ime I've committed, pater. The whole thing is something of a mystery
to me. But it shan't happen again, I promise you."

And they shook hands.

Now something really did stir in Kate. She would have liked to have
jumped up, to have cried: "Don't believe him, Paul, don't believe him.
He's sure to get drunk again. I don't trust him. I cannot trust him. If
you had seen him as I saw him--oh, he was so vulgar!" And as in a
vision a village tavern suddenly appeared before her eyes, a tavern she
had never seen. Rough men sat round the wooden table, leaning on their
elbows, smoking evil-smelling tobacco, drinking heavily, bawling wildly
... ah, had not his father sat among them? His grandfather too? All
those from whom he was descended? She was seized with a
terrible fear. It could never, never end well.

"You are so pale, Kate," her husband said at the evening meal. "You
sat still too long; it is still too cold outside."

"Aren't you well, mater?" inquired Wolfgang, politely anxious.

Kate did not answer her son, she only looked at her husband and
shook her head: "I am quite well."

That satisfied them.

Wolfgang ate with a good appetite, with a specially big one even; he
was quite ravenous. There were also lots of good things of which he was
fond: hot fricassee of chicken with sweetbread, force-meat balls and
crawfish tails, and then some very good cold meat, butter and cheese
and young radishes.

"Boy, don't drink so much," said Paul Schlieben, as Wolfgang seized
the decanter again.

"I'm thirsty," said his son with a certain defiance, filling his
glass to the brim and drinking it in one gulp.

"That comes of revelling." His father shook his finger at him, but
smiled at the same time.

"It comes of swilling," thought Kate, and she shuddered with disgust
again. She had never used such an expression before even in her
thoughts, but now none seemed strong, blunt, contemptuous enough.

There was no pleasant conversation in spite of the room being so
cosy, the appointments of the table so beautiful, the flowers so
prettily arranged in a cut-glass bowl on the white table-cloth, and
above it all a soft subdued light under a green silk shade. Kate was so
monosyllabic that Paul soon seized the newspaper, and the boy, after
trying to stifle his yawns, at last got up. It was really too awfully
slow to have to sit there. Should he drive into Berlin again
or go to bed? He did not quite know himself what to do.

"You are g