e peculiar.

He was half asleep as he went upstairs again alone; he almost
stumbled with fatigue, and his limbs were heavy. But in spite of that
his thoughts were clearer, more inexorable than in the daytime, when
there is so much around one to distract one's attention. At that hour
his heart was filled with longing for a wife who would lead him quietly
and gently along a soft track in his old age, and whose smiles were
not only outward as the smiles on Kate's face. A wife whose heart
laughed--and, alas, his Kate was not one of those.

The man lay down again with a sigh of disappointment and shivered as
he drew up the covering. But it was a long time before he could fall
asleep. If only the lad would come. It really was rather late to-day.
Such loafing about realty went too far.

The morning was dawning as a cab drove slowly down the street. It
stopped outside the white villa, and two gentlemen helped a third out
of it. The two, who were holding the third under his arms, were
laughing, and the driver on his seat, who was looking down at them full
of interest, also laughed slyly: "Shall I help you, gentlemen? Well,
can you do it?"

They leant him up against the railing that enclosed the front
garden, rang the bell gently, then jumped hastily into the cab again
and banged the door. "Home now, cabby."

The bell had only vibrated softly--a sound like a terrified
breath--but Kate had heard it, although she had fallen asleep in her
chair; not firmly, only dozing a little. She jumped up in terror, it
sounded shrill in her ears. She rushed to the window. Somebody was
leaning against the railing outside. Wolfgang? Yes, yes, it was. But
why did he not open the gate and come in?

What had happened to him? All at once she felt as though she must
call for help--Friedrich! Paul! Paul!--must ring for the maids.
Something had happened to him, something must have happened to him--why
did he not come in?

He leant so heavily against the railing, so strangely. His
head hung down on his chest, his hat was at the back of his head. Was
he ill?

Or had some vagrants attacked him? The strangest ideas shot suddenly
through her head. Was he wounded? O God, what had happened to him?

Fears, at which she would have laughed at any other time, filled her
mind in this hour, in which it was not night any longer and not day
either. Her feet were cold and stiff as though frozen, she could hardly
get to the door; she could not find the key at