icial light. He helped
his mother shell the peas, and in order to make her angry at Philippina,
kept making mean remarks about her staying out so long.

Just as the last piece of the lemon disappeared behind Jason Philip's
moustache, the door bell rang.

"There is a man out there," said Markus, who had gone to the door and
was now standing on the threshold, stupidly staring with his one
remaining eye.

Jason Philip stretched his neck. Then he got up. He had recognised
Daniel standing in the half-lighted hall.

"I have something to say to you," said Daniel, as he entered the room.
His eyes gazed on the walls and at the few cheap, ugly, banal objects
that hung on them: a newspaper-holder with embroidered ribbons; a corner
table on which stood a beer mug representing the fat body of a monk; an
old chromic print showing a volunteer taking leave of his big family as
he starts for the front. These things appealed to Daniel somewhat as an
irrational dream. Then, taking a deep breath, he fixed his eyes on Jason
Philip. In his mind's eye he looked back over many years; he saw himself
standing at the fountain in Eschenbach. Round about him glistened the
stones and cross beams of the houses. Jason Philip was hurrying by at a
timid distance. There was bitterness in his face: he seemed to be
fleeing from the world, the sun, men, and music.

"I have something to say to you," he repeated.

Theresa felt that the worst of her forebodings were about to be
fulfilled. With trembling knees she arose. She did not dare turn her
eyes toward the place in the room where Daniel was standing. She did not
see, she merely sensed Jason Philip as he beckoned to her and his sons
to leave the room. She took Markus by the hand and Willibald by the
coat-sleeve, and marched out between the two.

"What's the news?" asked Jason Philip, as he crossed his arms and looked
at the pile of beans on the table. "You have a--what shall I say?--a
very impulsive way about you. It is a way that reminds me of the fact
that we have a law in this country against disturbing the peace of a
private family. Your stocks must have gone to the very top of the market
recently. Well, tell me, what do you want?"

He cleared his throat, and beat a tattoo on the elbows of his crossed
arms with his fingers.

Daniel felt that his peace was leaving him; his own arm seemed to him
like a shot-gun; it itched. But thus far he could not say a thing. The
question he had in mind to p