him, and laid his hand on his head.

That was already a long time ago, but Kullrich was still not happy.
When they all walked in the playground during the interval, eating
their bread and butter, he stood at some distance and did not eat. Was
it really so hard to lose one's mother?

There was a wonderful moon shining over the silent pines that night;
the boy lay half out of the window for a long, long time. His eyes were
burning: his thoughts buzzed in his head like a swarm of gnats that
whirl round and round and up and down in the air like a cloud. Where
did they come from all at once?

He exposed his hot forehead, his chest, from which his nightshirt
had slipped, to the cool night air in May--ah, that did him good. That
was the best, the only thing that soothed, that gave peace. Oh, how
delightful the air was, so pure, so fresh.

Where could Cilia be now? he wondered. He had never heard anything
more about her, She was where he would like to have been--oh,
how he would have liked it. Something that resembled the sound of bells
came floating along, and he stretched out his arms and bent further and
further out of the window.

Wolfgang had such a vivid dream about Cilia that night that when he
awoke he thought she was standing at his bedside, that she had not left
him yet. But after he had rubbed his eyes, he saw that the spot on
which she had just been standing smiling so pleasantly was empty.

After school was over he had to go to the Bible-lesson; he was to be
confirmed the following Easter. True, he was still young, but Paul
Schlieben had said to his wife: "He is so developed physically. We
can't have him confirmed when he is outwardly, at any rate, a grown-up
man. Besides, his age is just right. It is much better for him if he
does not begin to reflect first."

Did he not reflect already? It often seemed to Kate as if the boy
evaded her questions, when she asked him about the Bible-lesson. Did
his teacher not understand how to make an impression on him? Dr.
Baumann was looked upon as an excellent theologian, everybody rushed to
hear his sermons; to be allowed to join his confirmation classes, that
were always so crowded, was a special favour; all his pupils raved
about him, people who had been confirmed by him ten, fifteen years
before, still spoke of it as an event in their lives.

Kate made a point of going to hear this popular clergyman's sermons
very often. Formerly she had only gone to church at Chri