g gestures.
Herr Carovius tittered. Daniel took off his glasses, polished them, and
looked at the young girl with squinting eyes. It seemed as if the
glasses had made it difficult for him to see Dorothea distinctly, or as
if he preferred to see her indistinctly. "I really don't know what I
could tell in the way of a story," he replied, shaking his head.

"Tell us everything, anything," cried Dorothea, seized with a veritable
fit of eagerness to hear him talk. She stretched out her hands toward
him: that seemed to him to be so like a child. He had never told stories
to a child; he had never in truth told stories to any one. Gertrude and
Eleanore had, to be sure, forced a confession or a complaint from him at
times, but that was all, and all that was necessary or appropriate.

Suddenly he was drawn on by the word in which his fate would be quietly
reflected; by the fiery young eye in the brilliancy of which the complex
became simple, the dark bright; by the wicked old man to whom the whole
world, as seen from his mire, had become a poisonous food.

And with his brittle, staccato voice he told of the countries through
which he had journeyed; of the sea and the cities by the sea; of the
Alps and the Alpine lakes; of cathedrals, palaces, and marvellous
monasteries; of the queer people he had met, of his work and his
loneliness. It was all incoherent, arid, and loveless. Though sorely
tempted, he desisted from mentioning things that came close to his soul;
things that moved his heart, fired his brain. When he told of the
Jewess, the Swallow, he did not even finish the sentence. He made a long
pause, and then shifted to the account of his visit to Eschenbach. Here
he stopped again before he was through.

But Dorothea began to ask questions. It was all too general and
therefore unsatisfactory. "What was there in Eschenbach? Why did you go
there?" she asked boldly.

He was in error concerning the hot desire that burned in her eyes to
know about Eschenbach. Her question made him feel good; he believed that
he was on the scent of warm-heartedness; he thought he had found a soul
that was eager to help through knowledge. He was seized with the desire
of the mature man to fashion an untouched soul in harmony with the
picture of his dreams. "My mother used to live there," he replied
hesitatingly, "she has died."

"Yes--and?" breathed Dorothea. She saw that that was not all.

He felt that this uncompromising reticence was not ri