when the
coldest hearts grow warm. Relations who have quarrelled all the year,
seek each other out at Christmas and talk tearfully of ties of blood.
And birthdays--will your twelve sisters be content to spend their twelve
birthdays remote from all members of their family? Birthdays here are
important days. There will be one a month now for you to celebrate at
Kleinwalde."

"I have not got farther than considering Karlchen," said Anna with some
impatience.

"A male Kuhraeuber," said Axel musingly, swinging his stick and gazing up
at the fleecy clouds floating over the pine tops, "a male Kuhraeuber
would be quite unlike anything you have yet seen."

"There are no male Kuhraeubers," said Anna. "At least," she added,
correcting herself, "Fraeulein Kuhraeuber said so. She said she had no
relations at all, but perhaps--perhaps she has forgotten some, and will
remember them by and by. Oh, I wish they would tell me exactly how they
stand, and not try to hide anything! I thought we had left nothing
unexplained in the letters, but now Karlchen--it seems----" She stopped
and bit her lip. She was actually on the verge of criticising, to Axel,
the behaviour of her sisters. "Look," she said, catching sight of red
roofs through the thinning trees, "isn't that Lohm? I have seen you home
without knowing it."

She held out her hand. "It isn't much good talking, is it?" she said,
moved by a sudden impulse, and looking up at him with a slightly wistful
smile. "How we talk and talk and never get any nearer anything or each
other. Such an amount of explaining oneself, and all no use. I don't
mean you and me especially--it is always so, with everyone and
everywhere. It is very weird. Good-bye."

But he held her hand and would not let her go. "No," he said, in a voice
she did not know, "wait one moment. Why will you not let me really help
you? Do you think you will ever achieve anything by shutting your eyes
to what is true? Is it not better to face it, and then to do one's
best--after that, knowing the truth? Why are you angry whenever I try to
tell you the truth, or what I believe to be the truth about these
ladies? You are certain to find it out for yourself one day. You force
me to look on and see you being disappointed, and grieved, and perhaps
cheated--anyhow your confidence abused--and you reduce our talks
together to a sort of sparring match unworthy, quite unworthy of either
of us----" He broke off abruptly and released her han