he turned around, nodded conventionally, and closed the door.

Gertrude was still sitting at the table. Jordan was walking up and down
the room. Suddenly she sprang up, stepped in his way, forced him to
stop, threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him on the forehead. She
had never done that before.

She too had gone to sleep. Jordan felt terribly alone. He heard the
street door open and close; he heard some one enter. It was Benno.
Jordan thought that his son would come in, for he must have seen the
light through the crack of the door. But Benno evidently had no desire
to see his father. He went to his room at the other end of the hall,
and closed the door behind him just as if he were a servant.

"They are all three in bed," thought Jordan to himself, "and what do I
know about them?"

He shook his head, removed the hanging lamp from its frame, and locked
the room, holding the lamp very carefully as he did so.

XIII

Eleanore had not seen Eberhard von Auffenberg for a number of weeks. He
wrote her a card, asking for the privilege of meeting her somewhere. The
place in fact was always the same--the bridge at the gate to the
Zooelogical Garden. Immediately after sunset she betook herself to that
point. It was a warm March evening; there was not a breath of wind; the
sky was covered with clouds.

They strolled up the castle hill, and when they had reached the parapet,
Eleanore said, gently laughing: "Now listen, I have talked enough; you
say something."

"It is so pleasant to be silent with you," replied Eberhard in a
downcast mood.

Filled with a disagreeable premonition, Eleanore sought out one of the
many hundreds of lights dimly flickering down in the city, fixed her
eyes on it, and stubbornly refused to look at any other earthly object.

"If I appeal to you at this hour," the young Baron finally began, "it is
to a certain extent exactly as if I were appealing to the Supreme Court.
My expectations in life have, with one single exception, been utterly
and irrevocably crushed. It depends quite upon you, Eleanore, whether I
am to become and remain a useless parasite of human society, or a man
who has firmly decided to pay for his share of happiness by an equal
amount of honest work. I offer you everything I have. It is not much,
but I offer it to you without haggling and forever. You and you alone
can save me. That is what I wanted to say to you."

He looked up at the cl