o
utter. Let this hint be sufficient for you, dear heart, and promise me
never to allude to it again, nor even, if it's possible, to strive to
discover what is concealed behind it. Have I not myself given you a
beautiful example of how we can stifle even the most lawful curiosity,
by not even inquiring what motives you could have for not accompanying
me on this vacation's journey, and refraining at your request from all
meditations upon whether the point in question was a grand cleaning
festival, a new carpet in our study, or some other unsuspected and
thoughtful expenditure of the traveling expenses you have saved?_

"_But to return to Mohr and his young happiness, I would never have
believed it possible that he could have changed so much for the better,
as during the last few years._

"_He was waiting for me at the railway station, holding in his arms a
little boy about three years old, who smiled brightly at me with his
wise black eyes. Not until we were out of the crowd and the child could
be placed without danger on his own feet, did his father have his arms
at liberty to embrace me. Then we walked slowly and silently along the
road that led toward the little city, Mohr kept his eyes steadily fixed
upon his boy, and only now and then cast a side glance at me, as if he
wanted to ask if I had ever seen such a child. 'You must know,' he said
at last, 'he has no other nurse than I, and he will not feel the lack.
At first Christiane did not believe I had the necessary qualifications
for his attendant, and also thought I should probably have something
better to do. But now she has discovered that this is my real vocation.
We must take ourselves as we are. Your old friend, Heinrich Mohr, who
used to imagine that he was something in himself, something out of the
common order, a poet, a musician--the devil knows what--has now come to
the knowledge, that he's only a transition point, an intermediate step
between the Mohrs who were still more insignificant and commonplace,
and this little Mohr, who will be greater than all of us, the head and
flower of the whole stock. What in me was only impulse, desire,
presentiment and desperation, will in him become fulfillment. You
laugh, my dear fellow_, '(_I was not laughing at all_)' _but first you
must learn to know him. To be sure he doesn't inherit from his papa
alone; his best qualities may have descended to him from his mother:
her strong will, to risk all for all. The elements