power of drawing into its fermenting
circle all who surround him and of ripening in him whatever is bad to
fresh guilt. Well for him who successfully defends his unblemished
heart against this magic power! Even if he cannot save the guilty one
himself, he may be an angel to the others. Here are these four human
beings with all their differences of individuality, held together in
one knot of life which is being consumed by the guilt of one! What
destiny will they spin for themselves, the people in the house with
the green shutters?

Weeks had now passed since Apollonius' return and still he had not
realized his sister-in-law's fears. During the first few days Fritz
Nettenmair read in her demeanor a convulsive effort to pull herself
together, a desperate endeavor to be prepared; now this gave way to
something that appeared to be amazement. He, and he alone, saw how she
began to observe his brother more and more courageously when he did
not suspect that her gaze rested upon him. She seemed to be comparing
his personality, his behavior with her expectation. Fritz Nettenmair
felt in her soul how little the two agreed. He took pains to nurse his
young wife's dislike of her brother-in-law back to its old strength.
He did so, feeling all the time how vain his effort was; for a single
glance at his brother's gentle, upright countenance must tear down
what it had taken him days laboriously to build up. He felt how
delicately he ought to go to work and how roughly he really did so;
for the same power that sharpened his feeling for the degree carried
him beyond it as soon as he came to act. He knew that what he had
begun must complete its course to his ruin. He sought forgetfulness
and drew his wife ever deeper with him into the whirlpool of
diversion.

Medicines taken in too large doses are said to have the opposite of
the desired effect. Thus it was with Fritz Nettenmair's medicine; at
least as regarded his young wife. In the midst of every-day domestic
work she had formerly longed for the festival of pleasure; now that
this had become her every-day atmosphere her longing was for the quiet
life of her home. Satiated with the marks of honor bestowed upon her
husband by the important people, she now began for the first time to
notice that there were other people who measured him according to a
different standard. She began to compare, and the important people
fell lower and lower in her eyes beside the every-day people. She
tho