table, Klutz turned from it with loathing. Nor did he
ever look at apple jelly again; nor did he, of other viands, eat enough
to keep him in health. He who had been so voracious forgot his meals,
and had to be coaxed before he would eat at all. He spent his spare time
writing, sitting up sometimes all night, and consuming candles at the
same head-long rate with which he had previously consumed the jelly; and
when towards May her husband once more commented on his seriousness,
Frau Manske's conscience no longer permitted her to sniff.

"You must be ill," she said to him at last, on a day when he had sat
through the meals in silence and had refused to eat at all.

"Ill!" burst out Klutz, whose body and soul seemed both to be in one
fierce blaze of fever, "I am sick--sick even unto death."

And he did feel sick. Only two days had elapsed since he had received
Anna's poem and had been thrown by it into a tumult of delight and
triumph; for the discouragement it contained had but encouraged him the
more, appearing to be merely the becoming self-depreciation of a woman
before him who has been by nature appointed lord. He was perfectly ready
to overlook the obstacles to their union to which she alluded. She could
not help her years; there were, truly, more of them than he would have
wished, but luckily they were not visible on that still lovely face. As
to position, he supposed she meant that he was not _adelig_; but a man,
he reflected, compared to a woman, is always _adelig_, whatever his name
may be, by virtue of his higher and nobler nature. He had been for
rushing at once to Kleinwalde; but his pupil and confidant had said
"Don't," and had said it with such energy that for that day at least he
had resisted. And now, the very morning of the day on which the Frau
Pastor was asking him whether he were ill, he had received a curt note
from Miss Leech, informing him that Miss Letty Estcourt would for the
present discontinue her German studies. What had happened? Even the
poem, lying warm on his heart, was not able to dispel his fears. He had
flown at once to Kleinwalde, feeling that it was absurd not to follow
the dictates of his heart and cast himself in person at Anna's no doubt
expectant feet, and the door had been shut in his face--rudely shut, by
a coarse servant, whose manner had so much enraged him that he had
almost shown her the precious verses then and there, to convince her of
his importance in that house; indeed, t