it?

"Don't neglect what I am telling you! Don't crush that wonderful flower! The girl is a rare specimen; the rarest I know. You need your whole heart with all its powers of love and kindness to appreciate her. But if my words reach you too late, please tear this letter into shreds, and get the whole idea out of your mind as soon and completely as possible."

"Come, let's eat," said Gertrude, as she entered the room with a dish of pickled herring.

Eleanore was sitting on the sofa looking at Daniel quizzically. He was lost in thought.

Daniel looked up, and studied the two women as if they were the figures of a hallucination: the one in dark red, the other in dark blue; minor and major keys. The two stood side by side, and yet so far removed from each other: they were the two poles of his world.

XI

"What has Benda got to say?" asked Gertrude hesitatingly.

"Just think, he is going to Africa," replied Daniel, with a voice as if he were lying. "Curious, isn't it? I suppose he is on the ocean by this time."

With an expression on his face that clearly betrayed the fact that he was afraid the sisters might somehow divine or suspect the parts of the letter he wished to keep to himself, he read as much of it as he dared to them.

"Why don't you read on?" asked Eleanore, when he paused.

She bent over the table, filled with a burning curiosity to know the whole contents of the letter, and while so doing her hair became entangled in the metal bric-a-brac of the hanging lamp. Gertrude got up and liberated her.

Daniel had laid his hand over the letter, and was looking at Eleanore threateningly. His eye and that of the captured girl chanced to meet; she struggled between a feeling of amusement and one of annoyance. It gave Daniel an uncomfortable feeling to have her eyes so close to his.

"Don't you know that that is not polite?" he asked. "We have some secrets, probably, Benda and I."

"I merely thought that Benda had sent me his greetings," replied Eleanore, and blushed with embarrassment.

Daniel then held the letter above the chimney of the lamp, waited until it had caught fire, and then threw it on the floor, where it burned up.

"It is late, and father is already waiting," said Eleanore, after they had eaten in great haste.

"I will take you home," declared Daniel. Surprised by such unusual gallantry, Eleanore looked at him with amazement. He at once became moody; she was still more surprised. "I can go home alone, Daniel," she said in a tone of noticeable seriousness, "you do not need to put yourself out for me."

"Put myself out? What do you mean? Are you one of those people who can't keep a tune, and step on the pedal when their sentiment runs short?"

Eleanore had nothing to say.

"Put your great coat on, Daniel," said Gertrude in the hall, "it is cold and windy out."

She wanted to help him on with it, but he threw it in the clothes press; he was irritated.

He walked along at Eleanore's side through the deserted streets.

She had already put the key in the front door, when she turned around, looked up in a most unhappy way, and said: "Daniel, what in the world is the matter with you? When I look at you, a feeling of anguish and distress comes over me. What have I done that you should act so disagreeably toward me?"

"Oh, forget it, think about something else, don't mention the subject any more," said Daniel, in a rough, rude voice. But the glance she fixed on him was so stern and unpitying, so testing and so un-girl-like, so strong and so bold, that he felt his heart grow softer. "Let us take a little walk," he said.

For a long time they paced back and forth in perfect silence. Then she asked him what he was working on now. He made cautious, non-committal replies, and then suddenly he was overwhelmed with a flood of words. He remarked that he felt at times as if he were struggling with goblins in the dark. What gushed forth from the deepest depths of his soul, he said, was somehow or other too noisy and blatant, and died in his hands while he was trying to create an appropriate form for it. He said he had no success with anything unless it was something disembodied, incorporeal, the melody of which had thus far found an echo in no human breast. Therefore he seemed to be groping around, without anchorage, after sprites from the land of nowhere. And the more domineering the order was to which he subjected his mind and his fancy, the more lost and hopeless his earthly self seemed to be as it drifted in the chaos of the everyday world. He remarked that heaven was in his dreams, hell in his association with men. And how dead everything about him seemed to be! It was all like a cemetery; it was a cemetery. His doughtiest life was gradually transformed into a shadow and lacerated into a monstrosity. But that he was aggrieved at men he felt full well; for they lived more innocent lives than he, and they were more useful.

"But you have some one to hold to," said Eleanore, realising that she was skating on thin ice, "you have Gertrude."

To this he made no reply. She waited for him to say something, and when she saw that he did not care to make a reply of any kind, she smiled at him as if in a last attempt to get him to tell her what was the matter. Then all peace of mind vanished from her soul—and her face. Every time they passed a street lamp she turned her head to one side.

"She is after all in the presence of God your wife," said Eleanore gently and with remarkable solemnity.

Daniel looked up and listened as if greatly abashed. Speaking out into the wind he said: "The over-tone, Eleanore; a bird twittering in the bush. In the presence of God my wife! But in the roots the bass is howling; it is an infernal tremolo; do you hear it?"

He laughed as if mad, and his face, with his spotted teeth, was turned toward her. She took him by the arm, and implored him to straighten up.

He pressed her hand to his forehead, and said: "The letter, Eleanore, the letter ...!"

"Now you see, Daniel, I knew it all along. What was in the letter?"

"I dare not tell you, otherwise my sweet over-tone will take a somersault, become mingled with the gloomy bass, and be lost forever."

Eleanore looked at him in amazement; he had never seemed so much like a fool to her in her life.

"Listen," he said, putting his arm in hers, "I have composed a song; here is the way it goes." He sang a melody he had written for one of Eichendorff's poems. In it there was a tender sadness. "While everything is still and everybody asleep, my soul greets the eternal light, and rests like a ship in the harbour."

They had again reached the front door; they had been strolling back and forth for two hours.

He had an unpleasant feeling when he went up the steps of his apartment.

Gertrude was sitting where he had left her: by the clothes press. She had wrapped his top coat about her legs, her back was leaning against the wall, her head had sunk on her shoulder; she was asleep. She was not awakened by his coming. Beside her stood the candle, now burned down to the edge of the metal holder; it was spluttering. The light from it fell on Gertrude's face, lighting it up irregularly and lending it a painful expression.

"In the presence of God my wife," murmured Daniel. He did not waken Gertrude until the candle had gone out. Then he did; she got up, and the two went off in darkness to their bed room.



THE GLASS CASE BREAKS

I

Daniel wished to see Eleanore skate; he went out to the Maxfeld at a time he knew she would be there.

He saw her quite soon, and was delighted when she glided by; but when she was lost in the crowd, he frowned. High school boys followed her with cowardly and obtrusive forwardness. One student, who wore a red cap, fell flat on his stomach as he bowed to her.

She ran into two army officers, or they into her; this put an end for the time being to the inspired grace of her movement. When she started off a second time, drawing a beautiful circle, she saw Daniel and came over to him. She smiled in a confidential way, chatted with him, glided backwards in a circle about him, laughed at his impatience because she would not stand still, threw her muff over to him, asked him to throw it back, and, with arms raised to catch it, cut an artistic figure on the ice.

The picture she offered filled Daniel with reverence for the harmony of her being.

II

They frequently took walks after sunset out to the suburbs and up to the castle. Gertrude was pleased to see that Daniel and Eleanore were good friends again.

One time when they walked up the castle hill, Eleanore told Daniel that there was where she had taken leave of Eberhard von Auffenberg. She could recall everything he said, and she confessed with marked candour what she had said in reply. The story about the old herb woman Daniel did not find amusing. He stopped, and said: "Child, don't have anything to do with spirits! Never interfere with your lovely reality."

"Don't talk in that way," replied Eleanore. "I dislike it. The tone of your voice and the expression on your face make me feel as if I were a woman of worldly habits."

They went into the Church of St. Sebaldus, and revelled in the beauty of the bronze castings on the tomb of the saint. They also went to the Germanic Museum, where they loved to wander around in the countless deserted passage-ways, stopped and studied the pictures, and never tired of looking at the old toys, globes, kitchen utensils, and armour.

Eleanore's greatest pleasure, however, was derived from sauntering through the narrow alleys. She like to stand in an open door, and look into the court at some weather-beaten statue; to stand before the window of an antique shop, and study the brocaded objects, silver chains, rings with gaudy stones, engraved plates, and rare clocks. All manner of roguish ideas came to her mind, and around every wish she wove a fairy tale. The meagrest incident sufficed to send her imagination to the land of wonders, just as if the fables and legends that the people had been passing on from hearth to hearth for centuries were leading a life of reality over there.

The tailor sitting with crossed legs on his table; the smith hammering the red-hot iron; the juggler who made the rounds of the city with the trained monkey; the Jewish pawnbroker, the chimney sweep, the one-legged veteran, an old woman who looked out from some cellar, a spider's nest in the corner of a wall—around all these things and still others she wound her tale of weal or woe. It seemed that what she saw had never been seen by mortal eyes before. It seemed that the things or people that attracted her attention had not existed until she had seen them. For this reason she was never in a bad humour, never bored, never lazy, never tired.

There was something about her, however, that Daniel could not understand. He did not know wherein the riddle lay, he merely knew that there was one. If she gave him her hand, it seemed to him that there was something unreal about it. If he requested that she look at him, she did so, but it seemed that her glance was divided, half going to the left, half to the right, neither meeting his. If she came so close to him that their arms touched, he had the feeling that he could not take hold of her if he wished to.

He struggled against the enticement that lay in this peculiarity.

Her presence ennobled his ambition and dispelled his whims. She gave him the beautifully formed cloud, the tree covered with young foliage, the moon that rises up over the roofs of the houses—she gave him the whole earth over which he was hastening, a stranger to peace, unfamiliar with contentment.

He cherished no suspicion; he had no foreshadowing of his fate. And Eleanore was not afraid of him; she, too, was without a sense of danger.

III

One Sunday afternoon in April they took a walk out into the country. Gertrude had been suffering for weeks from lassitude and could not go with them.

Eleanore was a superb walker. It gave Daniel extreme pleasure to walk along with her, keeping step, moving hastily. The quick movement increased his susceptibility to the charm of the changing landscapes. It was quite different when he walked with Gertrude. She was slow, given to introspection, thoughtful, and not very strong.

In the course of an hour clouds gathered in the sky, the sun disappeared, big drops began to fall. Eleanore had taken neither umbrella nor rain coat along; she began to walk more rapidly. If they tried, they could reach the inn beyond the forest, and find shelter from the storm.

Just as they slipped through the crowd that had hurried up the road to the same refuge and entered the inn, the sluices of heaven seemed to open, and a cloud-burst followed. They were standing in the hall. Eleanore was warm, and did not wish to remain in the draught. They went into the restaurant; it was so full that they had considerable trouble to find seats. A working man, his wife, and four sickly-looking children squeezed up more closely together; the two youngest boys gave them their chairs and went to look for others.

The clouds hung low, causing premature darkness. Lamps were lighted, and their odour mingled freely with the other odours of this overcrowded room. A few village musicians played some unknown piece; the eyes of the workingman's children shone with delight. Because they sat there so quietly—and because they looked so pale—Eleanore gave each of the children a sandwich. The mother was very grateful, and said so. The father, who said he was the foreman in a mirror factory, began to talk with Daniel about the troubles of the present era.

All of a sudden Daniel caught sight of a familiar face at a nearby table. As it turned to one side, he saw in the dim, smelly light another face he knew, and then a third and a fourth. It was all so ghost-like in the room that it was some time before he knew just where to place them. Then it occurred to him where they came from.

Herr Hadebusch and Frau Hadebusch, Herr Francke and Benjamin Dorn were having a little Sunday outing. The brush-maker's wife was radiant with joy on seeing her old lodger. She nodded, she blinked, she folded her hands as if touched at the sight, and Herr Hadebusch raised his beer glass, eager to drink a toast to Daniel's health.

They could not quite make out who Eleanore was; they took her for Daniel's wife. This misunderstanding, it seemed, was then cleared up by the Methodist after he had craned his neck and called his powers of recognition into play. The demoniac woman nodded, to be sure, and kept on blinking, but in her face there was an expression of rustic disapproval. Her mouth was opened, and the tusks of her upper jaw shone forth uncannily from the black abyss.

The swan neck of the Methodist was screwed up so hardily and picturesquely above the heads of the others that Eleanore could not help but notice his physical and spiritual peculiarities. She wrinkled her brow, and looked at Daniel questioningly.

She looked around, and saw a great many people from the city whom she knew either by name or from having met them so frequently. There was a saleswoman from Ludwig Street; a clerk with a pock-marked face from a produce store; the dignified preceptress of a Kindergarten; an official of the savings bank; the hat-maker from the corner of the Market Place with his grown daughter; and the sergeant who invariably saluted when he passed by her.

All these people were in their Sunday clothes and seemed care-free and good natured. But as soon as they saw Eleanore a mean expression came over them. The fluttering of the lights made their faces look ghastly, while partial intoxication made it easy to read their filthy, lazy thoughts. Full of anxiety, Eleanore looked up at Daniel, as if she felt she would have to rely on his wealth of experience and greater superiority in general.

He was sorry for her and sorry for himself. He knew what was in store for him and her. When he looked over this Hogarthian gathering, and saw, despite its festive, convivial mood, hidden lusts of every description, crippled passions, secreted envy, and mysterious vindictiveness spread about like the stench of foul blood, he felt it was quite futile to cherish delusions of any kind as to what was before him. To spare Eleanore and to defend her, to leave her rather than be guilty of causing the child-like smile on her lips to die out and disappear forever—this he believed in the bottom of his heart he could promise both her and himself.

The working man and his family had left; and as it was no longer raining, most of the other guests had also gone. Up in the room above people were dancing. The lamps were shaking, and it was easy to hear the low sounds of the bass violin. Daniel took out his pencil, and began writing notes on the table. Eleanore bent over, looking at him, and, like him, fell to dreamy thinking.

Neither wished to know what the other was thinking; they entertained themselves in silence; inwardly they were drawn closer and closer together, as if by some mysterious and irresistible power. They had not noticed that it was evening, that the room was empty, that the waiters had taken the glasses away, and that the dance music in the room above had stopped.

They sat there in the half-lighted corner side by side, as if in some dark, deserted cavern. When they finally came out of their deep silence and looked at each other, they were first surprised and then dismayed.

"What are we going to do?" asked Eleanore half in a whisper, "it is late; we must be going home."

The sky was clouded, a warm wind swept across the plains, the road was full of puddles. Here and there a light flashed from the darkness, and a dog barked every now and then in the distant villages. When the road turned into the forest, Daniel gave Eleanore his arm. She took it, but soon let go. Daniel stopped, and said almost angrily: "Are we bewitched, both of us? Speak, Eleanore, speak!"

"What is there for me to say?" she asked gently. "I am frightened; it is so dark."

"You are frightened, Eleanore, you? You do not know the night. It has never yet been night in your soul; nor night in the world about you. Now you appreciate perhaps how a being of the night feels."

She made no reply.

"Give me your hand," he said, "I will lead you."

She gave him her hand. Soon they saw the lights of the city. He took her to her house; but when they reached it, they did not say good-bye: they looked at each other with dazed, helpless, seeking eyes; they were both pale and speechless.

Eleanore hastened into the hall, but turned as she reached the stairs, and waved to him with a smile, as if the two were separated by a hazy distance. As he fixed his eyes on the spot where he saw the slender figure disappear, he felt as if something were clutching his throat.

IV

Without the slightest regard for time, without feeling tired, without definite thoughts, detached from the present and all sense of obligation, Daniel wandered aimlessly through the streets. A low dive on Schuett Island saw him as a late guest. He sat there with his hands before his eyes, neither seeing nor hearing nor feeling, all crouched up in a bundle. Dirty little puddles of gin glistened on the top of the table, the gamblers were cursing, the proprietor was drunk.

The fire alarm drove him out: there was a fire in the suburbs of Schoppershof. The sky was reddened, it was drizzling. It seemed to Daniel that the air was reeking with the premonition of a heart-crushing disaster. Above the Laufer Gate a sheaf of sparks was whirling about.

Just then the melody for which he had waited so long throughout so many nights of restless despair arose before him in a grandiose circle. It seemed as if born for the words of the "Harzreise": "With the dim burning torch thou lightest for him the ferries at night over bottomless paths, across desolate fields."

In mournful thirds, receding again and again, the voices sank to earth; just one remained on high, alone, piously dissociated from profane return.

He hummed the melody with trembling lips to himself, until he met the nineteenth-century Socrates with his followers in the Rosenthal. They were still gipsying through the night.

They all talked at once; they were going to the fire. Daniel passed by unrecognised. The shrill voice of the painter Kropotkin pierced the air: "Hail to the flames! Hail to those whose coming we announce!" The laughter of the slough brothers died away in the distance.

Gertrude was standing at the head of the stairs with a candle in her hand; she had been waiting there since twelve o'clock. At eleven she had gone over to her father's house and rung the bell. Eleanore, frightened, had raised the window, and called down to her that Daniel had left her at nine.

He took the half-inanimate woman into the living room: "You must never wait for me, never," he said.

He opened the window, pointed to the glowing sky beyond the church, and as she leaned her head, with eyes closed, on his shoulder, he said with a scurrilous distortion of his face: "Behold! The fire! Hail to the flames! Hail to those whose coming we announce!"

V

The following morning Eleanore had no time to think of why Daniel had not gone home.

Jordan had just finished his breakfast when some one rang the door bell with unusual rapidity. Eleanore went to the door, and came back with Herr Zittel, who was in a rare state of excitement.

"I have come to inquire about your son, Jordan," he began, clearing his throat as though he were embarrassed.

"About my son?" replied Jordan astonished, "I thought you had given him three days' leave."

"I know nothing about that," replied Herr Zittel.

"Last Saturday evening he went on a visit to his friend Gerber in Bamberg to celebrate the founding of a club, or something of that sort; we are not expecting him until to-morrow. If you know nothing about this arrangement, Herr Diruf must have given him his leave."

The chief of the clerical department bit his lips. "Can you give me the address of this Herr Gerber?" he asked, "I should like to send him a telegram."

"For heaven's sake, what has happened, Herr Zittel?" cried Jordan, turning pale.

Herr Zittel stared into space with his gloomy, greenish eyes: "On Saturday afternoon Herr Diruf gave your son a cheque for three thousand seven hundred marks, and told him to cash it at the branch of the Bavarian Bank and bring the money to me. I was busy and did not go to the office in the afternoon. To-day, about a half-hour ago, Herr Diruf asked me whether I had received the money. It turned out that your son had not put in his appearance on Saturday, and since he has not shown up this morning either, you will readily see why we are so uneasy."

Jordan straightened up as stiff as a flag pole: "Do you mean to insinuate that my son is guilty of some criminal transaction?" he thundered forth, and struck the top of the table with the bones of his clenched fist.

Herr Zittel shrugged his shoulders: "It is, of course, possible that there has been some misunderstanding, or that some one has failed to perform his duty. But in any event the affair is serious. Something must be done at once, and if you leave me in the lurch I shall have to call in the police."

Jordan's face turned ashen pale. For some reason or other he began to fumble about in his long black coat for the pocket. The coat had no pocket, and yet he continued to feel for it with hasty fingers. He tried to speak, but his tongue refused to obey him; beads of perspiration settled on his brow.

Eleanore embraced him with solicitous affection: "Be calm, Father, don't imagine the worst. Sit down, and let us talk it over." She dried the perspiration from his forehead with her handkerchief, and then breathed a kiss on it.

Jordan fell on a chair; his powers of resistance were gone; he looked at Eleanore with beseeching tenseness. From the very first she had known what had happened and what would happen. But she dared not show him that she was without hope; she summoned all the power at her resourceful command to prevent the old man from having a paralytic stroke.

With the help of Herr Zittel she wrote out a telegram to Gerber. The answer, to be pre-paid, was to be sent to the General Agency of the Prudentia, and Eleanore was to go to the main office between eleven and twelve o'clock. She accompanied Herr Zittel to the front door, whereupon he said: "Do everything in your power to get the money. If the loss can be made good at once, Herr Diruf may be willing not to take the case to the courts."

Eleanore knew full well that it would be exceedingly difficult to get such a sum as this. Her father had no money in the bank; his employer had lost confidence in him because he could no longer exert himself; what he needed most of all was a rest.

She entered the room with a friendly expression on her face, and remarked quite vivaciously: "Now, Father, we will wait and see what Benno has to say; and in order that you may not worry so much, I will read something nice to you."

Sitting on a hassock at her father's feet she read from a recent number of the Gartenlaube the description of an ascent of Mont Blanc. Then she read another article that her eye chanced to fall upon. All the while her bright voice was ringing through the room, she was struggling with decisions to which she might come and listening to the ticking of the clock. That her father no more had his mind on what she was reading than she herself was perfectly clear to her.

Finally the clock struck eleven. She got up, and said she had to go to the kitchen to make the fire. A maid usually came in at eleven to get dinner for the family, but to-day she had not appeared. Out in the hall Eleanore took her straw hat, and hastened over to Gertrude's as fast as her feet could carry her. Daniel was not at home; Gertrude was peeling potatoes.

In three sentences Eleanore had told her sister the whole story. "Now you come with me at once! Go up and stay with Father! See that he does not leave the house! I will be back in half an hour!"

Gertrude was literally dragged down the steps by Eleanore; before she could ask questions of any kind, Eleanore had disappeared.

At the General Agency Herr Zittel met her with the reply from that Gerber, Benno's friend. It bore Gerber's signature, and read: "Benno Jordan has not been here."

Benjamin Dorn stood behind Herr Zittel; he displayed an expression of soft, smooth, dirge-like regret.

"Herr Diruf would like to speak to you," said Herr Zittel coldly.

Eleanore entered Herr Diruf's private office; her face was pale. He kept on writing for about three minutes before he took any notice of her. Then his plum-like eyes opened lazily, a rare, voluptuous smile sneaked out from under his moustache like a slothful flash of heat lightning; he said: "The sharper has gone and done it, hasn't he?"

Eleanore never moved.

"Can the embezzled money be returned within twenty-four hours?" asked the pudgy, purple prince of pen-pushers.

"My father will do everything that is humanly possible," replied Eleanore anxiously.

"Be so good as to inform your father that to-morrow morning at twelve o'clock the charge will be preferred and placed in the hands of the police, if the money has not been paid by that time."

Eleanore hastened home. Now her father had to be brought face to face with the realities of the case. He and Gertrude were sitting close to each other in terrible silence. Eleanore revealed the exact state of affairs; she had to.

"My good name!" groaned Jordan.

He had to save himself from disgrace; the twenty-four hours seemed to offer him a sure means of doing this. He had not the remotest doubt but that he could find friends who would come to his aid; for he had something of which he could boast: a blameless past and the reputation of being a reliable citizen.

Thus he thought it over to himself. And as soon as he made up his mind to appeal to the friends of whom he felt he was certain, the most difficult part of his plan seemed to have been completed. The suffering to which he was condemned by his wounded pride and his betrayed, crushed filial affection he had to bear alone. He knew that this was a separate item.

He went out to look up his friends.

VI

The first one he appealed to was the brother-in-law of his sister, First Lieutenant Kupferschmied, retired. His sister had died six months ago, leaving nothing; the lieutenant, however, was a well-to-do man. He had married into the family of a rich merchant. Jordan's relation to him had always been pleasant; indeed the old soldier seemed to be very fond of him. But hardly had Jordan explained his mission when the lieutenant became highly excited. He said he had seen this disaster coming. He remarked that any man who brings up his children in excessive ease must not be surprised if they come to a bad end. He remarked, too, that no power on earth could persuade him to invest one penny in Jordan's case.

Jordan went away speechless.

The second friend he appealed to was his acquaintance of long standing, Judge Ruebsam. From him he heard a voluble flow of words dealing with regrets, expressions of disgust, one lament after the other, a jeremiade on hard times, maledictions hurled at dilatory creditors, infinite consolation—and empty advice. He assured Jordan that yesterday he had almost the requisite sum in cash, and that he might have it again some time next month, but to-day—ah, to-day his taxes were due, and so on, and so on.

Oppressed by the weight of this unexpected humiliation, he went to the third friend, a merchant by the name of Hornbusch, to whom he had once rendered invaluable assistance. Herr Hornbusch had forgotten all about this, though he had not forgotten that he had vainly sounded in Jordan's ears a warning against the ever-increasing flippancy of young Benno. He told Jordan that he himself was just then in urgent need of money, that he had only last month been obliged to sacrifice a mortgage, and that his wife had pawned her diamonds.

Thus it went with the fourth friend, an architect who had told him once that he would sacrifice money and reputation for him if he ever got into trouble. And it was the same story with the fifth and sixth and seventh. With a heart as heavy as lead, Jordan decided to take the last desperate step: He went to Herr Diruf himself. He asked for a three days' extension of time. Diruf sat inapproachable at his desk. He was smoking a big thick Havana cigar, his solitaire threw off its blinding fireworks, he smiled a cold, tired smile and shook his head in astonishment.

When Jordan came home that evening he found Daniel and Gertrude in the living room. Gertrude went up to him to support him; then she brought him a glass of wine as a stimulant: he had not eaten anything since breakfast.

"Where is Eleanore?" he murmured, but seemed to take no interest in the reply to his question. He fell down on a chair, and buried his face in his hands.

Gertrude, who saw his strength leaving him as the light dies out of a slowly melting candle, became dizzy with compassion. Her last hope was in Eleanore, who had left at five o'clock simply because she found it intolerable to sit around, hour after hour, doing nothing but waiting for the return of her father. At every sound that could be heard in the house, Gertrude pricked up her ears in eager expectancy.

Daniel stood by the window, and looked out across the deserted square into the dull red glow of the setting sun.

It struck seven, then half past seven, eight, and Eleanore had not returned. Daniel began to pace back and forth through the room; he was nervous. If his foot chanced to strike against a chair, Gertrude shuddered.

Shortly after eight, steps were heard outside. The key rattled in the front gate, the room door opened, and in came Eleanore—and Philippina Schimmelweis.

VII

Everybody looked at Philippina; even Jordan himself honoured her with a faint glance. Daniel and Gertrude were amazed. Daniel did not recognise his cousin; he knew nothing about her; he had seen her but once, and then he was a mere child. He did not know who this repulsive-looking individual was, and demanded that Eleanore give him an explanation. As he did this, he raised his eyebrows.

Eleanore was the only one Philippina looked at in a kindly way; in Philippina's own face there was an expression of curiosity.

Philippina's whole bearing had something of the monstrous about it. Even her dress was picturesque, adventuresome. Her great brown straw hat, with the ribbon sticking straight up in the air, was shoved on to the back of her head so as not to spoil the effect of the fashionable bangs that hung down over her forehead. Her loud, checkered dress was strapped about her waist with a cloth belt so tightly that the contour of her fat body was made to look positively ridiculous: she resembled a gigantic hour glass. In her rough-cut features there was an element of lurking malevolence.

After a few minutes of painful stillness she walked up to Daniel, and plucked him by the coat-sleeve: "Eh, you don't know who I am?" she asked, and her squinty eyes shone on him with enigmatic savagery: "I am Philippina; you know, Philippina Schimmelweis."

Daniel stepped back from her: "Well, what of it?" he asked, wrinkling his brow.

She followed him, took him by the coat-sleeve again, and led him over into one corner: "Listen, Daniel," she stammered, "my father—he must give you all the money you need. For years ago your father gave him all the money he had, and told him to keep it for you. Do you understand? I happened to hear about it one time when my father was talking about it to my mother. It was a good seven years ago, but I made a note of it. My father spent the money on himself; he thinks he can keep it. Go to him, and tell him what you want; tell him how much you want, and then go help these people here. But you must not give me away; if you do they'll kill me. Do you understand? You won't say a word about it, will you?"

"Is that true?" Daniel managed to say in reply, as a feeling of unspeakable anger struggled with one of indescribable disgust.

"It is true, Daniel, every word of it; 'pon my soul and honour," replied Philippina; "just go, and you'll see that I have told you the truth."

During the conversation of the two, of which she could hardly hear a single syllable, Eleanore never took her eyes off them.

VIII

Since the day Philippina had made her little brother Markus a cripple for life, she had been an outcast in the home of her parents.

To be sure, she had had no great abundance of kindness and cheerfulness before the accident took place. But since that time the barbarous castigation of her father had beclouded and besmirched her very soul. From her twelfth year on, her mind was ruled exclusively by hate.

Hatred aroused her; it gave birth to thoughts and plans in her; it endowed her with strength of will and audacity; and it matured her before her time.

She hated her father, her mother, her brothers.

She hated the house with all its rooms; she hated the bed in which she slept, the table at which she ate. She hated the people who came to see her parents, the customers who came into the shop, the loafers who gathered about the window, the tall lanky Zwanziger, the books and the magazines.

But the day she overheard her father and mother talking about that money, a second power had joined the ranks of hate in her benighted, abandoned soul. With her brain on fire she stood behind the door, and heard that she was to be married to Daniel. This remark had filled the then thirteen-year-old girl with all the savage instincts of a bound and fettered woman, with all the crabbedness of an unimaginative person of her standing.

In her father's remark she did not see merely a more or less carefully outlined plan; she heard a message from Fate itself; and from that time on she lived with an idea that brought light and purpose into her daily existence.

Shortly after his arrival in Nuremberg, she saw Daniel for the first time as he was standing by a booth in the market place on Schuett Island. Her father had pointed him out to her. She knew that he wished to become a musician; this made no special impression on her. She knew that he was having a hard time of it; this filled her neither with sympathy nor regret. When she later on saw him in the concert hall, he was already her promised spouse; he belonged to her. To capture him, to get him into her power, it made no difference how, was her unchanging aspiration, in which there was a bizarre mixture of bestiality and insanity.

The thieving, which she decided upon at once and practised with perfect regularity, netted her in the course of time a handsome sum. She did not become bolder and bolder as she continued her evil practices, but, unlike thieves generally, she grew to be more and more cautious. She acquired in time remarkable skill at showing an outwardly honest face. Indeed she became such an adept at dissimulation that the suspicion of even Jason Philip, aroused as it had been during the course of a careful investigation, was dispelled by her behaviour.

Her plan was to gain a goodly measure of independence through the money she had stolen. For she always felt convinced that the day would come when her parents would debar her from their home. She was convinced that her father and mother were merely waiting for some plausible excuse to rid themselves of her for good and all.

Moreover, she had two pronounced passions: one for candy and one for flashy ribbons.

The candy she always bought in the evening. She would slip into the shop of Herr Degen, and, with her greedy eyes opened as wide as possible, buy twenty pfennigs' worth of sweets, at which she would nibble until she went to bed.

The ribbons she sewed together into sashes, which she wore on her hat or around her neck or on her dress. The gaudier the colour the better she liked it. If her mother asked her where she got the ribbons she was forced to lie. Although she had no girl friends, as a matter of fact no friends of any kind, she would say that this or that girl had given them to her. When her wealth became too conspicuous, she would leave the house and not tie her sashes about her until she had reached some unlighted gateway or dark corner.

She never dared go to the attic more than once a week; she did this when her brothers were at school and her parents in the shop. The fear lest some one find her out and take her stolen riches from her made her more and more uneasy, lending to her face an expression of virulent distrust.

She would go up the thirteen steps from the landing to the attic with trembling feet. The fact that there were exactly thirteen was the first thing that awakened her superstition. As the months crept on, she resigned to this superstition with the abandon of an inveterate voluptuary. If she chanced to put her left foot first on the bottom step and not to notice it until she was half way up, she would turn around, come down, and relinquish the pleasure of seeing her treasures for the rest of that week.

She was afraid of ghosts, witches, and magicians; if a cat ran across the street in front of her, she turned as white as chalk.

Theresa did not keep a maid; Philippina helped in the kitchen; this ruined her complexion, and made her skin rough and horny. Frequently she got out of washing dishes by simply running away. On these occasions Theresa would create such an uproar that the neighbours would come to the window and look out. Philippina avenged herself by purposely ruining the sheets, towels, and shirts that lay in the clothes basket. When in this mood and at this business, she made use of a regular oath that she herself had formulated: it consisted of sentences that sounded most impressive, though they had no meaning.

She cherished the odd delusion that it lay in her power to bring misfortune to other people. The time Jason Philip complained of poor business she felt an infernal sense of satisfaction. His change of political views had driven away his old customers, and the new ones had no confidence in him. He had to go in for the publication of dubious works, if he wished to do any business at all. The result of this was that when people passed by the Schimmelweis bookshop, they stopped before the window, looked at his latest output, and smiled contemptuously. The workman's insurance no longer paid as it used to, for the credit of the Prudentia and its agents had suffered a violent setback.

The rise and fall in bourgeois life follows a well established law. In a single day the honesty and diligence of one man, the tricks and frauds of another, grow stale, antiquated. Thus Jordan's affairs started on the down grade, and Jason Philip's likewise.

Philippina ascribed their failure to the quiet influence of her destructive work. Every bit of misfortune in the life of her father loosened by that much the chain that prevented her from complete freedom of movement. In her most infamous hours she would dream of the hunger and distress, bankruptcy and despair of her people. Once this state of affairs had been realised, she would no longer have to play the role of Cinderella; she would no longer have to be the first one up in the morning; she would no longer have to chop wood, and polish her brothers' boots: she would have a fair field and no favours in her campaign to capture Daniel.

IX

At times she thought she could simply go to him and stay with him. At times she felt that he would come and get her. One thing or the other had to take place, she thought.

One Sunday afternoon—it chanced to be her eighteenth birthday—a junior agent of Jason Philip, a fellow by the name of Pfefferkorn, came to the house, and in the course of the conversation remarked rather casually that the elder of the Jordan sisters was engaged to the musician Nothafft, that the engagement had been kept secret for a while, but that the wedding was to take place in the immediate future.

"By the way, I hear that the musician is your nephew," said Pfefferkorn at the close of his report.

Jason Philip cast a gloomy look into space, while Theresa, then sipping her chicory coffee, set her cup on the table, and looked at the man with scornful contempt.

Philippina broke out in a laughter that went through them like a knife. Then she ran from the room, and banged the door behind her. "She seems a bit deranged," murmured Jason Philip angrily.

Then came that June night on which she did not come home at all. Jason Philip raged and howled when she returned the next morning; but she was silent. He locked her up in the cellar for sixteen hours; but she was silent.

After this she did not leave the house for months at a time; she did not wash or comb her hair; she sat crouched up in the kitchen with her long, dishevelled, unwashed hair falling in loose locks down over her neck and shoulders.

A feeling of consuming vengeance seethed in her heart; the patience she was forced to practise, much against her will, petrified in time into a mien of hypocritic sottishness.

Suddenly she took to dressing up again and sauntering through the streets in the afternoon. Her loud ribbons awakened the mocking laughter of young and old.

She had learned that Eleanore Jordan was attending the lectures in the Cultural Club. She went too; she always crowded up close to Eleanore, but she could not attract her attention. One time she sat right next to Eleanore. A strolling pastor delivered a lecture on cremation. Philippina took out her handkerchief, and pressed it to her eyes as though she were weeping. Eleanore, somewhat concerned, turned to her, and asked her what was the matter. She said that it was all so sad what the old gentleman was saying. Eleanore was surprised, for nothing the speaker had said was sad or in any way likely to bring tears to the eyes of his auditors.

At the end of the lecture she left the hall with Eleanore. When the ugly, disagreeable creature told her of the wretchedness of her life, how she was abused by her parents and brothers, and that there was not a soul in the world who cared for her, Eleanore was moved. The fact that Philippina was Daniel's blood cousin made her forget the aversion she felt, and drew from her a promise to go walking with her on certain days.

Eleanore kept her promise. She was not in the least disconcerted by the queer looks cast at her by the people they met. With perfect composure she walked along by the side of this strapping, quackish young woman dressed in the oddest garments known to the art of dress-making. At first they strolled in broad daylight through the park adjoining the city moat. Later Eleanore arranged to have the walks, which were to take place two or three times a month, postponed until after sunset.

This was quite agreeable to Philippina. She threw out a hint every now and then that there was a mysterious feud between the Schimmelweis family and the Nothaffts, and implored Eleanore never to let Daniel know that she was taking these walks with her. It was painful to Eleanore to have Philippina make such requests of her. The lurking manner in which she would turn the conversation to the affairs of Daniel and Gertrude had an element of offensive intrusiveness in it. She wanted to know first this, then that. She even had the impudence to ask about Gertrude's dowry; and finally she requested that Eleanore bring her sister along some time when they went walking.

Eleanore came to have a feeling of horror at the sight or thought of Philippina; she was dismayed too when, despite the darkness, she noticed the shrewish look of incorrigible wickedness in Philippina's face. An ineluctable voice put her on her guard. In so far as she could do it without grievously offending Philippina, she withdrew from further association with her. And even if she had not promised her absolute silence, a feeling half of fear and half of shame would have prevented her from ever mentioning Philippina's name in Daniel's presence.

She never once suspected that Philippina was spying on her. Philippina soon found out just when, how often, and where Daniel and Eleanore met; and wherever they went, she followed at a safe distance behind them. Why she did this she really did not know; something forced her to do it.

What she had succeeded in doing with Eleanore she now wished to do with Gertrude. She would bob up all of a sudden in the butcher shop, at the vegetable market, in the dairy, anywhere, stare at Gertrude, act as though she were intensely interested in something, and make some such remarks as: "Lord, but beans are dear this year"; or "That is a nasty wind, it is enough to give you the colic." But Gertrude was far too lost to the world and much too sensitive about coming in contact with strangers to pay any attention to her awkward attempts at approach.

"Just wait," thought Philippina, enraged, "the penalty of your arrogance will some day descend upon your head."

X

On that Monday so fatal for the Jordan family, Philippina had another violent quarrel with her mother. Theresa was still shrieking, when Jason Philip came up from the shop to know what could be wrong.

"Don't ask," cried Theresa at the top of her shrill voice, "go teach your daughter some manners. The wench is going to end up in jail; that's what I prophesy."

Philippina made a wry face. Jason Philip, however, was little inclined to play the role of an avenging power: he had something new on the string; his face was beaming.

"I met Hornbusch," he said, turning to Theresa, "you know him, firm of Hornbusch heirs, bloody rich they are, and the man tells me that young Jordan has embezzled some money from the Prudentia and left the country. I went at once to the Prudentia, and Zittel told me the whole story, just as I had heard it. It is almost four thousand marks! Jordan has been requested to make good the deficit; but he hasn't a penny to his name and is in a mighty tight place, for Diruf is threatening to send him to jail. You know, Diruf is hard-boiled in matters of this kind. What do you think of that?"

Theresa wrapped her hands in her apron, and looked at Jason Philip out of the corner of her eye. She guessed at once the cause of his joy, and hung her head in silence.

Jason Philip smirked to himself. Leaning up against the Dutch tiles of the stove, he began to whistle in a happy-go-lucky mood. It was the "Marseillaise." He whistled it partly out of forgetfulness and partly from force of habit.

He had not noticed how Philippina had listened to every syllable that fell from his lips; how she was holding her breath; that her features were lighted up from within by a terrible flame of fire. He did notice, however, that she got up at the close of his remarks and left the room with rustling steps.

Five minutes later she was standing before Jordan's house. She sent a small boy in with the request that Fraeulein Eleanore come down at once. The boy came back, and said that Fraeulein Eleanore was not at home. She took her position by the front gate, and waited.