atred and revenge shot from his blue eyes; then he too reached out his
hand. His arm trembled; thick knots of quivering muscles formed on his
cheeks. Sylvia had gently closed the door and vanished.

Anxious minutes passed by and nothing happened, except that each held
the hand of the other and each looked into the eyes of the other. The
silence was broken only by the crackling of the fire in the stove.

"Just at the right time," murmured the old Baron, without looking up and
as if lost in meditation, "just at the right time."

Eberhard made no reply. He stood as still, as motionless, as silent, and
with his heels as close together as if he were a young officer facing
his superior in command.

After a while he wheeled about and slowly left the room.

Sylvia was waiting in the library. In the twilight it was possible to
see only the vague outline of her body.

Eberhard took hold of her and whispered: "I really believe that I no
longer have a father."

VI

That same night the old Baron had left. He got up in the middle of the
night; at four o'clock his valet accompanied him to the station.

The next morning two letters were found lying on his writing desk: one
was addressed to Eberhard, the other to the Baroness. The latter
contained nothing more than a few words of farewell. The former was more
detailed. It expressed the Baron's satisfaction at the fact that
Eberhard, whom he welcomed as the head of the house, had returned, and
plainly indicated that all the necessary legal steps would be taken in a
very short while to give him complete authority as his heir and
successor. The letter closed with this surprising sentence: "So far as I
am personally concerned, I am planning to enter the Catholic Church, in
order to spend the remainder of my misapplied life at Viterbo in the
Dominican Convent of Della Guercia."

There was no explanation, no unusual display of feeling, no confession,
nothing but the naked fact.

The Baroness was neither surprised nor shocked. She fell into a mute,
melancholy brooding, and then said: "He never was happy, never in his
whole life. I never heard him laugh a really whole-souled laugh; and
living with him has made me forget how to laugh myself. His heart has
been from time immemorial a sort of convent, an abode of darkness, a
place of sternness. He has found his way home at last, and is probably
tired from the long journey on the way to his soul."