Axel's latest birthday was quite the
most solitary he had yet spent. The cheerful garlands had been put up by
an officious gardener on his own initiative. No one, except Axel's own
dependents, had passed beneath them to wish him luck. Trudi had
telegraphed her blessings, administering them thus in their easiest
form. His Stralsund friends had apparently forgotten him; in other years
they had been glad of the excuse the birthday gave for driving out into
the country in June, but this year the astonished Mamsell saw her
birthday cake remain untouched and her baked meats waiting vainly for
somebody to come and eat them.

Axel neither noticed nor cared. The haymaking season had just begun, and
besides his own affairs he was preoccupied by Anna's. If she had not
been shut up so long in the baroness's sick-room she would have met him
often enough. She thought he never intended to come near her again, and
all the time, whenever he could spare a moment and often when he could
not, he was on her property, watching Dellwig's farming operations. She
should not suffer, he told himself, because he loved her; she should not
be punished because she was not able to love him. He would go on doing
what he could for her, and was certainly, at his age, not going to sulk
and leave her to face her difficulties alone.

The first time he met Dellwig on these incursions into Anna's domain, he
expected to be received with a scowl; but Dellwig did not scowl at all;
was on the contrary quite affable, even volunteering information about
the work he had in hand. Nor had he been after all offensively zealous
in searching for the person who had set the stables on fire; and luckily
the Stralsund police had not been very zealous either. Klutz was looked
for for a little while after Axel had denounced him as the probable
culprit, but the matter had been dropped, apparently, and for the last
ten days nothing more had been said or done. Axel was beginning to hope
that the whole thing had blown over, that there was to be no
unpleasantness after all for Anna. Hearing that the baroness was nearly
well, he decided to go and call at Kleinwalde as though nothing had
happened. Some time or other he must meet Anna. They could not live on
adjoining estates and never see each other. The day after his birthday
he arranged to go round in the afternoon and take up the threads of
ordinary intercourse again, however much it made him suffer.

Meanwhile Anna did her busi