en writing letters, evidently, for an unfinished one
lay on the table. She stood a moment quite still in the silent room.
Manske had gone to find the coachman, and she could hear his steps on
the stones beneath the open windows. The desolation of the deserted
room, the terrible sense of misfortune worse than death that brooded
over it, struck her like a blow that for ever destroyed her cheerful
youth. She never forgot the look and the feeling of that room. She went
to the writing-table, dropped on her knees, and laid her cheek, with an
abandonment of tenderness, on the open, unfinished letter. "How are such
things possible--how are they possible----" she murmured passionately,
shutting her eyes to press back the useless tears. "So useless to cry,
so useless," she repeated piteously, as she felt the scalding tears, in
spite of all her efforts to keep them back, stealing through her
eyelashes. And everything else that she did or could do--how useless.
What could she do for him, who had no claim on him at all? How could she
reach him across this gulf of misery? Yes, it was good to be brave in
this world, it was good to have courage, but courage without weapons, of
what use was it? She was a woman, a stranger in a strange land, she had
no friends, no influence--she was useless. Manske found her kneeling
there, holding the writing-table tightly in her outstretched arms,
pressing her bosom against it as though it were something that could
feel, her eyes shut, her face a desolation. "Do not cry," he begged in
his turn, "dearest Miss, do not cry--it cannot help him."

They locked up his papers and everything that they thought might be of
value before they left. Manske took the keys. Anna half put out her hand
for them, then dropped it at her side. She had less claim than Manske:
he was Axel's pastor; she was nothing to him at all.

They left the dog-cart at the entrance to the town and went in search of
a _Droschke_. Manske's weather-beaten face flushed a dull red when he
gave the order to drive to the prison. The prison was in a by-street of
shabby houses. Heads appeared at the windows of the houses as the
_Droschke_ rattled up over the rough stones, and the children playing
about the doors and gutters stopped their games and crowded round to
stare.

They went up the dirty steps and rang the bell. The door was immediately
opened a few inches by an official who shouted "The visiting hour is
past," and shut it again.

Manske