hild the sight of his roughness
while she was still well; now it might frighten the little girl to
death. She did not answer him, but looked at him beseechingly,
indicating the child by a glance.

"He was here! Wasn't he here?" he asked, not for information but to
show that he did not need any. He raised his clenched fist; little
Annie struggled to sit up. He did not see it; but his wife saw it, and
her terror grew. She clasped her hands, she looked at him with a
glance in which there was everything that a woman can promise, that a
woman can threaten. He saw only her terror at his knowing what had
happened--and his fist descended on her forehead.

There was a shriek. The child writhed in convulsions; the mother, who
had fallen upon her, wept loudly. Valentine hurried in, Fritz
Nettenmair went into the bedroom. He did not know which was uppermost
in him, gratified revenge or fright at what he had done. He sank down
on the bed as if the blow that he struck had stunned himself. He only
half heard Valentine running for the doctor. In the same state he
heard the latter come and go, and in the same state he listened to see
if he could hear Apollonius' voice whispering and his soft tread. He
did not dare to show himself; shame restrained him. He justified his
behavior and called little Annie's illness just a desire to be
coddled. "Children think they're dying one day, and the next they're
more lively than ever," he said to himself.

His feverish listening and efforts to reassure himself turned into
feverish dreaming. Between waking and sleeping he heard quiet steps in
the next room, quiet voices, quiet weeping, and at intervals silence.

The quiet weeping that grows loud and is controlled again as if a
sleeper were near whom it will not wake, that breaks out again as if
it could not wake the sleeper, and again grows soft as if it were
frightened at itself for being so loud when every one is quiet: who
does not know such weeping? Who does not guess what it means, even if
he does not know it?

Fritz Nettenmair knew it, half asleep; there was a dead person in the
next room. They had brought him home. "We must submit to what is
unalterable."

For the first time for many months he slept quietly again.

And why should he not? The quiet weeping turned into a merry waltz.
"There he is! Now the fun will begin"--the words rang triumphantly
from the "Red Eagle Tavern" in the distance, into his sleep.

But the quiet steps and th