. The man
bade the children go home in a gruff voice. The pictures were ready,
what was the good of touching them up any more? That did not make them
any better, on the contrary.

That evening Kate cried as she used to cry at home. And she
was angry with her husband. Why did he not let her have that pleasure?
Why did he all at once say they were to leave? She did not understand
him. Were the children not sweet, delightful? Was it because they
disturbed him?

"Yes," was all he said. There was a hard dry sound in his voice--a
"yes" that came with such difficulty--and she raised her head from the
handkerchief in which she had buried it and looked across at him. He
was standing at the window in the carpeted room of the hotel, his hands
resting on the window-ledge, his forehead pressed against the pane. He
was gazing silently at the vast landscape before him, in which the
mountaintops covered with snow that glowed in the radiance of the
setting sun spoke to him of immortality. How he pressed his lips
together, how nervously his moustache trembled.

She crept up to him and laid her head on his shoulder. "What is the
matter with you?" she asked him softly. "Do you miss your work--yes,
it's your work, isn't it? I was afraid of that. You are getting tired
of this, you must be doing something again. I promise you I'll be
reasonable--never complain any more--only stop here a little longer,
only three weeks longer--two weeks."

He remained silent.

"Only ten--eight--six days more. Not even that?" she said, bitterly
disappointed, for he had shaken his head. She wound her arms round his
neck. "Only five more--four--three days, please. Why not? Those few
days, please only three days more." She positively haggled for each
day. "Oh, then at least two days more."

She sobbed aloud, her arms fell from his neck--he must allow her two
days.

Her voice cut him to the heart. He had never heard her beg
like that before, but he made a stand against the feeling of yielding
that was creeping over him. Only no sentimentality. It was better to go
away from there quickly, much better for her.

"We're going away to-morrow."

And as she looked at him with wide-open horror-struck eyes and
pallid cheeks, the words escaped from his lips although he had not
intended saying them, drawn from him by a bitterness that he could not
master any longer:

"They are not yours!"

CHAPTER II

And they went away.

But it seemed to the wom