ions in the world. Bella took an active part in the
conversation. It sometimes seemed to Eric, that there was nothing
beyond a certain superficial cleverness in her ready flow of words; but
he rejected the criticism as a pedantic one.

His life among books, he said to himself, had rendered him
unsusceptible to this easy, graceful, brilliancy, while his profession
as teacher led him to be always on the watch for an elaborate network
of thoughts and impressions, where there was meant to be nothing but a
simple expression of natural feeling. He now gave himself freely up to
the pleasure of enjoying the close companionship of so richly endowed a
nature. These butterfly movements of the mind he began to look upon as
legitimately feminine characteristics, which were not to be roughly
criticized. Hitherto he had been familiar, in his mother and aunt, only
with that severe and business-like conscientiousness, in all
intellectual and moral matters, which borders on the masculine; here
was a nature that craved only to sip the foam of life. Why require
anything further of it?

When Bella was one day walking with Eric in the park, Roland and Lina
meanwhile sitting with Clodwig, she complained of not being able to
repress the religious doubts that often beset her, while, at the same
time, existence without a belief in a compensating future life was a
terrible enigma. Without wishing to weaken this idea, Eric sought to
give her the assured peace which can be found in the realms of pure
thought. There was a strange contradiction in the hearts of these two,
imagining, as they did, that they were speaking of things far above and
beyond all life, while in reality they were talking of life itself, and
that in a way whose significance they would not willingly have
acknowledged to themselves.

Suddenly Bertram came riding towards them, his horse white with foam,
and while at a distance cried out,--

"Herr Captain, you must return instantly."

"What has happened?" asked Eric.

Clodwig came up with Roland and Lina, and Pranken also appeared at the
windows, all anxious to know what had happened.

"Thieves! robbers!" cried Bertram. "The villa has been broken into, and
Herr Sonnenkamp's room entered."

A few moments later, Eric and Pranken were in the wagon driving back to
the villa. Pranken's vexation was extreme, for he had taken the whole
responsibility upon himself.

For a long time neither of the three spoke, until at last Roland