n of grief
over the stormy, desolate field of the dead. As he stood before
Gertrude's grave he was overwhelmed with the feeling of the hour: there
were voices in the storm; he felt that the horror and the memory of it
all would hurl him to the ground. But when he stood by the grave of
Eleanore, he felt his peace return. The clouds suddenly opened on the
distant horizon, and a moonbeam danced about him.

It was almost morning when he reached home.

A week later he went over to Siegmundshof and got Dorothea.

Sylvia and Dorothea came down through a snow-covered alley to meet him.
They were walking arm in arm, and Sylvia was laughing at Dorothea's
easy-flowing conversation. They seemed to be getting along perfectly
together: there could be no mistaking the picture he saw before him.
Sylvia told Daniel when she was alone with him that she had taken a
great liking to Dorothea. She remarked that her cheerfulness was
irresistible and contagious, and that when she was with children she
became a child herself.

Yet, despite all this, Sylvia studied Daniel. And when Dorothea was
present she studied her too: she cast fleeting, searching, unassured
glances at them--at Daniel and at Dorothea.

Daniel and Dorothea were married on a sunny day in December.

DOROTHEA

I

For the past fortnight, Philippina and Agnes had been living at Frau
Hadebusch's. A message came from Daniel telling Philippina that she and
Agnes should return, or, if she preferred to stay with Frau Hadebusch,
she should send Agnes home at once.

"There you have it," said Frau Hadebusch, "the master speaks."

"Ah, him--he's been speakin' to me for a long while. Much good it does
him," said Philippina. "The child stays with me, and I'm not going back.
That settles it! What, Agnes? Yes?"

Agnes was sitting on the bench by the stove with Henry the idiot,
reading the greasy pages of a cheap novel. When Philippina spoke to her,
she looked up in a distracted way and smiled. The twelve-year-old child
had a perfectly expressionless face; and as she never got out of the
house for any length of time, her skin was almost yellow.

"It ain't no use to try to buck him," continued Frau Hadebusch, who
looked as old as the mountains and resembled generally a crippled witch,
"he c'n demand the kid, and if he does he'll git her. If you ain't
careful, I'll get mixed up in the mess before long."

"We