this space is a big, bare, yellow house, the only hotel in
Stubbenkammer, the only house in fact that I saw at all, and some
distance to the left of this in the shade of the forest, one-storied,
dank, dark, and mosquito-y, the pavilion.

'Gertrud,' I said, scanning it with a sinking heart, 'never yet did I
sleep in a pavilion.'

'I know it, gracious one.'

'With shutterless windows on a level with the elbows of the passers-by.'

'What the gracious one says is but too true.'

'I will enter and speak with my cousin Charlotte.'

Charlotte was, as Gertrud had said, sitting on one of the two beds that
nearly filled the room. She was feverishly writing something in pencil
on the margin of _The Beast of Prey_, and looked up with an eager,
worried expression when I opened the door. 'Is it not terrible,' she
said, 'that one should not be able to do more than one's best, and that
one's best is never enough?'

'Why, what's the matter?'

'Oh everything's the matter! You are all dull, indifferent, deadened to
everything that is vital. You don't care--you let things slide--and if
any one tries to wake you up and tell you the truth you never, never
listen.'

'Who--me?' I asked, confused into this sad grammar by her outburst.

She threw the pamphlet down and jumped up, 'Oh, I am sick of all your
sins and stupidities!' she cried, pulling her hat straight and sticking
violent pins into it.

'Whose--mine?' I asked in great perplexity.

'It would almost seem,' said Charlotte, fixing me with angry eyes,--'it
would really almost seem that there is no use whatever in devoting one's
life to one's fellow-creatures.'

'Well, one naturally likes to be left alone,' I murmured.

'What I try to do is to pull them out of the mud when they are in it, to
warn them when they are going in it, and to help them when they have
been in it.'

'Well, that sounds very noble. Being full of noble intentions, why on
earth, my dear Charlotte, can't you be placid? You are never placid.
Come and have some tea.'

'Tea! What, with those wretched people? Those leathern souls? Those
Harvey-Brownes?'

'Come along--it isn't only tea--it's strawberries and roses, and looks
lovely.'

'Oh, those people half kill me! They are so pleased with themselves, so
satisfied with life, such prigs, such toadies. What have I in common
with them?'

'Nonsense. Ambrose is not a toady at all--he's nothing but a dear. And
his mother has her points. Why not try to do