n order to make sure that he inquired after Eleanore.

Gertrude opened the iron door. "Eleanore does not want you to come in,"
she said, with a trace of joy in her eyes.

"Why not? What has happened?"

"She does not wish to see you," said the monosyllabic Gertrude, and
gazed into the light of the hall lamp.

"Is she ill?"

"No!"

"Then she has got to tell me herself that she does not wish to see me."

"Go!" commanded Gertrude and tossed her head back.

Her gloomy eyes hung on his, and the two stood there for a moment
opposite each other, like two racers who have come in at the same goal
at the same time but from opposite directions. Daniel then turned
around, and went down the steps in silence. Gertrude remained standing
for a time, her head sinking deeper and deeper all the while on her
breast. Suddenly she covered her face with her hands; a cold shudder ran
through her body.

XVI

Before going to bed, Eleanore wrote a letter to Herr Zittel informing
him that she was leaving the Prudentia at once.

Lying in bed, she could not sleep. She saw herself on the ice cutting
bold and novel figures. The spectators, grouped about her in a wide
circle, admired her skill. She saw the sea with fishing smacks and
coloured sails. She saw gardens full of roses.

Her father and Benno had come home long ago. She heard the bell up in
the nearby church tower strike twelve--and then one--and then two.

She heard some one walking back and forth in the house; she heard some
one opening and closing a door. Then the steps died away, and all was
quiet. She got up, went to the door, and listened. A deep sigh reached
her ear from the next room. She opened the door just a little, without
making the slightest noise, and peeped out through the crack.

Gertrude was standing by the open window; she was in her night-gown and
bare feet. The moon was shining on the square in front of the house; the
glitter of the snow on the roofs made it seem quite cold. The spooky
illumination made the girl's face look spooky. Her loose flowing hair
looked as black as ebony.

Eleanore ran into the room, and closed the window. "What on earth are
you doing, Gertrude?" she exclaimed; "are you getting ready to take your
life?"

Gertrude's slender body shivered in the cold; her toes were all bent in
as if she were having a convulsion. "Yes," she said with marked
moroseness, "that is what I would like to do."

"That's