oman, a member of the sex in whose presence he was always
at his ease. The brandy prevented him from feeling it as acutely as he
would otherwise have done, but the plain truth, the truth undisguised by
brandy, was that he looked up to Axel Lohm with a respect bordering on
fear, had never in his life been alone with him, or so much as spoken to
him beyond ordinary civilities when they met, and he was frightened.

By the time he reached Axel's stables, which stood by the roadside about
five minutes' walk from Axel's gate, he found himself obliged to go over
his sufferings once again one by one, to count the dinners he had
missed, to remember the feverish nights and the restless days, to
rehearse what Dellwig had just told him of his present ridiculousness,
or he would have turned back and gone home. But these thoughts gave him
the courage necessary to get him through the gate; and by the time he
had rounded the bend in the avenue escape had become impossible, for
Axel was standing on the steps of the house. Axel had a cigar in his
mouth; his hands were in his pockets, and he was watching the paces of a
young mare which was being led up and down. Two pointers were sitting at
his feet, and when Klutz appeared they rushed down at him barking. Klutz
did not as a rule object to being barked at by dogs, but he was in a
highly nervous state, and shrank aside involuntarily. The groom leading
the mare grinned; Axel whistled the dogs off; and Klutz, with hot ears,
walked up and took off his hat.

"What can I do for you, Herr Klutz?" asked Axel, his hands still in his
pockets and his eyes on the mare's legs.

"I wish to speak with you privately," said Klutz.

"_Gut._ Just wait a moment." And Klutz waited, while Axel, with great
deliberation, continued his scrutiny of the mare, and followed it up by
a lengthy technical discussion of her faults and her merits with the
groom.

This was intolerable. Klutz had come on business of vital importance,
and he was left standing there for what seemed to him at least half an
hour, as though he were rather less than a dog or a beggar. As time
passed, and he still was kept waiting, the fury that had possessed him
as he stood helpless before Anna's shut door in the afternoon, returned.
All his doubts and fears and respect melted away. What a day he had had
of suffering, of every kind of agitation! The ground alone that he had
covered, going backwards and forwards between Lohm and Kleinwalde, wa