ch he spent at Heringsdorf. In
September the Kreuzzeitung announced his betrothal to Fraulein Ellrich,
which was followed in the winter by their brilliant wedding.

The breaking of Wilhelm's relations with Loulou left a great blank in
his life. Up till now he had had in pleasant, hopeful hours, an object
to which all the paths in his life led him, to which his thoughts were
drawn as a ship steers for a distant yet secure harbor; now the object
was gone, and when he looked forward to his future it seemed like the
gray surface of the sea at dusk, formless, limitless, without meaning
or interest. Even the painful doubt he had been in, his hesitation
between the resolve to persevere in the engagement, or to renounce it,
the fight between his intelligence and his inclinations, had become
familiar to him, and had filled his thoughts by day and his dreams by
night. These must now all be renounced. If for the last half-year his
love had been only a quiet happiness, or a hardly-defined desire, it
was at any rate an occupation for his mind, and he missed the
employment very greatly.

He became quieter than ever; his face lost its youthful, healthy color,
and he appeared like the typical lover famed in classic story. But his
friends did not laugh at him; they bore with him, treated him gently,
as if he had been a disappointed girl. Paul, who was filling the place
of an invalided professor of agricultural chemistry, and working hard
after the college term began, found time to come every day for a long
walk in the Thiergarten, and resigned himself to long philosophical
discussions which so far had not been at all to his taste. Dr.
Schrotter seldom had any spare time during the day; but Wilhelm always
took tea with him in the evenings.

Did Bhani know anything of his story?

Had her womanly instinct guessed that his careworn, melancholy
expression betrayed an unhappy love story--a subject so sympathetic to
women? Anyhow she anticipated every means of serving him, and her
glance betrayed an almost shamefaced sympathy.

One November evening they were sitting at the little drum-shaped table
in the Indian drawing-room; the teaurn steaming, and Bhani standing
near, ready to obey her master's slightest wish. Schrotter touched on
the wound in Wilhelm's heart hitherto so tenderly avoided.

"My friend," he said, "it is time that you came to yourself. It is
obvious that you are still grieving, instead of fighting against your
dreams; yo