I will tell you all.
If the charm our game of hide and seek has had, vanishes as soon as you
know your friend's very commonplace and prosaic story--you yourself
have willed it to be so. But that you may have a pledge of my sincerity
at once--take this unlucky note away with you and keep it for me until
to-morrow. We will read it together--"

She rose and extended her hand, which, absorbed in gloomy thoughts, he
grasped and held firmly in his own. "I need no pledge," he replied.
"Perhaps it would be best if I--"

"If I should bid you farewell forever," he was going to say. But he had
not the courage to do so. He gazed into her eyes, which were again as
unclouded, nay, which sparkled as brightly as ever, and mechanically he
took the little note she held out to him. Then he bent over her hand
and kissed it--long and passionately; it was the first time he had ever
pressed his lips to her cool, soft fingers.

"To-morrow!" said he. "Keep your promise!"

"And suppose that the skies should fall during the night," she answered
smiling. "But sleep calmly. What I have to say to you, is only worth
knowing because you are still ignorant of it. Oh! my friend, I fear you
will yet regret having destroyed the spell by your question, if from
to-morrow the fairy tale is ended and Cinderella again sits in the
ashes!"

CHAPTER III.

When, soon after, Edwin returned home, passed Christiane's door, behind
which he heard loud, eager voices, and climbed the dark stairs, he was
glad that neither Mohr's nor Franzelius' voice could be distinguished
in the "tun." He was longing for an hour alone with his brother, and
therefore the surprise was all the more unwelcome when he found Balder
with his usual companions. Mohr was sitting opposite him before the
chess board, which they had placed on one corner of the turning lathe,
to take advantage of the last fading daylight. He had set a bottle of
Rhine wine--a small stock of which he had stored in the cellar of the
house, that he might not drink at the brothers' expense--on the window
sill, and seemed so absorbed by the wine, the game, and the smoke of
his cigarette, that he scarcely noticed Edwin's entrance. Franzelius
was sitting in the middle of the room astride a chair on whose back he
had clasped his broad hands, and rested his chin, while his gloomy eyes
stared intently at the bust of Demosthenes on the book case. He, too,
scarcely turned his head towar