After a year and a half of congealed torpidity, the March wind once more began to blow in his soul.

But it was like a disease; he was being consumed with impatience. His immediate goal was the cloister of Oesede at Osnabrueck, and from there he wanted to go to Berlin. He could not bear to sit in the railway carriages: in Wesel he placed his trunk on a freight train, and went from there on foot, his top-coat hung over his arm, his knapsack strapped across his back. Despite the inclement weather he walked from eight to ten hours every day. It was towards the end of October, the mornings and evenings were chilly, the roads were muddy, the inns were wretched. This did not deter him from going on: he walked and walked, sought and sought, often until late at night, passionately absorbed in himself.

When he came to the coal and iron district, he raised his head more and more frequently. The houses were black, the earth and the air were black, blackened men met him on the road. Copper wires hummed in the fog and mist, hammers clinked, wheels hummed, chimneys smoked, whistles blew—it was like a dream vision, like the landscape of an unknown and accursed star.

One evening he left a little inn which he had entered to get something to eat and drink. It was eight miles to Dortmund, where he planned to stay over night. He had left the main road, when all of a sudden the fire from the blast-furnaces leaped up, giving the mist the appearance of a blood-red sea. Miners were coming in to the village; in the light of the furnaces their tired, blackened faces looked like so many demoniac caricatures. Far or near, it was impossible to say, a horse could be seen drawing a car over shining rails. On it stood a man flourishing his whip. Beast, man, and car all seemed to be of colossal size; the "gee" and "haw" of the driver sounded like the mad cries of a spectre; the iron sounds from the forges resembled the bellowing of tormented creatures.

Daniel had found what he had been looking for: he had found the mournful melody that had driven him away the day Eleanore died. He had, to be sure, put it on the paper then and there, but it had remained without consequence: it had been buried in the grave with Eleanore.

Now it had arisen, and its soul—its consequence—had arisen with it; it was expanded into a wonderful arch, arranged and limbed like a body, and filled as the world is full.

Music had been born to him again from the machine, from the world of machinery.

IV

Jason Philip Schimmelweis had been obliged to give up his house by the museum bridge. He could not pay the rent; his business was ruined. By a mere coincident it came about that the house on the Corn Market had a cheap apartment that was vacant, and he took it. It was the same house in which he lived when he made so much money twenty years ago.

Was Jason Philip no longer in touch with modern business methods? Had he become too old and infirm to make the public hungry for literary nourishment? Were his advertisements without allurement, his baits without scent? No one felt inclined to buy expensive lexicons and editions de luxe on the instalment plan. The rich old fellows with a nose for dubious reading matter never came around any more. Jason Philip had become a dilatory debtor; the publishers no longer gave him books on approval; he was placed on the black list.

He took to abusing modern writers, contending that it was no wonder that the writing of books was left exclusively to good-for-nothing subjects of the Empire, for the whole nation was suffering from cerebral atrophy.

But his reasoning was of no avail; his business collapse was imminent; in a jiffy it was a hard reality. A man by the name of Rindskopf bought his stock and furnishings at brokers' prices, and the firm of Jason Philip Schimmelweis had ceased to exist.

In his distress Jason Philip appealed to the Liberal party. He boasted of his friendship with the former leader of the party, Baron von Auffenberg, but this only made matters worse: one renegade was depending upon the support of another. This was natural: birds of a feather flock together.

Then he went to the Masons, and began to feel around for their help; he tried to be made a member of one of the better lodges. He was given to understand that there was some doubt as to the loyalty of his convictions, with the result that the Masons would have none of him.

For some time he found actual difficulty in earning his daily bread. He had resigned his position with the Prudentia Insurance Company long ago. Ever since a certain interpellation in the Reichstag and a long lawsuit in which the Prudentia became involved, and which was decided in favour of its opponents, the standing of the company had suffered irreparably.

Jason Philip had no other choice: he had to go back to bookbinding; he had to return to pasting, cutting, and folding. He returned in the evening of his life, downcast, impoverished, and embittered, to the position from which he had started as an ambitious, resourceful, stout-hearted, and self-assured man years ago. His eloquence had proved of no avail, his cunning had not helped him, nor his change of political conviction, nor his familiarity with the favourable turns of the market, nor his speculations. He had never believed that the order of things in the world about him was just and righteous, neither as a Socialist nor as a Liberal. And now he was convinced that it was impossible to write a motto on the basis of business principles that would be fit material for a copy book in a kindergarten.

Willibald was still the same efficient clerk. Markus had got a job in a furniture store, where he spent his leisure hours studying Volapuek, convinced as he was that all the nations of the earth would soon be using this great fraternal tongue.

Theresa moved into the house on the Corn Market with as much peace and placidity as if she had been anticipating such a change for years. There was a bay window in the house, and by this she sat when her work in the kitchen was done, knitting socks for her sons. At times she would scratch her grey head with her knitting needle, at times she would reach over and take a sip of cold, unsugared coffee, a small pot of which she always kept by her side. Hers was the most depressed face then known to the human family; hers were the horniest, wrinkliest peasant hands that formed part of any citizen of the City of Nuremberg.

She thought without ceasing of all that nice money that had passed through her hands during the two decades she had stood behind the counter of the establishment in the Plobenhof Street.

She tried to imagine where all the money had gone, who was using it now, and who was being tormented by it. For she was rid of it, and in the bottom of her heart she was glad that she no longer had it.

One day Jason Philip came rushing from his workshop into her room. He had a newspaper in his hand; his face was radiant with joy. "At last, my dear, at last! I have been avenged. Jason Philip Schimmelweis was after all a good prophet. Well, what do you say?" he continued, as Theresa looked at him without any noticeable display of curiosity, "what do you say? I'll bet you can't guess. No, you will never be able to guess what's happened; it's too much for a woman's brain." He mounted a chair, held the paper in his hand as if it were the flag of his country, waved it, and shouted: "Bismarck is done for! He's got to go. The Kaiser hates him! Now let come what may, I have not lived in vain."

Jason Philip had the feeling that it was due to his efforts that the reins of government had been snatched from the hands of the Iron Chancellor. His satisfaction found expression in blatancy and in actions that were thoroughly at odds with a man of his age. He held up his acquaintances on the street, and demanded that they offer him their congratulations. He went to his favourite cafe, and ordered a barrel of beer for the rejuvenation of his friends. He delivered an oration, spiced with all the forms of sarcasm known to the art of cheap politics and embellished with innumerable popular phrases, explaining why he regarded this as the happiest day of his eventful life.

He said: "If fate were to do me the favour of allowing me to stand face to face with this menace to public institutions, this unscrupulous tyrant, I would not, believe me, mince matters in the slightest: I would tell him things no mortal man has thus far dared say to him."

Several months passed by. Bismarck, then staying at his country place in Sachsenwald and quarrelling with his lot, decided to visit Munich. There was tremendous excitement in Nuremberg when it was learned that he would pass through the city at such and such an hour.

Everybody wanted to see him, young and old, aristocrats and humble folk. Early in the morning the whole city seemed to be on its feet, making its way in dense crowds out through the King's Gate.

This was a drama in which Jason Philip had to play his part: without him it would be incomplete. "To look into the eyes of a tiger whose claws have been chopped off and whose teeth have been knocked out is a pleasure and a satisfaction that my mother's son dare not forego," said he.

His elbows stood him in good stead. When the train pulled into the station, our rebel was standing in the front row, having pushed his way through the seemingly impenetrable mass of humanity.

The train stopped for a few minutes. The Iron Chancellor left his carriage amid deafening hurrahs from the assembled multitude. He shook hands with the Mayor and a few high-ranking army officers.

Jason Philip never budged. It never occurred to him to shout his own hurrah. An acidulous smile played around his mouth, his white beard quivered when he dropped the corners of his lips in satanic glee. It never occurred to him to take off his hat, despite the threatening protests all too audible round about him. "I am consistent, my dear Bismarck, I am incorruptible," he thought to himself.

And yet—the satisfaction which we have described as satanic seemed somehow or other to be ill founded: it was in such marked contrast to the general enthusiasm. What had possessed this imbecile pack? Why was it raging? It saw the enemy, the hangman, right there before it, immune to the law, dressed in civilian clothes, and yet it was acting as though the Messiah had come to town on an extra train!

Jason Philip had the feeling that Bismarck was looking straight at him. He fancied that the fearfully tall man with the unusually small head and the enormously blue eyes had taken offence at his silence. He feared some one had told him all about his political beliefs.

The scornful smile died away. Jason Philip detected a lukewarm impotency creeping over his body. The sweat of solicitude trickled down across his forehead. Involuntarily he kneed his way closer to the edge of the platform, threw out his chest, jerked his hat from his head, opened his mouth, and cried: "Hurrah!"

He cried hurrah. The Prince turned his face from him, and looked in another direction.

But Jason Philip had cried hurrah.

He sneaked home shaking with shame. He drew his slippers, "For the tired Man—Consolation," on his feet. They had become quite worn in the course of his tempestuous life. He lay down on the sofa with his face to the wall, his back to the window and against the world.

V

Daniel had been in Berlin for weeks. He had been living a lonely life on the east side of the gigantic city. One of the managers of Philander and Sons came to see him. He returned the call, and in the course of two hours he was surrounded, contrary to his own will, by a veritable swarm of composers, directors, virtuosos, and musical critics.

Some had heard of him; to them he appeared to be a remarkable man. They threw out their nets to catch him, but he slipped through the meshes. Unprepared, however, as he was for their schemes, he could not help being caught in time. He had to give an account of himself, to unveil himself. He found himself under obligations, interested, and so forth, but in the end they could not prevail against him: he simply passed through them.

They laughed at his dialect and his rudeness. What drew them to him was his self-respect; what annoyed them was his secretiveness; what they found odd about him was the fact that, try as they might to associate with him, he would disappear entirely from them for months at a time.

A divorced young woman, a Jewess by the name of Regina Sussmann, fell in love with him. She recognised in Daniel an elemental nature. The more he avoided her the more persistent she became. At times it made him feel good to come once again into intimate association with a woman, to hear her bright voice, her step more delicate, her breathing more ardent than that of men. But he could not trust Regina Sussmann; she seemed to know too much. There was nothing of the plant-like about her, and without that characteristic any woman appealed to him as being unformed and uncultured.

One winter day she came to see him in his barren hall room in Greifswald Street. She sat down at the piano and began to improvise. At first it was all like a haze to him. Suddenly he was struck by her playing. What he heard made a half disagreeable, half painful impression on him. He seemed to be familiar with the piece. She was playing motifs from his quartette, his "Eleanore Quartette" as he had called it. It came out that Regina Sussmann had been present at the concert given in Leipzig three years ago when the quartette was performed.

After a painful pause Regina began to ask some questions that cut him to the very heart. She wanted to know what relation, if any, the composition bore to actual life. She was trying to lift the veil from his unknown fate. He thrust her from him. Then he felt sorry for her: he began to speak, with some hesitation, of his symphony. There was something bewitching, enchanting in the woman's passionate silence and sympathy. He lost himself, forgot himself, disclosed his heart. He built up the work in words before her, pictured the seven movements like seven stairs in the tower of a temple, a glorious promenade in the upper spheres, a tragic storm with tragically cheerful pauses of memory and meditation, all accompanied by laughing genii that adorned and crowned the pillars of the structure of his dreams.

He went to the piano, began playing the melancholy leading motif and the two subsidiary themes, counterpointed them, ran into lofty crescendos, introduced variations, modulated and sang at the same time. The pupils of his eyes became distended until they shone behind his glasses like seas of green fire. Regina Sussmann fell on her knees by the piano. It may be that she was so affected by his playing that she could not act otherwise; and it may be that she wished thereby to give him visible proof of her respect and adoration. All of a sudden the woman became repulsive to him. The unleashed longing of her eyes filled him with disgust. Her kneeling position appealed to him as a gesture of mockery and ridicule: a memory had been desecrated. He sprang to his feet and rushed out of the room, leaving her behind and quite alone. He never said a word; he merely bit his lips in anger and left. When he came back home late that night, he was afraid he might meet her again; but she was not there. Only a letter lay on the table by the lamp.

She wrote that she had understood him; that she understood he had been living in the past as if in an impregnable fortress, surrounded by shadows that were not to be dispelled or disturbed by the presumption of any living human being. She remarked that she had neither intention nor desire to encroach upon his peace of mind, that she was merely concerned for his future, and was wondering how he would fight down his hunger of body and soul.

"Shameless wretch," cried Daniel, "a spy and a woman!"

She remarked, with almost perverse humility, that she had recognised his greatness, that he was the genius she had been waiting for, and that her one desire was to serve him. That is, she wished to serve him at a distance, seeing that he could not endure her presence. She implored him to grant her this poor privilege, not merely for his own sake, but for the sake of humanity as well.

Daniel threw the letter in the stove. In the night he woke up with a burning desire for delicate contact with an untouched woman. He dreamed of a smile on the face of a seventeen-year-old girl innocently playing around him—and shuddered at himself and the thought of himself.

Shortly after this he went to Dresden, where he had some work to do in the Royal library.

People came to him anxious to place themselves at his service. Many signs told him that Regina Sussmann was making fervent propaganda for him.

One day he received a letter from a musical society in Magdeburg, asking him to give a concert there. He hesitated for a long while, and then agreed to accede to their wish. Outwardly it could not be called an unusually successful evening, but his auditors felt his power. People with the thinnest smattering of music forgot themselves and became infatuated with his arms and his eyes. An uncertain, undetermined happiness which he brought to the hearts of real musicians carried him further along on his career. For two successive winters he directed concerts in the provincial towns of North Germany. He was the first to accustom the people to strictly classical programmes. It is rare that the first in any enterprise of this kind reaps the gratitude of those who pay to hear him. Had he not desisted with such Puritanical severity from feeding the people on popular songs, opera selections, and favourite melodies, his activity would have been much better rewarded. As it was, his name was mentioned with respect, but he passed through the streets unacclaimed.

Regina Sussmann was always on hand when he gave a concert. He knew it, even if he did not see her. At times he caught sight of her sitting in the front row. She never approached him. Articles redolent with adulation appeared in the papers about him: it was manifest that she had been influential in having them written. Once he met her on the steps of a hotel. She stopped and cast her eyes to the ground; she was pale. He passed by her. Again he was filled with longing to come into intimate contact with an untouched woman. Was his heart already hungry, as she had predicted? He bit his lips, and worked throughout the whole night. He felt that he was being fearfully endangered by the prosy insipidity of the age and the world he was living in. But could he not escape the terrors of such without having recourse to a woman? The shadows receded, enveloped in sorrow, Gertrude and Eleanore, wrapped in the embrace of sisters.

"Don't!" they cried. He saw at once that his provincial concerts were leading him to false goals, enflaming false ambitions, robbing him of his strength. He no longer found it possible to endure the sight of brilliantly lighted halls, and the over-dressed people who came empty and left untransformed. It all seemed to him like a lie. He desisted; he threw it all overboard just as the temptation was strongest, just as the Berlin Philharmonic invited him to give a concert of his own works in its hall.

He had suddenly disappeared. In less than three months his name had become a saga.

VI

He spent the summer, autumn, and winter of 1893 wandering around. Now he was in a remote Thuringian village, now in some town in the Rhoen region, now in the mountains of Saxony, now in a fishing village on the Baltic. Throughout the day he worked on his manuscripts, in the evening he composed. No one except the members of the firm of Philander and Sons knew where he was. He did not dare hide himself from the people who were sending him the cheque at the end of the month.

He gradually became so unaccustomed to talking that it was only with difficulty that he could ask a hotel-keeper about the price of his room. This unrelieved silence chiselled his lips into ghastly sharpness.

He never heard from his mother or his children. He seemed to have forgotten that there were human beings living who thought of him with affection and anxiety.

The only messages he received from the world were letters that were forwarded to him at intervals of from four to five weeks by the musical firm in Mayence. These letters were written by Regina Sussmann, though they were not signed in her name: the signature at the close of each one was "The Swallow." She addressed Daniel by the familiar Du, and not by the more conventional and polite Sie.

She told him of her life, wrote of the books she had read, the people she had met, and gave him her views on music. Her communications became in time indispensable to him; he was touched by her fidelity; he was pleased that she did not use her own name. She had a remarkable finesse and power of expression, and however ungenuine and artificial she may have appealed to him in personal association, everything she wrote seemed to him to be natural and convincing. She never expressed a wish that he do something impossible and never uttered a complaint. On the other hand, there was a passion of the intelligence about her that was quite new to him; she was unlike the women he had known. And there was a fervour and certainty in her appreciation of his being before which he bowed as at the sound of a higher voice.

Though he never answered her letters, he looked forward to receiving them, and became impatient if one were overdue. He often thought of the swallow when he would step to the window on a dark night. He thought of her as an all-seeing spirit that hovered in the air. The swallow—that was fraught with meaning—the restless, delicate, swift-flying swallow. And in his mind's eye he saw the swallow that hovered over AEgydius Place when Eberhard came to take him up to the room with the withered flowers.

He wrote to Philippina: "Decorate my graves. Buy two wreaths, and lay them on the graves."

"You must mount to the clouds, Daniel, otherwise you are lost," was one passage in one of the letters from the Swallow. Another, much longer, ran: "As soon as you feel one loneliness creeping over you, you must hasten into another, an unknown one. If your path seems blocked, you must storm the hedges before you. If an arm surrounds you, you must tear yourself loose, even though it cost blood and tears. You must leave men behind and move above them; you dare not become a citizen; you dare not allow yourself to be taken up with things that are dear to you; you must have no companion, neither man nor maid. Time must hover over you cold and quiet. Let your heart be encased in bronze, for music is a flame that breaks through and consumes all there is in the man who created it, except the stuff the gods have forged about their chosen son."

Why should the picture of this red-haired Jewess, from whom Daniel had fled in terror, not have vanished? There was a Muse such as poets dream of! "Jewess, wonderful Jewess," thought Daniel, and this word—Jewess—took on for him a meaning, a power, and a prophetic flight all its own.

"The work, Daniel Nothafft, the work," wrote this second Rahel in another letter, "the rape of Prometheus, when are you going to lay it at the feet of impoverished humanity? The age is like wine that tastes of the earth; your work must be the filter. The age is like an epileptic body convulsed with agonies; your work must be the healing hand that one lays on the diseased brow. When will you finally give, O parsimonious mortal? when ripen, tree? when flood the valley, stream?"

But the tree was in no hurry to cast off the ripened fruit; the stream found that the way to the sea was long and tortuous; it had to break through mountains and wash away the rocks. Oh, those nights of torment when an existing form crashed and fell to the earth in pieces! Oh, those hundreds of laborious nights in which there was no sleep, nothing but the excited raging of many voices! Those grey mornings on which the sun shone on tattered leaves and a distorted face, a face full of suffering that was always old and yet new! And those moonlight nights, when some one moved along singing, not as one sings with joy, but as the heretics who sat on the martyr benches of the Inquisition! Then there were the rainy nights, the stormy nights, the nights when it snowed, and when he chased after the phantom of a melody that was already half his own, and half an incorporeal thing wandering around in boundless space under the stars.

Each landscape became a pale vision: bush and grass and flower, like spun yarn seen in a fever, the people who passed by, and the clouds fibrillated above the forests were of one and the same constituency. Nothing was tangible; the palate lost its sense of taste, the finger its sense of touch. Bad weather was welcome; it subdued the noises, made men quieter. Cursed be the mill that clappers, the carpenter who drives the nails, the teamster who calls to his jaded pair, the laughter of children, the croaking of frogs, the twittering of birds! An insensate man looks down upon the scene, one who is deaf and dumb, one who would snatch all clothing and decorations from the world, to the end that neither colour nor splendour of any description may divert his eye, one who mounts to heaven at night to steal the eternal fire, and who burrows in the graves of the dead by day—an outcast.

In the beginning of spring, he started on the third movement, an andante with variations. It expressed the gruesome peace that hovered over Eleanore's slumbering face one night before her death. The springs within him were all suddenly dried up; he could not tell why his hand was paralysed, his fancy immobile.

One evening he returned from a long journey to Arnstein, a little place in Lower Franconia, where he had then pitched his tent. He was living in the house of a seamstress, a poor widow, and as he came into the room he noticed her ten-year-old daughter standing by the open box in which he had kept the mask of Zingarella. Out of a perfectly harmless curiosity the child had removed the lid, and was standing bewitched at the unexpected sight.

When Daniel's eyes fell on her, she was frightened; her body shook with fear; she tried to run away. "No, no, stay!" cried Daniel. He felt the emaciated body, the timidly quivering figure, and a distant memory sunk its claws deep into his breast. The mouth of the mask seemed to speak; the cheeks and forehead shone with a brilliant whiteness. And as he turned his eyes away there was a little elf dancing over him; and this little elf aroused a guilty unrest in his heart.

VII

Philippina would not permit little Agnes to play with other children.

One day the child went out on to the square, and stood and watched some other children playing a game known as "Tailor, lend me the scissors." She was much pleased at the sight of them, as they ran from tree to tree and laughed. She would have been only too happy to join them, but no one thought of asking the pale, shy little creature to take part. Philippina, seeing her, rushed out like a fury, and cried in her very meanest voice: "You come back here in the house, or I'll maul you until your teeth will rattle in your mouth for three days to come!"

Philippina also disliked to have Jordan pay any attention to Agnes. If he did not notice that he was making her angry by talking with the child, she would begin to sing, first gently, and then more and more loudly. If this did not drive the old man away, she would unload some terrific abuse on him, and keep at it until he would get up, sigh, and leave. He did not dare antagonise her, for if he did, she would penalise him by giving him poor food and reduced portions. And he suffered greatly from hunger. He was making only a few pennies a week, and had to save every bit of it, if possible, so as to defray the expenses he was incurring while working on his invention.

He had unbounded faith in his invention; his credulity became stronger and stronger as the months rolled by. He could not be discouraged by seeming failure. He was convinced, on the contrary, that each failure merely brought him so much nearer the desired goal.

He said to Philippina: "Why is it that you object to my playing once in a while with my little grand-daughter? It gives me so much pleasure; it diverts me; it takes my mind off of my troubles."

"Crazy nonsense," replied Philippina. "Agnes has had trouble enough with her father. Her grandfather? whew! That beats me!"

Another time the old man said: "Suppose we make an agreement: let me have the child a half-hour each day, and in return for that I'll run your errands down town."

Philippina: "I'll run my own errands. Agnes belongs to me. That settles it."

And yet Philippina was in an especially good humour about this time. Benjamin Dorn, like Herr Zittel, had left the Prudentia, and obtained a position with the Excelsior. He was taking unusual interest in Philippina. In a dark hour, Philippina had told her friend, Frau Hadebusch, that she had saved a good deal of money, and, equipped with this bit of earthly wisdom, Frau Hadebusch had gone to the Methodist, told him all about it, and put very serious matrimonial ideas in his head.

Benjamin Dorn took infinite pains to gain Philippina's good graces. He was, to be sure, somewhat dismayed at having her blasphemous system of theology dinned into his ears. He shook his head wearily when she called him a sky-pilot and declared right out that all this sanctimonious stuff was damned rot, and that the main thing was to have a fat wallet. In this philosophy Frau Hadebusch was with her to the last exclamation point. She had told Benjamin Dorn that a doughtier, bonnier, more capable person than Fraeulein Schimmelweis was not to be found on this earth, and that the two were as much made for each other as oil and vinegar for a salad. She said: "You simply ought to see the dresses the girl has and how she can fix herself up when she wants to go out. Moreover, she comes of a good family. In short, any man who could get her would be a subject for real congratulations."

To Philippina Frau Hadebusch said: "Dorn—he can write as no one else on this earth. Oh, you ought to see him swing a pen! He limps a little, but what of it? Just think how many people go around on two sound legs, but have their heads all full of rubbish! But Dorn! He's whole cloth and a yard wide! He's as soft as prune juice. Why, when a dog barks at him, he gives the beast a lump of sugar. That's the kind of a man he is."

In October Benjamin Dorn and Philippina went to the church fair, and naturally took Agnes along. Benjamin Dorn knew what was expected of him. He had Philippina take two rides on the merry-go-round, paid her way into the cabinet of wax figures, and took a chance on the lottery. It was a blank. He then explained to Philippina that it was immoral to have anything to do with lotteries, and bought her a bag of ginger snaps; and that was solid pleasure.

Philippina acted very nicely. She laughed when nothing amusing had taken place, rolled her eyes, spoke with puckered lips, shook her hips when she walked, and never lost a chance to show her learning. As they were coming home on the train, she said she felt she would like to ride in a chaise, but there would have to be two horses and a coachman with a tile hat. Benjamin Dorn replied that that was not an impossible wish, suggesting at the same time in his best brand of juvenile roguishness that there was a certain solemn ceremony that he would not think of celebrating without having a vehicle such as she had described. Philippina giggled, and said: "Oi, oi, you're all right." Whereupon Benjamin Dorn, grinning with embarrassment, looked down.

Then they took leave of each other, for Agnes had fallen asleep in Philippina's arms.

How Philippina actually felt about the attention he was showing her would be extremely difficult to tell, though she acted as if she felt honoured and flattered. Benjamin Dorn was by no means certain of himself. Frau Hadebusch did all she could to bring Philippina around, but every time she made a fresh onslaught Philippina put her off.

But Philippina had never sung as she had been singing recently, nor had she ever been so light and nimble of foot. Every day she put on her Sunday dress and trimmed it with her choicest ribbons. She washed her hands with almond soap, and combed her hair before the mirror. Bangs had gone out of fashion, so she built her hair up into a tower and looked like a Chinese.

She visited Herr Carovius occasionally, and always found him alone, for Dorothea Doederlein had been sent by her father to Munich to perfect herself in her art. In broken words, with blinking eyes, from a grinning mouth and out of a dumb soul, she told Herr Carovius all about her affair with Benjamin Dorn, evidently believing that he was all fire and flame to know how she was getting along and what she had in petto. Herr Carovius had long since grown sick and tired of her, though he did not show her the door. He had reached the point where he heaved a sigh of relief when he heard a human voice, where he began to dread the stillness that ruled supreme within his four walls. No one came to see him, no one spoke to him, and he in turn no longer had the courage to speak to any one. His arrogance of former days had died a difficult death, and now he saw no way of making friends. If he went to the cafe, there was no one there whom he knew. The brethren of the Vale of Tears had been scattered to the four corners of the earth; a new generation was having its fling; new customs were being introduced, new topics discussed, and he was old.

He found it hard to get along without Dorothea. He counted the days, waiting for her to return. He never opened the piano, because all music, and especially the music he loved, caused a melancholy depression to arise that filled the room with miasma.

The Nero of our day was suffering from Caesar sadness. The private citizen had sunk to the very bottom of the ditch which he himself had dug with the idea of burying all that was new and joyful, and all winged creatures in it.

The worst of it all was that he had nothing to do, and no brain racking could devise a position he could fill. The world went on its way, progress was made, and, strangely enough, it was made without his criticism, his adulation, his opinions, or his crepe-hanging.

Philippina was annoyed at the grudging squints cast at her by the old stay-at-home; her visits became rarer and rarer. She did not feel like opening her heart to Frau Hadebusch, for she did not appeal to her as a disinterested party. This completed her list of friends; she was obliged to restrain her impatience and excitement.

It was Christmas. On Christmas Eve they had bought a tree for Agnes, trimmed it, and lighted it with candles. Agnes's Christmas gifts were placed under the tree: a big piece of ginger-bread, a basket with apples and nuts, and a cheap doll. For Old Jordan she had bought a pair of boots which he badly needed. He had been going around on his uppers since autumn.

Jordan was sitting by the door holding his boots on his knees. Agnes looked at the doll with unhappy eyes; she did not dare touch it. After gazing for a while into the light of the fluttering candles, Jordan said: "I thank you, Philippina, I thank you. You are a real benefactress. I also thank you for remembering the child. It is a paltry makeshift you have bought there at the bazaar, but any one who gives gifts to children deserves the reward of Heaven, and in such giving we do not weigh the value or count the cost."

"Don't whine all the time so!" shrieked Philippina. She was chewing her finger nails, hardly able to conceal her embarrassment. Frau Hadebusch had told her that Benjamin Dorn was coming around that evening to make a formal proposal of marriage.

"Just wait, Agnes, just wait!" continued old Jordan, "you'll soon get to see a wonder of a doll. A few short years, and the world will be astonished. You are going to be the first to see it when it is finished. You'll be the first, little Agnes, just wait. What have we got to eat on this holy evening?" asked Jordan, turning with fear and trembling to Philippina.

"Cold hash and broiled meal-beetles," said Philippina scornfully.

"And ... and ... no letter from Daniel?" he asked in a sad voice, "nothing, nothing at all?"

Philippina shrugged her shoulders. The old man got up and tottered to his room.

A little later Philippina heard some one stumbling around in the hall, and then the bell rang. "Open the door," she said to Agnes, who did as she was told and returned with Benjamin Dorn. The Methodist wore a black suit, and in his hand he had a black felt hat that was as flat as a pancake. He bowed to Philippina, and asked if he was disturbing any one. Philippina pushed a chair over to him. He sat down quite circumstantially, and laughed a hollow laugh. As Philippina was as silent as the tomb and looked at him so tensely, he began to speak.

First he expatiated on the general advantages of a married life, and then remarked that what he personally wished first of all was to be able to take a good, true woman into his own life as his wife. He said that he had gone through a long struggle over the matter, but God had finally shown him the light and pointed the way. He no longer hesitated, after this illumination from above, to offer Fraeulein Schimmelweis his heart and his hand forever and a day, insist though he must that she give the matter due consideration, in the proper Christian spirit, before taking the all-important step.

Philippina was restless; she rocked back and forth, first on one foot and then on another—and then burst out laughing. She bent over and laughed violently. "No, you poor simpleton, what you want is my money, hey? Be honest! Out with it! You want my money, don't you?"

Her anger grew as Benjamin Dorn sat and looked on, his asinine embarrassment increasing with each second of silence. "Listen! You'd like to git your fingers on it, wouldn't you? Money—it would taste good, wouldn't it? You think I'm crazy? Scrape a few coppers together and lose my mind and marry some poor fool, and let him loaf around and live on me. Nothing doin'! They ain't no man livin' what can catch Philippina Schimmelweis so easy as all that. She knows a thing or two about men, she does. D'ye hear me! Get out!" She sawed the air with her arms like a mad woman, and showed him the door.

Benjamin Dorn rose to his feet, stuttered something unintelligible, moved backwards toward the door, reached it, and left the place with such pronounced speed that Philippina once again broke out in a shrill, piercing laughter. "Come here, Agnes," she said, sat down on the step in the corner, and took the child on her lap.

She was silent for a long while; the child was afraid to speak. Both looked at the lights on the Christmas tree. "Let us sing something," said Philippina. She began with a hoarse, bass voice, "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht," and Agnes joined in with her high, spiritless notes.

Another pause followed after they had finished singing.

"Where is my father?" asked Agnes suddenly, without looking at Philippina. It sounded as if she had waited for years for an opportunity to ask this question.

Philippina's face turned ashen pale; she gritted her teeth. "Your father, he's loafing around somewhere in the country," replied Philippina, and blew out one of the candles that had burned down and was ready to set the twig on fire. "He's done with women, it seems, but you can't tell. He strums the music box and smears good white paper full of crow-feet and pot-hooks. A person can rot, and little does he worry." Whereat she set the child on the floor, hastened over to the window, opened it, and put her head out as if she were on the point of choking with the heat.

She leaned out over the snow-covered window sill.

"I'm getting cold," said Agnes; but Philippina never heard her.

VIII

Daniel wrote to Eberhard and Sylvia asking them if he might visit them. He thought: "There are friends; perhaps I need friends again."

He received a note in a strange, secretarial hand informing him that the Baroness was indeed very sorry but she could not receive him at Siegmundshof: she was in child-bed. She sent her best greetings, and told him that the newest born was getting along splendidly, as well as his brother who was now three years old.

"Everywhere I turn, children are growing up," thought Daniel, and packed his trunk and started south as slowly as he could go, so slowly indeed that it seemed as if he were approaching a goal he was afraid to reach and yet had to.

He arrived in Nuremberg one evening in April. As he entered the room, Philippina struck her hands together with a loud bang, and stood as if rooted to the floor.

Agnes looked at her father shyly. She had grown slim and tall far beyond her age.

Old Jordan came down. "You don't look well, Daniel," he said, and seemed never to let go of his hand. "Let us hope that you are going to stay home now."

"I don't know," replied Daniel, staring absent-mindedly around the walls. "I don't know."

On the third day he was seized with a quite unusual sense of fear and anxiety. He felt that he had made a mistake; that he had lost his way; that something was driving him to another place. He went into the kitchen. Philippina was cooking potato noodles in lard; they smelt good.

"I am going to Eschenbach," he said, to his own astonishment, for the decision to do so had come with the assertion.

Philippina jerked the pan from the stove; the flames leaped up. "You can go to Hell, so far as I'm concerned," she said in a furious rage. With the light from the fire flaring up through the open top of the stove and reflected in her face, she looked like a veritable witch.

Daniel gazed at her questioningly. "What is the matter with Agnes?" he asked after a while. "The child seems to try to avoid me."

"You'll find out what's the matter with her," said Philippina spitefully, and placed the pan on the stove again. "She don't swallow people whole."

Daniel left the kitchen.

"He is going over to see his bastard, the damned scoundrel," murmured Philippina. She crouched down on the kitchen stool, and gazed into space.

The potato noodles burned up.

IX

Daniel entered his mother's little house in Eschenbach late at night. As soon as he saw her, he knew that some misfortune had taken place.

Eva was gone. She had disappeared one evening four weeks ago. A troupe of rope dancers had given an exhibition in the city, and it was generally suspected that they had abducted the child. The people of Eschenbach were still convinced of their suspicion after the police had rounded up the dancers without finding a trace of the child.

A general alarm had been sent out, and investigations were being made even at the time of Daniel's arrival. But they were in vain; it was impossible to find the slightest clue. To the authorities, indeed to every one, the case was a hopeless riddle.

They made a thorough search of the forests; the canals were drained; vagabonds were cross-questioned. It was all in vain; Eva had apparently been spirited away in some mysterious fashion. Then the Mayor received an anonymous letter that read as follows: "The child you are looking for is in safe keeping. She was not forced to do what she has done; of her own free will and out of love for her art she went off with the people with whom she is at present. She sends her grandmother the tenderest of greetings, and hopes to see her some time again, after she has attained to what she now has in mind."

To this Eva had added in a handwriting which Marian Nothafft could be reasonably certain was her own: "This is true. Good-bye, grandmother!"

The people who mourned with Marian the loss of the child were convinced that if Eva had really written these words herself, she had been forced to do it by the kidnappers.

The letter bore the postmark of a city in the Rhenish Palatinate. A telegram brought the reply that a company of jugglers had been there a short while ago, but that they had already gone. It was impossible to say in what direction, but it was most likely that they had gone to France.

Marian was completely broken up. She no longer had any interest in life. She did not even manifest joy or pleasure at seeing Daniel.

Daniel in turn felt that the brightest star had fallen from his heaven. As soon as he had really grasped the full meaning of the tragedy, he went quietly into the attic room, threw himself across the bed of his lost daughter, and wept. "Man, man, are you weeping at last?" a voice seemed to call out to him.

Of evenings he would sit with his mother, and they would both brood over the loss. Once Marian began to speak; she talked of Eva. She had always been made uneasy by the child's love for mimicry and shows of any kind. Long ago, she said, when Eva was only eight years old, a company of comedians had come to the village, and Eva had taken a passionate interest in them. She would run around the tent in which they played, from early in the morning until late in the evening. She had made the acquaintance of some of them at the time, and one of them took her along to a performance. Whenever the circus came to town, it was impossible to keep her in the house. "At times I thought to myself, there must be gipsy blood in her veins," said Marian sadly, "but she was such a good and obedient child."

Another time she told the following story. One Sunday in spring she took a walk with Eva. It had grown late, night had come on, and on the return journey they had to go through the forest. Marian became tired, and sat down on the stump of a tree to rest. The moon was shining, and there was a clearing in the forest where they had stopped. All of a sudden Eva sprang up and began to dance. "It was marvellous the way she danced," said Marian, at the close of her story. "The girl's slender, delicate little figure seemed to glide around on the moss in the moonlight of its own accord. It was marvellous, but my heart grew heavy, and I thought to myself at the time, she is not going to be with me much longer."

Daniel was silent. "Oh, enchanting and enchanted creature!" he thought, "heredity and destiny!"

He remained with his mother for three weeks. Then he began to feel cramped and uneasy. The house and the town both seemed so small to him. He left and went to Vienna, where the custodian of the Imperial Institute had some invaluable manuscripts for him.

Six weeks later he received a letter that had followed him all over south Europe informing him of the death of his mother. The school teacher at Eschenbach had written the letter, saying, among other things, that the aged woman had died during the night, suddenly and peacefully.

A second letter followed, requesting him to state what disposition should be made of his mother's property. He was asked whether the house was to be put on the market. A neighbour, the green-grocer, had expressed his willingness to look after Daniel's interests.

Daniel wrote in reply that they should do whatever seemed best. There was a heavy mortgage on the house, and the amount that could reasonably be asked for it was not large.

He retired to a desolate and waste place.

X

While living in little towns and villages on the Danube, Daniel completed the third movement of the Promethean symphony. When he awoke as if from a delirious fever, it was autumn.

One morning in October he heard a saint playing the organ. It was in the Church of St. Florian near Enns. The great artist had lived in former years in the monastery, and now had the habit of coming back once in a while to hold communion with his God. In his rapture, Daniel felt as if his own crowned brother were at the organ. He sat in a corner and listened, meekly and with overwhelming delight. Then when a man passed by him, a stooped, haggard, odd-looking old fellow with a wrinkled face and dressed in shabby clothes, he was terror-stricken at the reality, the corporeality of genius: he wondered whether he himself were not a ghost.

The Swallow wrote: "There is only one who can redeem us: the musician. The day of founders of religion, builders of states, military heroes, and discoverers is gone. The poets have only words, and our ears have grown tired of words, words, words. They have only pictures and figures, and our eyes are tired beholding. The soul's last consolation is to be found in music; of this I am certain. If there is any one thing that can make restitution for the lost illusions of religious faith, provide us with wings, transform us, and save us from the abyss to which we are rushing with savage senses, it is music. Where are you, O redeemer? You are wandering about over the earth, the poorest, the most abandoned, the guiltiest of men. When are you going to pay your debts, Daniel Nothafft?"

Daniel spent seven months in Ravenna, Ferrara, Florence, and Pisa. He was looking for some manuscripts by Frescobaldi, Borghesi, and Ercole Pasquini. Having found the most important ones he could regard his collection as complete.

Men seemed to him like puppets, landscapes like paintings on glass. He longed for forests; his dreams became disordered.

From Genoa he wandered on foot through Lombardy and across the Alps. He slept on hard beds in order to keep his hot blood in check, and lived on bread and cheese. His attacks of weakness, sometimes of complete exhaustion, did not worry him at first; he paid no attention to them. But in Augsburg he swooned, falling headlong on the street. He was taken to a hospital, where he lay for three months with typhus. From his window he could see the tall chimneys of factories and an endless procession of wandering clouds. It had become winter; the ground was covered with snow.

Two years after his last visit he again entered the house on AEgydius Place. When Philippina saw him, so pale and emaciated, she uttered a cry of horror.

Agnes had grown still taller, thinner, and more serious. At times when she looked at her father he felt like crying out to her in anger: "What do you mean by your everlasting questions?" But he never said a word of this kind to her.

When Philippina saw that Daniel had returned as lonesome and uncommunicative as he was when he went away, she took it upon herself to display a great deal of gentleness, kindness, sympathy in his presence. Old Jordan was living the same life he had been living for years. Everything in fact was just the same; it seemed that the household was run according to a prescribed routine. It seemed as if Daniel had been away, not six years, but six days.

He did not feel strong yet, but he worked day and night. The fourth movement of the symphony gave promise of being a miracle of polyphony. Daniel felt primeval existence, the original of all longing, the basic grief of the world urging and pulsing in him, and this he was translating into the symphony. The eternal wanderer had arrived at the gates of Heaven and was not admitted. Supernal harmonies had borne him aloft. Muffled drum beats symbolised his beseeching raps on closed doors. Within resounded the terrible "no" of the trumpets. The pleading of the violins was in vain; in vain the intercession of the one angel standing at the right, leaning on a harp without strings; in vain the melodious chants of the other angel at the left, crowned with flowers and all together lovely; in vain the elfin chorus of the upper voices, in vain the foaming lament of the voices below. No path here for him, and no space!

One evening Daniel noticed a strange girl at his window. She was beautiful. Struck by her charms, he got up to go to her. She had vanished. It was an hallucination. He became afraid of himself, left the house, and wandered through the streets as in days of long ago.

XI

It was Carnival Week, and the people had resumed their wonted gaiety. Masked boys and girls paraded the streets, making merry wherever they went.

As Daniel was passing through The Fuell he was startled: the windows in the Benda house were lighted. He suddenly recalled that Herr Seelenfromm had told him that Frau Benda had returned from Worms some time ago, and was living with her niece; she had become totally blind.

He went up the steps and rang the bell. A grey-haired, distressed-looking woman came to the door. He thought she must be the niece. He told her his name; she said she had heard of him.

"You probably know that Friedrich has disappeared," she said in a sleepy, sing-song voice. "It is eight years since we have heard from him. The last letter was from the interior of Africa. We have given up all hope. Not even the newspapers say anything more about him."

"I have read nothing about it," murmured Daniel. "But Friedrich cannot be dead," he continued, shaking his head, "I will never believe it, never." Partly in distraction and partly in anxiety, he riveted his eyes on the woman, who stared at his glasses as if held by a charm.

"We have done everything that was humanly possible," she said. "We have written to the consulates, we have inquired of the military outposts and missionary stations, and all to no purpose." After a pause she said with a little more vivacity: "You do not wish me to ask you in, I hope. It is so painful to my aunt to hear a strange voice, and I cannot think of letting you talk to her. If I did, it would merely open her old wounds, and she has a hard enough time of it as it is."

Daniel nodded and went on his way. A coarse laugh could be heard down in the entrance hall; it was painfully out of harmony with the depressed atmosphere of the Benda apartment. He felt his heart grow faint; he felt a burning desire for something, though he was unable to say precisely what, something sweet and radiant.

On the last landing he stopped, and looked with utter amazement into the hall below.

Herr Carovius was dancing like a Merry-Andrew around the door of his residence. He had a crown of silver paper on his head, and was trying to ward off the importunate advances of a young girl. His smiles were tender but senile. The girl wore a carnival costume. Her dark blue velvet dress, covered with threads of silver, made her robust figure look slenderer than it actually was. A black veil-like cloth hung from her shoulders to the ground, and then draped along behind her for about three paces. It was sprinkled with glittering tinsel. In her hand she held a hideous wax mask of the face of an old sot with a red nose. She was trying to fit the mask to Herr Carovius's face.

She was working hard to make him yield; she said she was not going to leave until she had put the mask on his face. Herr Carovius shook the door, which in the meantime had closed, fumbled about in his pockets for the key, but the girl gave him no peace.

"Come now, Teddy," she kept crying, "come, Uncle, don't be such an old bore." She kept getting closer and closer to him.

"You wait, I'll show you how to make a fool of respectable people," croaked Herr Carovius in well-meaning anger. He resembled an old dog, hopping about and getting ready to make the plunge when his master throws his walking stick into the water. In his zeal, however, to prevent the girl from offending his dignity, he had forgotten the paper crown on his head. It wabbled and shook so when he hopped around, that the girl nearly split her sides laughing.

A maid came in just then with an apronful of snow. The girl with the sweeping train ran up to her, got some of the snow, and threatened to pelt Herr Carovius with it. He begged for mercy; and rather than undergo a bombardment with this cold stuff, he ceased offering resistance, whereupon the girl walked up to him and placed the mask on his face. Then, exhausted from laughter, she laid her head on his shoulder. The maid—it was Doederlein's maid—was delighted at the comedy, and made a noise that resembled the cackling of a hen.

The scene was dimly lighted by a lamp attached to the adjacent wall, and had on this account, quite apart from the sight of Herr Carovius with the paper crown and the toper's mask, something fantastic about it.

Daniel did not know that the girl was Dorothea Doederlein, though he half suspected as much. But whoever she was, he was impressed by her jollity, her actual lust for laughter, her complete lack of restraint. He had never known that sort of mirthful hilarity; and if he had known it, he could not recall it. Her youthful features, her bright eyes, her white teeth, her agile gestures filled him with deferential respect; his eyes swam with emotion. He felt so old, so foreign; he felt that where he was the sun was not shining, the flowers were not budding. He felt that life had appeared to him all of a sudden and quite unexpectedly in a new, kindly, bewitching light.

He came slowly down the steps.

"Is it possible!" cried Herr Carovius, tearing the mask from his face. "Can I trust my own eyes? It is our maestro! Or is it his ghost?"

"It is both he and his ghost," replied Daniel drily.

"This is no place for ghosts," cried Dorothea, and threw a snow ball, hitting him square on the shoulder.

Daniel looked at her; she blushed, and looked at Herr Carovius questioningly. "Don't you know our Daniel Nothafft, you little ignoramus?" said Herr Carovius. "You know nothing of our coryphaeus? Hail to the Master! Welcome home! He is here, covered with fame!"

At any other time Herr Carovius's biliary sarcasm would have aroused Daniel's whole stock-in-trade of aversion and indignation. To-day he was unimpressed by it. "How young she is," he thought, as he feasted his eyes on the embarrassed, laughing Dorothea, "how gloriously young!"

Dorothea was angry because she did not have on the red dress she had had made in Munich.

"Dorothea!" called a strong voice from the first floor.

"Oh, there's father!" whispered Dorothea. She was frightened. She ran up the steps on her tiptoes, dragging her long veil after her. The maid followed her.

"A devil, a regular little devil, Maestro," said Herr Carovius turning to Daniel. "You must come in some time and hear how she can draw the bow. She's a regular little devil, I say."

Daniel bade Herr Carovius adieu, and went walking down the street with bowed head.

XII

In the province, Dorothea Doederlein, fresh from the Bavarian capital, was a phenomenon that attracted general attention. Her conduct seemed, to be sure, a bit liberal, but then she was an artist, and her name appeared in the newspapers every now and then, so it was only natural to make allowances for her. When she gave her first concert, Adler Hall was almost completely sold out.

The musical critic of the Herold was captivated by her capricious playing. He called her an extraordinary talent, and predicted a brilliant future for her. Andreas Doederlein accepted the congratulations in the spirit of a seasoned patron of the arts; Herr Carovius was in the seventh heaven of joy. He who had formerly been so captious never uttered a critical word. He had taken to worshipping the Dorothea cult, and this had made him quite indiscriminating.

At first Dorothea never suffered from want of invitations to all manner of clubs, dances, and family gatherings. She was much adored by the young men, so much so that other daughters of the city of matrimonial age could not sleep from envy. In a short while, however, the youth of more sterling character, warned while there was yet time by their mothers, sisters, cousins, and aunts, withdrew in fear.

Dorothea reaped the disapproval of her acquaintances by walking with her admirers in public, unchaperoned. Moreover she could frequently be seen in the company of officers in the Eisenbeiss pastry shop, drinking chocolate and having a good time generally. Once she had been seen in the society of a big blonde Swede from Schuckert's factory coming out of the Music Hall. The rumour was spread that she had lived an irregular life in Munich, had gadded about the streets at night, contracted a number of bad debts, and flirted with all kinds of men.

Yet there were a few serious wooers who, duped by Andreas Doederlein's diplomacy, fell into the habit of coming around on Sunday evenings and taking dinner with father and daughter. Dorothea, however, always managed to play off one against the other; and as they were all serious and provincial, they did not know precisely what to make of it. In order to instil patience into them, Doederlein took to delivering them lectures on the intricate complications of the artistic temperament, or he made mysterious allusions to the handsome legacy to which Dorothea would one day fall heir.

It was this very fact, however, that made him exercise caution with regard to Dorothea. Knowing her spirit of defiance, and appreciating her youthful lack of judgment, he was afraid she might make some faux pas that would offend that old fool of a Carovius. He was already giving her a little spending money, and the Doederleins found this a highly advantageous arrangement.

The state of Doederlein's own finances was hopeless. It was with the greatest difficulty that he kept up the appearance of a well-to-do man. The chief cause of his pecuniary embarrassment was his relation of long standing with a woman by whom he had had three children. To support this second family, of whose existence not a soul in his immediate surroundings knew a thing, burdened him with a care that made it hard for him to preserve his cheerful, Jove-like disposition.

He had been leading a double life for fourteen years. His regular visits to the woman he loved—she lived very quietly out in the remote suburbs of the city—had to be made without attracting attention. To conceal his connection with her from the vigilant eyes of his fellow citizens made constant dissimulation, discretion, and shrewdness a necessary part of his character. But to practise these traits year in and year out and suffer at the same time from economic pressure filled him with suppressed anger and fear.

He was afraid of Dorothea. There were moments when he would have liked to maul her; and yet he saw himself obliged to hold her in check with kind words. He could not see through her. But she was always around, always adding to his troubles with her plans, wishes, engagements and intrigues. He thought he had her under control, only to discover that she was a tyrant, lording it over him. Now she would burst out crying because of some bagatelle, now she was laughing as though nothing had ever happened. The roses her serious and moneyed admirers brought her she picked to pieces in their very presence, and threw the pieces in the waste-paper basket. Doederlein would lecture her in the kindest and most intelligent way on good morals and gentle manners, and she would listen as though she were a saint. Five minutes later she would be hanging out of the window, flirting with the barber's boy across the street.

"I am an unfortunate father," said Andreas Doederlein to himself, when, apart from all his other multifarious worries, he began to be sceptical about Dorothea's artistic ability. Shortly after her success in Nuremberg, she gave a concert in Frankfort, but everything was pretty quiet. Then she toured the small towns of central Germany, and was received everywhere with the greatest enthusiasm. But what of it? How much critical acumen is to be found in such places?

One evening she was at the home of a certain Frau Feistelmann, a woman whose past had some connection with nearly every scandal of the city. While there she met an actor by the name of Edmund Hahn. Herr Hahn had soft, blonde hair and a pale, bloated face. He was rather tall and had long legs. Dorothea raved about long legs. There was a thoroughly sensual atmosphere about the man; he devoured Dorothea with his impudent eyes. His build, his bearing, his half blase, half emphatic way of speaking made an impression on Dorothea. He sat next to her at the table, and began to rub his feet against hers. Finally he succeeded in getting his left foot on her slipper. She tried to pull her foot back, but the more she tried the harder he bore down on it. She looked at him in amazement; but he smiled cynically, and in a few minutes they were desperately intimate. After dinner they withdrew to a hidden corner, and you could hear Dorothea giggling.

They arranged to meet each other on a certain street corner in the dark. He sent her free tickets to "Maria Stuart" and "Die Raeuber." He played the roles of Mortimer and Kosinsky; he roared till you thought the roof would fall in. He introduced Dorothea to a number of his friends, and these brought their girl friends along, and they all sat in the Nassau Cellar till break of day. Among them was a certain Samuelsky, an employe of the Reutlinger Bank. He had the manners of a man about town, drank champagne, and went mad over Dorothea. She submitted to his attention, welcomed it in fact, and accepted presents from him, though, as it seemed, not until she had received the permission from Edmund Hahn. Once he tried to kiss her: she gave him a ringing box on the ears. He wiped his cheek, and called her a siren.

She liked the expression. At times she would stand before the mirror, and whisper: "Siren."

When Andreas Doederlein heard of what was going on, he had an attack of mad rage. "I will put you out of the house," he exclaimed, "I will beat you until you are a helpless, despicable cripple." But in his eyes there was again the trace of that suppressed fear that gave the lie to his seeming berserker rage.

"An artist does not need to adapt her morals to the code of the Philistine," remarked Dorothea, with complete imperturbability. "Those are all nice people with whom I am going. Every one of them is a gentleman."

A gentleman: that was an argument against which it was futile to enter a caveat. In her eyes that man was a gentleman who ran risks, impressed waiters and coachmen, and wore creased trousers. "No one dares come too close to me," she said with much pride. That was the truth; no one had thus far awakened her deepest curiosity, and she had determined to put a high price on herself. Edmund Hahn was the only one who had any influence on her; and this was true of him because he was absolutely devoid of feeling, and had a type of shamelessness that completely disarmed and terrified her.

Andreas Doederlein had to let her have her way. If he had any consolation at all, it lay in the belief on his part that a real Doederlein would never voluntarily come to grief. If Dorothea was a genuine Doederlein, she would march straight to her objective, and take by storm the good and useful things of life. If she failed, it would be proof that there was a flaw somewhere in her birth. This was his logic; and having applied it, theoretically, he enshrouded himself in the clouds of his Olympus.

Dorothea gave her uncle Carovius, however, detailed accounts of how she was making her suitors, young and old, walk the war-path. They all had to do it, the actor and the banker, the candle manufacturer and the engineer. She said she was leading the whole pack of them around by the nose. Herr Carovius's face beamed with joy when he heard her say this. He called her his little jackanapes, and said she was the fortune of his old age. To himself he said that she was a genuine Carovius destined to great deeds.

"You don't have to get married," he said with the urge of a zealot of old, and rubbed his hands. "Oh, of course, if a Count comes along with a few millions and a castle in the background, why, you might think it over. But just let some greasy comedian get it into his head that he is going to steal you away from me! Or let some wabbly-hipped office-boy imagine for a minute that he is going to drag you into his circle along with his other unwashed acquaintances! If this ever happens, Dorothea, give it to 'em hot and heavy! Show the wanton satyrs what kind of blood you have in you."

"Ah, Uncle," said Dorothea, "I know you mean well by me. You are the only one who does. But if I were only not so poor! Look at me! Look at this dress I have on! It's a sight!" And she put her head in her uplifted arm and sobbed.

Herr Carovius pulled at his moustaches, moved his eyebrows up and down, went to his writing desk, opened his strong box, took out a hundred-mark bill, and gave it to her with turned head, as if he were afraid of the wrath of the protecting spirit of the money chest.

This was the state of affairs when Daniel met the youthful Dorothea in Herr Carovius's home, and went away with an unforgettable, unextinguishable picture of her in his soul.

XIII

Daniel's approaching fortieth birthday seemed like a sombre portal leading to the realm of spent ambition. "Seize what remains to be seized," a voice within him cried. "Grass is growing on the graves."

His senses were at war with his intellect and his heart. He had never looked on women as he was looking on them now.

One day he went out to Siegmundshof. Eberhard was not at home. Sylvia's face showed traces of subdued sadness. She had three children, each one more beautiful than the other, but when her eyes rested on them her heart was filled with grief. Women whose married life is unhappy have dull, lifeless features; their hands are transparent and yellow.

Daniel took leave more quickly than he had wished or intended. He felt an egoistic aversion to the joyless sons of man.

He went to see Herr Carovius. The laughing one whom he sought was not at home.

Herr Carovius looked at him at times distrustfully. The face of his former foe set him to thinking. It was furrowed like a field under cultivation and burnt like a hearthstone. It was the face of a criminal, crabbed, enervated, tense, and breathed upon, it seemed, by threatening clouds. Herr Carovius was a connoisseur of faces.

In order to avoid the discomfort of fatuous conversation, Daniel played a number of old motetts for Herr Carovius. Herr Carovius was so pleased that he ran into his pantry, and got a half dozen Boxdorf apples and put them in Daniel's pockets. He bought these apples every autumn by the peck, and cherished them as so many priceless treasures.

"At the sound of such music it would not be difficult to become a real Christian," he said.

"There is spring in them," said Daniel, "they are art that is as innocent as new seed in the soil. But your piano needs tuning."

"Symbolic, symbolic, my dear friend," cried Herr Carovius, and puffed out his cheeks. "But you come back another time, and you will find it in the pink of condition. Come frequently, please. You will reap the reward of Heaven if you do."

Herr Carovius begging for company; it was touching. Daniel promised to bring some of the manuscripts he had been collecting along with him. When he returned a few days later, Dorothea was there; and from then on she was always there. His visits became longer and longer. When Herr Carovius noticed that Dorothea was coming to see him more frequently now, he moved heaven and earth to persuade Daniel to come more frequently. He rained reproach and abuse on him if he failed to come; if he was late, he greeted him with a sour face and put indiscreet questions to him. When he was alone of an afternoon, time stood still. He was like a drinker tantalised by seeing his accustomed portion of brandy on the table but just beyond his reach. The company of these two people, Daniel and Dorothea, had become as indispensable to his happiness as in former years the reading of the newspapers, the brethren of the Vale of Tears, the troubles of Eberhard and the funerals were indispensable if he were to feel at ease. It is the way of the small citizen: each of his customs becomes a passion.

When Daniel played the old chorals, Dorothea listened quietly, though it could not be said that she was perfect at concealing her tedium.

One time they began talking about Dorothea's violin playing. Herr Carovius asked her to play something. She declined without the slightest display of affectation. Daniel said nothing to encourage her; he found that this modesty was becoming to her; he believed that he detected wisdom and resignation in her behaviour; he smiled at her graciously.

"Tell us a story, Daniel," she said, "that would be better." It eventually came out that that was what she had wanted all along.

"I am a poor raconteur," said Daniel. "I have a thick tongue."

She begged him, however, with stammering words and beseeching gestures. Herr Carovius tittered. Daniel took off his glasses, polished them, and looked at the young girl with squinting eyes. It seemed as if the glasses had made it difficult for him to see Dorothea distinctly, or as if he preferred to see her indistinctly. "I really don't know what I could tell in the way of a story," he replied, shaking his head.

"Tell us everything, anything," cried Dorothea, seized with a veritable fit of eagerness to hear him talk. She stretched out her hands toward him: that seemed to him to be so like a child. He had never told stories to a child; he had never in truth told stories to any one. Gertrude and Eleanore had, to be sure, forced a confession or a complaint from him at times, but that was all, and all that was necessary or appropriate.

Suddenly he was drawn on by the word in which his fate would be quietly reflected; by the fiery young eye in the brilliancy of which the complex became simple, the dark bright; by the wicked old man to whom the whole world, as seen from his mire, had become a poisonous food.

And with his brittle, staccato voice he told of the countries through which he had journeyed; of the sea and the cities by the sea; of the Alps and the Alpine lakes; of cathedrals, palaces, and marvellous monasteries; of the queer people he had met, of his work and his loneliness. It was all incoherent, arid, and loveless. Though sorely tempted, he desisted from mentioning things that came close to his soul; things that moved his heart, fired his brain. When he told of the Jewess, the Swallow, he did not even finish the sentence. He made a long pause, and then shifted to the account of his visit to Eschenbach. Here he stopped again before he was through.

But Dorothea began to ask questions. It was all too general and therefore unsatisfactory. "What was there in Eschenbach? Why did you go there?" she asked boldly.

He was in error concerning the hot desire that burned in her eyes to know about Eschenbach. Her question made him feel good; he believed that he was on the scent of warm-heartedness; he thought he had found a soul that was eager to help through knowledge. He was seized with the desire of the mature man to fashion an untouched soul in harmony with the picture of his dreams. "My mother used to live there," he replied hesitatingly, "she has died."

"Yes—and?" breathed Dorothea. She saw that that was not all.

He felt that this uncompromising reticence was not right; he felt a sense of guilt. With still greater hesitation—and immediate repentance—he added: "A child of mine also lived there; she was eleven years old. She has disappeared; no one knows where she is."

Dorothea folded her hands, "A child? And disappeared? Simply vanished?" she whispered excitedly.

Herr Carovius looked like a man sitting on a hot iron. "Eleven years old?" he asked, hungry for sensation, "why—that was, then—before the time ..."

"Yes, it was before the time," said Daniel gloomily and by way of confirmation. He had betrayed himself, and was angry at himself for having done so. He became silent; it was impossible to get him to say another word.

Herr Carovius noticed how Dorothea hung on Daniel's eyes. A tormenting suspicion arose in him. "Yesterday out on St. Joseph's Place, I was talking with one of your admirers, the fellow who shatters the wings of the stage with his ranting," he began with malice aforethought. "The blade had the nerve to say to me: 'You'd better hurry up and get Dorothea Doederlein a husband, or people will talk their tongues loose in their throats.'"

"That is not true," cried Dorothea indignantly, blushing to the roots of her hair. "He didn't say that."

Herr Carovius laughed malevolently. "Well, if it is not true, it is pretty well put together," he said with his usual bleat.

When Daniel left, Dorothea accompanied him to the outside door.

"It's a pity," murmured Daniel, "a pity!"

"Why a pity? I am free. There isn't a soul in the world who has any claim on me." She looked at him with the courage of a real woman.

"There are remarks that are just like grease spots," he replied.

"Well, who can keep from the dirt these days?" she asked, almost wild with excitement.

Daniel let his eyes rest on her as though she were some material object. He said slowly and seriously: "Keep your hands and your eyes off of me, Dorothea. I will bring you no happiness."

Her lips opened, thirsty. "I should like to take a walk with you some time," she whispered, and her features trembled with an ecstasy which he was dupe enough to believe was meant for him; in reality Dorothea was thinking of the adventurer and the disclosure of the secret.

"Many years ago," said Daniel, "you will scarcely recall it, I protected you here in this very same gateway from a big dog. Do you remember?"

"No! Or do I? Wait a minute! Yes, I remember, that is, quite indistinctly. You did that?" Dorothea seized his hands with gratitude.

"Fine! Then we will go walking to-morrow morning. Where? Oh, it doesn't make much difference," said Daniel.

"But you must tell me everything, you hear? everything." Dorothea was as insistent as she had been in the room a short while ago; and she was more impetuous and impatient.

They agreed upon the place where they would meet.

XIV

At first they took short walks in remote parts of the city; then they took longer ones. On Mid-Summer Day they strolled out to Kraftshof and the grove of the Pegnitz shepherds. Daniel made unconscious effort to avoid the places where he had once walked with Eleanore.

There came moments when Dorothea's exuberance made him pensive and sad; he felt the weight of his forty years; they were inclined to make him hypochondriacal. Was it the vengeance of fate that made him slow up when they came to a hill, while Dorothea ran on ahead and waited for him, laughing?

She did not see the flowers, the trees, the animals, or the clouds. But when she saw people a change came over her: she would become more active; or she would mobilise her resources; or she seemed to strike up a spiritual liaison with them. It might be only a peasant boy on an errand or a vagabond going nowhere; she would shake her hips and laugh one note higher.

"Her youth has gone to her head, like wine," Daniel thought to himself.

Once she took a box of chocolate bon-bons along. Having had enough of them herself and seeing that Daniel did not care for them, she threw what was left away. Daniel reproached her for her wastefulness. "Why drag it along?" she asked with perfect lack of embarrassment, "when you have enough of a thing you throw it away." She showed her white teeth, and took in one deep breath of fresh air after another.

Daniel studied her. "She is invulnerable," he said to himself; "her power to wish is invincible, her fulness of life complete." He felt that she bore a certain resemblance to his Eva; that she was one of those elves of light in whose cheerfulness there is occasionally a touch of the terrible. He decided then and there not to let mischievous chance have its own way: he was going to put out his hand when he felt it was advisable.

"When are you going to begin to tell me the stories?" she asked: "I must, I must know all about you," she added with much warmth of expression. "There are days and nights when I cannot rest. Tell me! Tell me!"

That was the truth. In order to penetrate his life history, which she pictured to herself as full of passionate, checkered events, she had done everything that he had demanded of her.

Daniel refused; he was silent; he was afraid he would darken the girl's pure mind, jeopardise her unsuspecting innocence. He was afraid to conjure up the shadows.

One day she was talking along in her easy way, and while so doing she tripped herself up. She had begun to tell him about the men she had been going with; and before she knew what she was doing, she had fallen into the tone she used when she talked with her Uncle Carovius. Becoming suddenly aware of her indiscretion, she stopped, embarrassed. Daniel's serious questions caused her to make some confessions she would otherwise never have thought of making. She told a goodly number of rather murky and ugly stories, and it was very hard for her to act as though she were innocent or the victim of circumstances. At last, unable longer to escape from the net she had woven, she made a clean breast of her whole life, painted it all in the gaudiest colours, and then waited in breathless—but agreeable—suspense to see what effect it would have on Daniel.

Daniel was silent for a while; then he made a motion with his outstretched hand as if he were cutting something in two: "Away from them, Dorothea, or away from me!"

Dorothea bowed her head, and then looked at him timidly from head to foot. The decisiveness with which he spoke was something new to her, though it was by no means offensive. A voluptuous shudder ran through her limbs. "Yes," she whispered girlishly, "I am going to put an end to it. I never realised what it all meant. But don't be angry, will you? No, you won't, will you?"

She came closer to him; her eyes were filled with tears. "Don't be angry at me," she said again, "poor Dorothea can't help it. She is not responsible for it."

"But how did you come to do it?" asked Daniel. "I can't see how it was possible. Weren't you disgusted to the very bottom of your soul? How could you go about under God's free heavens with such hyenas? Why, girl, the very thought of it fills me with scepticism about everything."

"What should I have done, Daniel?" she said, calling him by his baptismal name for the first time. She spoke with a felicitous mixture of submissiveness and boldness that touched and at the same time enchanted him. "What should I have done? They come and talk to you, and spin their nets about you; and at home it is so dreary and lonely, and your heart is so empty and Father is so mean, you haven't got anybody else in the world to talk to." Such was her defence, effective even if more voluble than coherent.

They walked on. They were passing through a valley in the forest. On either side were tall pine trees, the crowns of which were lighted by the evening sun.

"You can't play with Fate, Dorothea," said Daniel. "It does not permit smudging or muddling, if we are to stand the test. It keeps a faultless ledger; the entries it makes on both sides are the embodiment of accuracy. Debts that we contract must always be paid, somehow, somewhere."

Dorothea felt that he was getting started; that the great, good story was about to come. She stopped, spread her shawl on the ground, and took a graceful position on it, all eyes and ears. Daniel threw himself on the moss beside her.

And he told his story—into the moss where little insects were creeping around. He never raised either his eye or his voice. At times Dorothea had to bend over to hear him.

He told about Gertrude, her torpor, her awakening, her love, her resignation. He told about Eleanore; told how he had loved her without knowing it. He told how Eleanore, out of an excess of passion and suffering, became his, how Gertrude wandered about dazed, unhappy, lost, until she finally took her life: "Then we went up to the attic, and found it on fire and her lifeless body hanging from the rafter."

He told how Gertrude had lived on as a shadow by the side of Eleanore, and how Eleanore became a flower girl, and how Philippina the inexplicable, and still inexplicable, had come into his family, and how Gertrude's child lived there like an unfed foundling, and how the other child, the child he had had by the maid, had found such a warm spot in his heart.

He told of his meeting the two sisters, their speaking and their remaining silent, his seeing them in secret trysts, the moving about from house to house and room to room, the singing of songs, his experiences with the Doermaul opera company, the light thrown on his drab life by a mask, his friend and the help he had received from him, his separation from him, the brush-maker's house on St. James's Place, the three queer old maids in the Long Row, the days he spent at Castle Erfft, the old father of the two sisters and his strange doings—all of this he described in the tone of a man awakening from a deep sleep. There was a confidence in what he said and the way he said it that mayhap terrified the hovering spirits of the evening, though it did not fill Dorothea's eyes, then glistening like polished metal, with a more intimate or cordial light.

When he looked up he felt he saw two sombre figures standing on the edge of the forest; he felt he saw the two sisters, and that they were casting mournful, reproachful glances at him.

He got up. "And all that," he concluded, "all that has been drunk up, like rain by the parched earth, by a work on which I have been labouring for the past seven years. For seven years. Two more years, and I will give it to the world, provided this unsteady globe has not fallen into the sun by that time."

Dorothea had a confused, haphazard idea as to the type of man that was standing before her. She was seized with a prickling desire for him such as she had thus far never experienced. She began to love him, in her way. Something impelled her to seek shelter by him, near him, somewhat as a bird flies under the crown of a tree at the approach of a storm. Daniel interpreted the timidity with which she put her arm in his as a sign of gratitude.

And in this mood he took her back to the city.

XV

It was in this pulsing, urging, joyful mood that Daniel worked at and completed the fifth movement of his symphony, a scherzo of grand proportions, beginning with a clarinet figure that symbolised laughing sans-souci. All the possibilities of joy developed from this simple motif. Nor was retrospection or consolation lacking. If the main themes, mindful of their former pre-eminence, seemed inclined to widen the bed of their stream, they were appeased and forced back into their original channel by artistic and capriciously alternating means. Once all three themes flowed along together, gaining strength apparently through their union, rose to a wonderful fugue, and seemed to be just on the point of gaining the victory when the whole orchestra, above the chord in D sevenths, was seized by the waltz melody, those melancholy sister-strains were taken up by the violins, and fled, dirge-like, to their unknown abodes. Just before the jubilant crescendo of the finale, a bassoon solo held one of them fast on its distant, grief-stricken heights.

Daniel sketched the sixth movement in the following fourteen nights.

He was fully aware of the fact that he had never been able to work this way before. When a man accomplishes the extraordinary, he knows it. It seizes him like a disease, and fills him like a profound dream.

At times he felt as though he must tell some one about it, even if it were only Herr Carovius. But once the flame had died down, he could not help but laugh at the temptation to which he had felt himself subjected. "Patience," he thought, feeling more assured than ever, "patience, patience!"

Since his work on the manuscripts was completed and his connection with the firm of Philander and Sons dissolved, he began to look around for another position. He had saved in the course of the last few years four thousand marks, but he wished to keep this sum intact.

He learned that the position of organist at the Church of St. AEgydius was vacant; he went to the pastor, who recommended him to his superiors. It was decided that he should play something before the church consistory. This he did one morning in October. The trial proved eminently successful to his exacting auditors.

He was appointed organist at St. AEgydius's at a salary of twelve hundred marks a year. When he played on Sundays and holidays, the people came into the church just to hear him.

XVI

Among the suitors for the hand of Dorothea on whom Andreas Doederlein looked with special favour was the mill owner, a man by the name of Weisskopf. Herr Weisskopf was passionately fond of music. He had greatly admired Dorothea when she gave her concert, and had sent her a laurel wreath.

One day Herr Weisskopf came in and took dinner with the Doederleins. When he left, Doederlein said to his daughter: "My dear Dorothea, from this day on you may consider yourself betrothed. This admirable man desires to have you as his lawfully wedded wife. It is a great good fortune; the man is as rich as Croesus."

Instead of making a reply, Dorothea laughed heartily. But she knew that the time had come when something had to be done. Her mobile face twitched with scorn, fear, and desire.

"Think it over; sleep on it. I have promised Herr Weisskopf to let him know to-morrow," said Doederlein, black-browed.

A week before this, Andreas Doederlein, confidently expecting that Herr Weisskopf would ask for the hand of his daughter, had borrowed a thousand marks from him. The miller had loaned him the money believing that he was thereby securing a promissory note on Dorothea. Doederlein had placed himself under obligations, and was consequently determined to carry out his plans with regard to the marriage of his daughter.

But Dorothea's behaviour made it safe to predict that objections would be raised on her part. Doederlein was in trouble; he sought distraction. Sixteen years ago he had begun an opus entitled "All Souls: a Symphonic Picture." Five pages of the score had been written, and since then he had never undertaken creative work. He rummaged around in his desk, found the score, went to the piano, and tried to take up the thread where he had lost it sixteen years ago. He tried to imagine the intervening time merely as a pause, an afternoon siesta.

It would not go. He sighed. He sat before the instrument, and stared at the paper like a schoolboy who has a problem to solve but has forgotten the rule. He seemed to lament the loss of his artistic ability. He felt so hollow. The notes grinned at him; they mocked him. His thoughts turned involuntarily to the miller. He improvised for a while. Dorothea stuck her head in the door and sang: "Rhinegold, Rhinegold, pu-re gold."

He was enraged; he got up, slammed the lid of the piano, took his hat and top coat, left the house, and went out to see his friend in the suburbs.

When he returned that night, he saw Dorothea standing in the door with a man. It was the actor, Edmund Hahn. They were carrying on a heated conversation in whispers. The man was holding Dorothea by the arm, but when Doederlein became visible from the unlighted street, he uttered an ugly oath and quickly disappeared.

Dorothea looked her father straight, and impudently, in the face, and followed him into the dark house.

When they were upstairs and had lighted the lamp, Doederlein turned to her, and asked her threateningly: "What do you mean by these immodest associations? Tell me! I want an answer!"

"I don't want to marry your flour sack. That's my answer," said Dorothea, with a defiant toss of her head.

"Well, we'll see," said Doederlein, pale with rage and ploughing through his hair with his fingers, "we'll see. Get out of here! I have no desire to lose my well-earned sleep on account of such an ungrateful hussy. We'll take up the subject again to-morrow morning."

The next morning Dorothea hastened to Herr Carovius. "Uncle," she stammered, "he wants to marry me to that flour sack."

"Yes? Well, I suppose I'll have to visit that second-rate musician in his studio again and give him a piece of my mind. In the meantime be calm, my child, be calm," said he, stroking her brown hair, "Old Carovius is still alive."

Dorothea nestled up to him, and smiled: "What would you say, Uncle," she began with a knavish and at the same time unusually attentive expression in her face, "if I were to marry Daniel Nothafft? You like him," she continued in a flattering tone, and held him fast by the shoulder when he started back, "you like him, I know you do. I must marry somebody; for I do not wish to be an old maid, and I can't stand Father any longer."

Herr Carovius tore himself loose from her. "To the insane asylum with you!" he cried. "I would rather see you go to bed with that meal sack. Is the Devil in you, you prostitute? If your skin itches, scratch it, so far as I am concerned, but take a stable boy to do it, as Empress Katherine of blessed memory did. Buy fine dresses, bedizen yourself with tom-foolery of all shades and colours, go to dances and lap up champagne, make music or throw your damn fiddle on the dung heap, do anything you want to do, I'll pay for it; but that green-eyed phantast, that lunk-headed rat-catcher, that woman-eater and music-box bird, no, no! Never! Send him humping down the stairs and out the front door! For God's sake and the sake of all the saints, don't marry him! Don't, I say. If you do, it's all off between you and me."

There was such a look of hate and fear in Herr Carovius's face that Dorothea was almost frightened. His hair was as towsled as the twigs of an abandoned bird's nest; water was dripping from the corners of his mouth; his eyes were inflamed; his glasses were on the tip of his nose.

Nothing could have made Dorothea more pleased with the story Daniel had told her than Herr Carovius's ravings. Her eyes were opened wide, her mouth was thirsty. If she had hesitated at times before, she did so no more. She loved money; greed was a part of her make-up from the hour she was born. But if Herr Carovius had laid the whole of his treasures at her feet, and said to her, "You may have them if you will renounce Daniel Nothafft," she would have replied, "Your money, my Daniel."

Something terribly strange and strong drew her to the man she had just heard so volubly cursed. That sensual prickling was of a more dangerous violence and warmth in his presence than in that of any other man she had ever known; and she had known a number. To her he was a riddle and a mystery; she wanted to solve the one and clear up the other. He had possessed so many women, indubitably more than he had confessed to her; and she wished now to possess him. He was so quiet, so clever, so resolute: she wanted his quietness, his cleverness, his resoluteness. She wanted everything he had, his charm, his magic, his power over men, all that he displayed and all that he concealed.

She thought of him constantly; she thought in truth of no one else, and nothing else. Her thoughts fluttered about his picture, shyly, greedily, and as playfully as a kitten. He had managed to bring will power and unity into her senses. She wanted to have him.

The rain beat against the window. Terrified at Dorothea's thoughtfulness, Herr Carovius pressed his hands to his cheeks. "I see, I see, you want to leave me all alone," he said in a tone that sounded like the howling of a dog in the middle of the night. "You want to deceive me, to surrender me to the enemy, to leave me nothing, nothing but the privilege of sitting here and staring at my four walls. I see, I see."