o get a footing, in the world of actual objects round about
her.

She would take a pear, and think herself, so to speak, into the very
heart of this bit of fruit, just as if it were possible to find
protection, shelter in so small a space. Or she would take a piece of
coloured glass, hold it in her hand, and look at the world of reality
about her, hoping that the commonplace would in this way be made to seem
more beautiful. Or she looked into the burning fire, and studied, with a
smile on her face, the romantic tongues of flames. Or she had a longing
to look at old pictures: she went to the Germanic Museum, and spent an
entire morning there, standing before a Crucifixion, a Last Supper, her
eye and her heart filled with flowing emotion.

Her love for flowers became stronger than ever, and she began to study
them. The most of them she picked herself; those that grew only in
gardens she bought from the florists, paying very little for them. After
she had made several purchases, they refused to take any more money from
her; they gave her just as many flowers as she wanted. She took them
home, and made bouquets out of them.

One evening she was frightened by Philippina, who came rushing up to her
just as she was arranging her flowers and told her that little Agnes had
a high fever. Eleanore went out and got the doctor, who immediately
reassured her. As she returned, her astonishment was intense and
unusual. Reaching the door, her eyes fell on the flowers: they seemed
wonderfully beautiful to her; the harmony and play of their colours was
so striking that she involuntarily looked around in the illusion that a
stranger had called during her absence, brought the flowers, and
arranged them in their artistic bouquets.

In the meantime poverty was haunting the house in very tangible form.
Neither the butcher nor the baker was willing any longer to deliver
goods on credit. It was quite impossible for Eleanore to support five
people with her clerical work, to say nothing of keeping them in clothes
and paying the rent. However hard she might work, the most she could do
was to get enough money for the barest necessities. Her cares multiplied
day by day.

She had always been an implacable foe of debts; she would not make them.
But after all, the people could not starve, and so she had to contract
debts now. Bitter humiliations were unavoidable; she looked into the
future with untempered dread. She racked her brain trying to devis