ut from her fly at the ugly little wayside
inn with its narrow lawn and its bands of early flowers. Trees rose
round it, the moors of the forest stretched before. It was remote and
very silent.

Here it was, she had learned at the station, some miles away, that the
German lady and gentleman were staying, and the lady was said to be very
ill. Madame von Marwitz's glance, as it rested upon the goal of her
journey, had in it the look of vast, constructive power, as when, for
the first time, it rested on a new piece of music, realized it, mastered
it, possessed it, actual, in her mind, before her fingers gave it to the
world. So, now, she realized and mastered and possessed the scene that
was to be enacted.

She got out of the fly and told the man to carry in her box and
dressing-case and then to wait. She opened the little gate, and as she
did so, glancing up, she saw Franz Lippheim standing looking out at her
from a ground-floor window. His gaze was stark in its astonishment. She
returned it with a solemn smile. In another moment she had put the
landlady aside with benign authority and was in the little sitting-room.
"My Franz!" she exclaimed in German. "Thank God!" She threw her arms
around his neck and burst into sobs.

Franz, holding a pipe extended in his hand, stood for a moment in
silence his eyes still staring their innocent dismay over her shoulder.
Then he said: "How have you come here, _gnaedige Frau_?"

"Come, Franz!" Madame von Marwitz echoed, weeping: "Have I not been
seeking my child for the last six days! Love such as mine is a torch
that lights one's path! Come! Yes; I am come. I have found her! She is
safe, and with my Franz!"

"But Karen is ill, very ill indeed," said Franz, speaking with some
difficulty, locked as he was in the great woman's arms. "The doctor
feared for her life three days ago. She has been delirious. And it is
you, _gnaedige Frau_, whom she fears;--you and her husband."

Madame von Marwitz leaned back her head to draw her hand across her
eyes, clearing them of tears.

"But do I not know it, Franz?" she said, smiling a trembling smile at
him. "Do I not know it? I have been in fault; yes; and I will make
confession to you. But--oh!--my child has punished me too cruelly. To
leave me without a word! At night! It was the terror of her husband that
drove her to it, Franz. Yes; it has been a delirium of terror. She was
ill when she went from me."

She had released him now, though ke