spread out her
hands, and dropped on to the carpet as though she had been shot.

CHAPTER XXVIII

"Is Herr von Treumann gone?"

It was late the same afternoon, and Princess Ludwig had come into the
bedroom where the Stralsund doctor was still vainly endeavouring to
bring the baroness back to life, to ask Anna whether she would see Axel
Lohm, who was waiting downstairs and hoped to be allowed to speak to
her. "But is Herr von Treumann gone?" inquired Anna; and would not move
till she was sure of that.

"Yes, and his mother has gone with him to the station."

Anna had not left the baroness's side since the catastrophe. She could
not see the unconscious face on the pillow for tears. Was there ever
such barbarous, such gratuitous cruelty as young Treumann's? His mother
had been in once or twice on tiptoe, the last time to tell Anna that he
was leaving, and would she not come down so that he might explain how
sorry he was for having unwittingly done so much mischief? But Anna had
merely shaken her head and turned again to the piteous little figure on
the bed. Never again, she told herself, would she see or speak to
Karlchen.

The movement with which she turned away was expressive; and Frau von
Treumann went out and heaped bitter reproaches on Karlchen, driving with
him to Stralsund in order to have ample time to heap all that were in
her mind, and doing it the more thoroughly that he was in a crushed
condition and altogether incapable of defending himself. For what had he
really cared about the baroness's relationship to Lolli? He had thought
it a huge joke, and had looked forward with enjoyment to seeing Anna
promptly order her out of the house. How could he, thick of skin and
slow of brain, have foreseen such a crisis? He was very much in love
with Anna, and shivered when he thought of the look she had given him as
she followed the people who were carrying the baroness out of the room.
Certainly he was exceedingly wretched, and his mother could not reproach
him more bitterly than he reproached himself. While she was vehemently
pointing out the obvious, he meditated sadly on the length of the
journey he had taken for worse than nothing. All the morning he had been
roasted in trains, and he was about to be roasted again for a dreary
succession of hours. His hot uniform, put on solely for Anna's
bedazzlement, added enormously to his torments; and the distance between
Rislar and Stralsund was great, and the jour