med to be full of people. The
supper bell had lately rung, and the inmates, talking and laughing, were
going into the dining-room. Dellwig, his hands full of papers, not
having found Anna at home, was in the act of making elaborate farewell
bows to the assembled ladies. After the two silent hours of suffering
that lay between herself and Axel, how strange it was, this noisy bustle
of daily life. She caught fragments of what they were saying, fragments
of the usual prattle, the same nothings that they said every day,
accompanied by the same vague laughs. How strange it was, and how awful,
the tremendousness of life, the nearness of death, the absolute
relentlessness of suffering, and all the prattle.

"_Um Gottes Willen!_" shrieked Frau von Treumann, when she caught sight
of this white image of grief set suddenly in their midst. "It has
smashed up, then, your bank?" And she made a hasty movement towards the
hall table, on which lay a letter for Anna from Karlchen, containing, as
she knew, an offer of marriage.

Anna turned with a blind sort of movement, and stretched out her hand
for Letty, drawing her to her side, instinctively seeking any comfort,
any support; and she stood a moment clinging to her, gazing at the
little crowd with sombre, unseeing eyes.

"What has happened, Anna?" asked the princess uneasily.

"You must congratulate me," said Anna slowly in German, her head held
very high, her face of a deathly whiteness.

A lightening look of comprehension flashed into Dellwig's eyes; he
scarcely needed to hear the words that came next.

"Herr von Lohm and I were to-day," she said. Then she looked round at
them with a vague, piteous look, and put her hand up to her throat. "We
shall be married--we shall be married--when--when it pleases God."

CONCLUSION

The moral of this story, as Manske, wise after the event, pointed out
when relating those parts of it that he knew on winter evenings to a
dear friend, plainly is that all females--_alle Weiber_--are best
married. "Their aspirations," he said, "may be high enough to do credit
to the noblest male spirit; indeed, our gracious lady's aspirations were
nobility itself. But the flesh of females is very weak. It cannot stand
alone. It cannot realise the aspirations formed by its own spirit. It
requires constant guidance. It is an excellent material, but it is only
material in the raw."

"What?" cried his wife.

"Peace, woman. I say it is only material in