af blown about by the wind--could be seen
afar off in the flat, treeless field.

Mrs. Tiralla was in the sitting-room with Boehnke, and saw them in the
distance through the gateway. "There he is again," she said, with a
look of disgust on her face.

Already? The schoolmaster sighed. He had been so delighted to find the
woman he adored alone at home--he had seen little Rosa on her way to
the village--and now they were so soon to be disturbed. What did that
horrid fellow mean by always coming back? Boehnke quite forgot that this
house to which he came regularly every Sunday and very often besides,
belonged to Mr. Tiralla, and that the latter invariably received him
with a loud welcome and ordered the best they had to be served up in
his honour. But the farmer's presence always inconvenienced him, and
especially to-day. Mrs. Tiralla had been about to pour out her heart to
him, and the thought of the moment when at last he would be [Pg 118]
able to console the sad-looking woman made him tremble.

"I'm in trouble," she had said, when he had asked her if she had a
headache. There were dark, heavy shadows under her eyes, and her pale
mouth drooped so sadly that he had thought she was ill.

"Oh, how I'm suffering," she had cried, in a sudden outburst of grief
and fury, and had run up and down the room with both hands flung high
above her head. She had come to a standstill close in front of him, and
her black eyes had blazed. "What would you say if I ran away from him?
Away, anywhere, over the fields, only away."

The passion with which she had uttered those words had terrified him.
Away, away over the fields, but where would she go?

"That's for you to tell me." Then she had given a loud, scornful laugh;
in spite of all his cleverness he did not know where she was to go
either. There really was nobody, nobody who could advise her. What
would he say if she went into the Przykop into the deep morass, where
the pool under the drooping birches was just now as deep as any lake on
account of the rainy spring? If she went into it up to her mouth, or
even a little further, and never more appeared, what would he say then?
Would he shed a tear in memory of her, a little forget-me-not in his
book of memories?

"God forbid!" he had exclaimed, seizing hold of her hand in sudden
fear. How could she say such things, even have such thoughts? She was
so good, so beautiful, there was still much happiness in store for her.

"Never, so lo