---"

"Do you mean to say that is the reason?"

"Oh, isn't it sufficient----"

"No. If you cared for me it would be no reason at all."

She cried bitterly. "But I don't," she sobbed. "Not like that--not in
that way. It is atrocious of me not to--I know how good you are, how
kind, how--how everything. And still I don't. I don't know why I don't,
but I don't. Oh, Axel, I am so sorry--don't look so wretched--I can't
bear it."

"But what can it matter to you how I look if you don't care about me?"

"Oh, oh," sobbed Anna, wringing her hands.

He caught hold of her wrist. "See here, Anna. Look at me."

But she would not look at him.

"Look at me. I don't believe you know your own mind. I want to see into
your eyes. They were always honest--look at me."

But she would not look at him.

"Surely you will do that--only that--for me."

"There isn't anything to see," she wept, "there really isn't. It is
dreadful of me, but I can't help it."

"Well, but look at me."

"Oh, Axel, what _is_ the use of looking at you?" she cried in despair;
and pulled her handkerchief away and did it.

He searched her face for a moment in silence, as though he thought that
if only he could read her soul he might understand it better than she
did herself. Those dear eyes--they were full of pity, full of distress;
but search as he might he could find nothing else.

He turned away without a word.

"Don't, don't be tragic," she begged, anxiously following him a few
steps. "If only you are not tragic we shall still be able to be
friends----"

But he did not look round.

A servant with a tray was outside coming in to take the coffee away.
"Oh," exclaimed Anna, seeing that it was impossible to hide her
tear-stained face from the girl's calm scrutiny, "oh, Johanna, the poor
baroness--she is so ill--it is so dreadful----" And she dropped into a
chair and hid herself in the cushions, weeping hysterically with an
abandonment of woe that betokened a quite extraordinary affection for
the baroness.

"_Gott, die arme Baronesse_," sympathised Johanna perfunctorily. To
herself she remarked, "This very moment has the Miss refused to marry
_gnaediger Herr_."

CHAPTER XXIX

What Anna most longed for in the days that followed was a mother. "If I
had a mother," she thought, not once, but again and again, and her eyes
had a wistful, starved look when she thought it, "if I only had a
mother, a sweet mother all to myself, of my very own, I'