en way to a painful feeling of sympathy when she
thought of the unknown mother of her friend. It seemed to her now as if
she could play the role of an emissary of reconciliation; as if it were
her duty to take the deserted woman here to the deserted woman there; as
if she were called to take the mother-to-be to the mother who had just
reasons for regretting that she had ever been a mother.

It seemed to her as if she must create a bond which could not even be
sundered by crime, to say nothing of misunderstanding or caprice; it
seemed to her that Daniel had to effect a reconciliation in the home of
the Ruedigers as well as in that of his mother; and that, conscious as
she was of doing what was right, she would meet with no opposition,
would have no settling of accounts to fear.

She also took the practical side of the matter into careful
consideration: Meta would have no trouble in making her living in
Eschenbach; she could help Daniel's mother, or she could do day work
among the peasants.

When the child was born, Daniel's mother would have a picture of young
life to look at; it would alleviate her longing; it would appease her
bitterness to see a child of Daniel's own blood.

Eleanore told the people at home that she was going on an excursion with
a school friend to the Ansbach country. She studied the time-table, and
wrote a postcard to Meta telling her to be at the station at eight
o'clock in the morning.

Jordan approved of Eleanore's outing, though he warned her against
bandits and cold drinks. Gertrude was not wholly without suspicion. She
had a feeling that something was wrong, that these unspoken words
referred to Daniel, for she was always thinking about him.

If she received a letter from him, which was very rare, she would let it
lie on the table for a long while, imagining that it was full of the
most glorious declarations of his love for her, expressed in language
which she could not command. In a sort of moon-struck ecstasy she made
an inner, dreamed music out of what he wrote.

When she read his letter, she was satisfied merely to see the words he
had written and to feel the paper on which his hand had rested. She
submitted in silence to the laws of his nature, which would not permit
him to be excessive in his remarks or unusually communicative. Each of
his dry reports was a tiding of glad joy to her, though her own replies
were just as dry, giving not the slightest picture of the enraptured
soul