o-day and surfeited to-morrow, to a
man who longs for peace and repose, and be peace and repose to him? Could
you for my sake give up all that has until now filled your life, if I for
your sake leave behind me everything that has wasted my existence? Shall
we both begin afresh, on a new basis, simply and without any false
glamour, and live and die as plain country persons? I will be tender with
you, Ingigerd." Frederick hollowed his hands and held them as he had done
when speaking of the Madonna. "I will--" He broke off and cried: "Say
something! Just tell me the one thing, Ingigerd! Can you--can you become
my comrade for life?"

Ingigerd was standing at the window looking out into the fog and tapping
the pane with a pencil.

"Perhaps, Doctor von Kammacher," she said finally.

"Perhaps!" Frederick blazed up. "And Doctor von Kammacher!"

Ingigerd turned and said quickly:

"Why do you always fly into such a temper right away? How do I know if I
am suited to your needs and desires?"

"It is merely a question of love," replied Frederick.

"I like you. Yes, I do like you, but whether my feeling for you is love,
how can I tell? I always say that so far I haven't loved anything but
animals."

"Animals!" cried Frederick von Kammacher. He felt mortally ashamed.
Never, it seemed to him, in his whole life had he so degraded himself.

XI

A few moments later there was a knock at the door, and a man in a long
overcoat and brown kid gloves, carrying a silk hat in his fat hand
entered.

"Excuse me," he said, "I presume this is Miss Hahlstroem?"

"Yes. I am Miss Hahlstroem."

"My name is Lilienfeld--manager of the Cosmopolitan Theatre." He handed
Frederick his card, which announced that he was also manager of a variety
theatre and impresario in general. "I obtained your address from Mr.
Stoss, the armless marksman, you know. I heard you had had some
unpleasantness with Webster and Forster, and I said to myself, I must go
and call on the daughter of a good old friend of mine. I knew both your
father and mother." Mr. Lilienfeld, in tactfully subdued tones, wound up
his rather lengthy address with delicate expressions of sympathy and his
personal sorrow at Hahlstroem's death.

Ingigerd being helpless as a child in business matters, Frederick had
taken it upon himself to represent her, and he used the pause in the
impresario's speech to put in a word. The man's personality was by no
means displeasing to him, and h