their
arms at once, and press new-comers to their heart. It is a
straightforward, prosaic house, where requests are made and refused in
few words; and it is a proud and rigid house besides. Remember this, it
is no tender welcome to which you are leading your friend.

This Sabine felt, and delayed a moment before she opened the door; but
her resolve was taken, and, holding Anton's hand in hers, she drew him
in, crying to her brother with a beaming face, "Here he is; he is
returned to us."

The merchant rose from his writing-table, but he remained standing by
it; and his first words, coldly and peremptorily spoken, were these:
"Release my sister's hand, Mr. Wohlfart."

Sabine drew back. Anton stood alone in the middle of the room, and
looked at the principal. His strongly-marked features were aged during
the last year, his hair had grown gray, the lines in his face had
deepened.

"That I should enter here at the risk of being unwelcome," said Anton,
"will show you how strong my desire was to see you and the firm once
more. If I have excited your displeasure, do not let me feel it in this
hour."

The merchant turned to his sister. "Leave us, Sabine; I wish to speak to
Mr. Wohlfart alone." Sabine went up to her brother, and stood erect
before him. She said not a word, but with a bright glance, in which a
firm resolve was plainly visible, she looked full into his frowning
face, and then left the room. The merchant looked gloomily after her,
and turned to Anton. "What brings you back to us, Wohlfart?" said he.
"Have you failed to attain what your youthful ambition hoped for, and
are you come to seek in the tradesman's house the happiness that once
seemed inadequate to your claims? I hear that your friend Fink has
settled himself on the baron's property; has he sent you back to us
because you were in his way there?"

Anton's brow grew clouded. "I do not appear before you as an
adventurer," said he; "you are unjust in expressing such a suspicion;
nor does it become me to submit to it. There was a time when your
judgment of me was more friendly; I thought of that time when I sought
you out; I think of it now, that I may forgive your injurious words."

"You once said to me," continued the merchant, "that you felt yourself
at home in my house and firm. And you had a home, Wohlfart, in our
hearts and in the business. In a moment of effervescence you gave us up,
and we, with sorrow, did the same with you. Why do you return