air need be
made grow over that. Take the young lady, pack her trunk, and go to
Berlin for a few weeks. Go to the theatre every evening for my sake, and
see something classical; but take her away from here!'

"'Ah, doctor, you do not know Anna Maria.'

"I made an attempt, nevertheless. She let me have my say, and then
said: 'I do not understand the outside world at all. I miss nothing
here, I complain of nothing. Do not tease me any more!'

"When the workmen appeared, one after another, to put in order the rooms
for the young couple, when the dear old articles of furniture were taken
out and the wall-papers torn off, she fled to her room. The writing-desk
at which her father had formerly sat and worked was to remain in its
place, at Klaus's express desire; but the old thing looked so
ridiculously awkward beside the _Boule_ furniture that paper-hanger and
cabinet-maker refused to receive it, so Anna Maria had it taken into her
room. She now sat there all day at the window before her mother's
sewing-table, and looked blankly out on the wintry garden, every stroke
of the hammer from the workmen making her start. The bunch of keys no
longer hung at her belt; Brockelmann had taken charge of that.

"No one came to see us in those desolate winter days, except the old
brother and sister from the parsonage, and even from them she fled. I
stood by her faithfully, and beheld the struggles of her proud heart.

"At first Isa had lived on quietly up-stairs by herself, disregarded by
Anna Maria. Then one day toward Christmas she came into my room, beaming
with joy, and announced to me that the young Frau wanted her to come to
her; she was in need of her help at her toilet, and she was to have the
position of lady's maid with her. '_Je vais a Paris ce soir, a Paris_,
and from there to Nice. Oh, I speak French excellently!'

"I wished her a prosperous journey, and commissioned her with messages.
Then I sat down and reflected. Klaus, quiet, easy-going Klaus, who
valued the comfort of his arm-chair in the evening beyond everything,
in Paris, the gay Paris, with a young wife who needed a maid to make
her toilet? I could not make that rhyme without a dissonance.

"In the rooms down-stairs an exquisite elegance was being gradually
revealed, and I learned from the workmen that the pale blue silk
hangings of the boudoir (the little library next to Klaus's study was
converted into a boudoir), and the dainty rosewood furniture, Frau von
H