he report in the kitchen.

"Why doesn't he go and get her?" said the coachman, "I wouldn't cry a
drop; I should know very well how to get back an obstinate wife,"
making an unmistakable gesture. "Brute!" cried the maids, and thereupon
all the women turned their backs on him.

It was long since there had been such a harvest; the barns could
scarcely contain all the grain. The fragrance of the hay came over from
the meadows and mingled with that of the thousand roses in the garden;
the great linden bloomed in the court-yard and a happy hen-mother led
out to walk a legion of yellow little chickens.

In the stork's nest on the barn the young ones were growing apace; the
homely old house lay almost buried in luxuriant greenery; the clematis
climbed up to the windows and peeped in at the empty rooms, and the
swallows which were building under the roof, went crying through the
country and the city, "She has gone away from him! She has gone away
from him!"

Yes, everybody knew the sad story by this time. Gertrude Baumhagen was
separated from her husband. In the coffee parties one whispered to
the other, people spoke of it at the cafes and at dinner-parties,
and at the table d'hote in the hotel it was the standing topic of
conversation. No one knew exactly why this had happened. There were a
thousand reports of a most wonderful nature.

"He did something disagreeable about his wife's dowry--"

"She went away because he lifted his hand to strike her--"

"The mother-in-law made mischief between them--"

"Nonsense! She was jealous--there is a little brown cousin in the
house--"

"No, it was not that--she heard that before they were engaged he
consulted an agent about her fortune. It is not so very unusual
now-a-days."

"Ah, bah, no woman would run away for that!"

"That shows that you don't know Gertrude Baumhagen very well. It is a
fact that she has gone away."

Yes, it was a fact, and Gertrude sat in her lonely house like one
buried alive in that ever gloomy room. She could no longer read; it
seemed as if she slept with open eyes. Sometimes Johanna brought her
her child, and the young wife's eyes mechanically followed the little
creature as it crept awkwardly over the floor or tried to raise
itself by a chair, but she would not touch it even when it fell and
cried.--Towards evening, however, the same unaccountable restlessness
always came over her; then she walked hurriedly up and down the garden
for a long time t