look, straight and bold. His young face was so
pale that his dark eyes appeared still darker, a dense black.

"Bad eyes," said the man to himself. And suddenly a suspicion took
possession of him, a suspicion that was old and long forgotten, but
still had slumbered in the recesses of his heart in spite of everything
and had now all at once been roused again, and he seized hold of the
boy, gripped hold of his chest so tightly that he made no further
resistance.

"Boy! Rascal! Have you no heart? She who has done so much for you,
she, she is waiting for you and you, you won't come? On your knees, I
say. Go on in front--ask her pardon. At once." And he seized the boy,
who showed no emotion whatever, by the scruff of his neck instead of by
his chest, and shoved him along in front of him down the stairs and
into the room where Kate was sitting buried in her grief, her eyes red
with weeping.

"Here's somebody who wants to beg your pardon," said the man,
pushing the boy down in front of her.

Wolfgang would have liked to cry out: "No, I won't beg her pardon,
and especially not now"--and then all at once he felt so sorry for her.
Oh, she was just as unhappy as he--they did not suit each other, that
was it. This knowledge came to him all at once, and it deepened his
glance and sharpened the features of his young face so much that he
looked old beyond his years.

He jerked out with a sob: "Beg your pardon." He did not hear himself
how much agony was expressed in his voice, he hardly felt either that
her arms lifted him up, that he lay on her breast for some moments and
she stroked his hair away from his burning brow. It was as if he were
half unconscious; he only felt a great emptiness and a vague
misery.

As in a dream he heard his father say: "There, that's right. Now go
and work. And be a better boy." And his mother's soft voice: "Yes, he's
sure to be that." He went upstairs as though he were walking in his
sleep. He was to work now--why? What was the object? Everything was so
immaterial to him. It was immaterial whether these people praised or
blamed him--what did it matter to him what they did? On the whole he
did not like being there any longer, he did not want to stay there any
more--no, no! He shook himself as though with loathing.

Then he stood a long time on one spot, staring into space. And
gradually a large, an immeasurable expanse appeared before his staring
eyes--cornfields and heather in bloom, heather in w