sy mob was doubly unpleasant, and the two friends
hastened to escape into the Schadowstrasse. At Wilhelm's doorstep they
took leave of each other; Paul went off humming a snatch of Offenbach
up the Friedrichstrasse to his home near the Weidendamme.

Wilhelm was tired, but much too excited to sleep. He lived over again
in thought the last few months, and, as often happened lately, he
lapsed into painful meditation on his relations to Loulou. After her
departure from Hornberg she had not written to him for eight days. Then
came a letter from Ostend, in which she called Wilhelm "Sie." She said
she was very sorry for this, that it would be painful if she called him
"Du" and he did not return it, but it would be safer not to do so, as
his answer would certainly be read by her mother, and perhaps by her
father also, and they would not wish them to say "Du" to each other.
Already this change of tone between them cut Wilhelm to the heart, but
almost more still the contents of Loulou's letter. She spoke a little
of the sea, whose breakers continually sounded in her soul, and her
thoughts, which accompanied them like an orchestra; she seldom
mentioned the delightful time in the mountains of the Black Forest,
which remembrance he carried always with him; but a great deal about
the Promenade, the concerts, the Casino balls, her own charming bathing
and society toilettes, and those of extravagant Parisians, who tried by
incredible mixtures of colors and style to outstrip each other. She
wrote particularly about her acquaintances with celebrated people, and
her personal following, and for the rest she hardly missed expressing
in any of her letters her regret that he was not with her, and enjoying
her varied life. Often in the letter there was a flower, or a piece of
wild thyme, which betrayed an undercurrent of feeling beneath the
shallowness of the words, and once she sent him her photograph with the
words "Loulou to her dearest Wilhelm." So he gathered from her
frivolous letters much that was unspoken, and through signs and
indications believed that her feeling for him was there and gained
strength. His answers were short and rather compressed. The knowledge
that they would be seen by her prosaic parents, and that Loulou herself
would hardly trouble to read anything in the midst of her whirl of
gayety, deprived him of words, stopped the flow of his feelings, and
turned his expressions into mere Philistinisms. But, on the other Land,