you must. And that,"
he added, looking alarmed, "would be disastrous. No, no, leave it alone.
In any case leave it alone till I have seen Lolli. I shall come down
soon again, you may be sure. I wish we could get rid of the Penheim. Now
that really would be a good thing. Think it over."

But Frau von Treumann felt that by no amount of thinking it over would
they ever get rid of the Penheim.

"You do not like my Karlchen?" she said plaintively to Anna that
evening, coming out into the dusky garden where she stood looking at the
stars. Karlchen was well on his way to Berlin by that time.

"I am sure I should like him very much if I knew him," replied Anna,
putting all the heartiness she could muster into her voice.

Frau von Treumann shook her head sadly. "But now? I see you do not like
him now. You hardly spoke to him. He was hurt. A mother"--"Oh," thought
Anna, "I am tired of mothers,"--"a mother always knows."

Her handkerchief came out. She had put one hand through Anna's arm, and
with the other began to wipe her eyes. Anna watched her in silence.

"What? What? Tears? Do I see tears? Are we then missing our son so
much?" exclaimed a cheery voice behind them. And there was the princess
again.

"Serpent," thought Frau von Treumann; but what is the use of thinking
serpent? She had to submit to being consoled all the same, while Anna
walked away.

CHAPTER XXI

Anna seemed always to be walking away during the days that separated
Karlchen's first visit from his second. Frau von Treumann noticed it
with some uneasiness, and hoped that it was only her fancy. The girl had
shown herself possessed of such an abnormally large and warm heart at
first, had been so eager in her offers of affection, so enthusiastic, so
sympathetic, so--well, absurd; was it possible that there was no warmth
and no affection left over from those vast stores for such a
good-looking, agreeable man as Karlchen? But she set such thoughts aside
as ridiculous. Her son's simple doctrine from his fourteenth year on had
been that all girls like all men. It had often been laid down by him in
their talks together, and her own experience of girls had sufficiently
proved its soundness. "The Penheim must have poisoned her mind against
him," she decided at last, unable otherwise to explain the apathy with
which Anna received any news of Karlchen. Was there ever such sheer
spite? For what could it matter to a woman with no son of her own, who
married