d we told him in time--" No, she would not find
any help in him either. And now--what was it Paul was saying now? Her
eyes dilated with a sudden fear, she grasped the arms of her chair with
both hands, she wanted to sink back and still she started up to ward
off what must come now Was Paul out of his mind? He was saying: "You
are not our son."

"Not your son?" The boy stammered. He had made up his mind
that nothing should disconcert him, but this answer disconcerted him
all the same. It bewildered him; he turned red, then white, and his
eyes wandered uncertainly from the man to the woman, from the woman to
the man.

So he, too--that man--was not his father either? But Frau Laemke had
said so? Oh, so he wanted to disown him now? He looked suspiciously at
the man, and then something that resembled mortification arose within
him. If he were not his father, then he had really no--no right
whatever to be there?

And, drawing a step nearer, he said hastily: "You must be my father.
You only don't want to say it now. But she"--he gave a curt nod in the
direction of the chair--"she's not my mother." His eyes gleamed; then
he added, drawing a long breath as though it were a relief: "I've
always known that."

"You've been wrongly informed. If I had had my way, I
would have told you the truth long ago. But as the right
moment--unfortunately--has been neglected, I will tell you it to-day.
I tell you it--on my word of honour, as one man speaking to another--I
am not your father, just as little as she is your mother. You have
nothing to do with us by birth, nothing whatever. But we have adopted
you as our child because we wanted to have a child and had not one. We
took you from----"

"Paul!" Kate fell on her husband's breast with a loud cry, as she
had done at the time when he wanted to disclose something to the boy,
because he was indignant at his ingratitude. She clasped her arms round
his neck, she whispered hastily, passionately in his ear with trembling
breath: "Don't tell him from where. For God's sake not from where. Then
he'll go away, then I shall lose him entirely. I can't bear it--have
mercy, have pity on me--only don't tell him from where."

He wanted to push her away, but she would not let go of him. She
repeated her weeping, stammering entreaty, her trembling, terrified,
desperate prayer: only not from where, only not from where.

He felt a great compassion for her. His poor, poor wife--was this to
happen to he