is moving in our
place. It is a pity to leave the good old rooms. The second-hand dealer
is going to get a deal of our stuff; there is no room for it up there in
those two cubby holes. How is Gertrude? May I go up and see her for a
minute or two?"

"Yes, go right up," said Daniel stiffly; "you can stay and listen if you
wish to. I am going to play the Harzreise."

"If I wish to? I almost have a right to; you promised me this long ago."

"She thinks after all that I want to catch her," he thought to himself.
"It will be better for me to drop the whole business than to let the
idea creep into her stupid skull that my composition is going to make
propaganda for our private affairs." With bowed head he ascended the
stairs, M. Riviere and Eleanore following along behind. His ears were
pricked to hear anything they might say about Paris; they talked about
the weather.

As they entered the room Gertrude had the harp between her knees; but
she was not playing. Her hands lay on the strings, her head was resting
on the frame. "Why haven't you lighted a lamp?" asked Daniel angrily.

She was terrified; she looked at him anxiously. The expression on her
face made him conscious of many things that he had kept in the
background of his thoughts during his everyday life: her unconditional
surrender to him; the magnanimity and nobility of her heart, which was
as dependent on his as the mercury in the thermometer is dependent on
the atmosphere; her speechless resignation regarding a thousand little
things in her life! her wellnigh supernatural ability to enter into the
spirit and enjoyment of what he was doing, however much his mind might
presume to write _De profundis_ across his creations.

It was on this account that he recognised in her face a serious,
far-away warning. At once cowardly and reverential, conscious of his
guilt and yet feeling innocent, he went up to her and kissed her on the
hair. She leaned her head on his breast, thus causing him to feel,
though quite unaware of it herself, the whole weight of the burden she
was placing on him.

He told her he was going to play. He said: "I have lost my picture
again; I want to try to find it in others."

Gertrude begged him, with a pale face, to be permitted to stay in the
living room. She closed the door only partly.

VI

In Goethe's verses entitled "Harzreise im Winter," thoughts lie
scattered about like erratic strata in the world o