f and amusing life at night?
It was awful, oh, unspeakably horrible.

Suddenly Kate saw everything from one point of view only. Hitherto
she had been blind, as unsuspicious as a child. A policeman's helmet
came into sight. She flew away as though somebody were in pursuit of
her: the man could not see that she had grey hairs and that she was a
lady. Perhaps he, too, looked upon her as one of those. Let her only
get away, away.

She threw herself into a cab, she fell rather than got into it. She
gave the driver her address in a trembling voice. A burning longing
came over her all at once: home, only home. Home to her clean,
well-regulated house, to those walls that surrounded her like a
shelter. No, he must not come into her clean house any more, not carry
his filth into those rooms.

She drove the whole way huddled up in a corner, her trembling
eyelids closed convulsively; the road seemed endless to her to-day. How
slowly the cab drove. Oh, what would Paul say? He would be getting
anxious, she was so late.

All at once Kate longed to fly to her husband's arms and find
shelter on his breast. She had quite forgotten she had wanted to go to
the Laemkes straight away. Besides, how could she? It was
almost midnight, and who knows, perhaps she would only find a mother
there, who was just as unhappy as she? Lost children--alas, one does
not know which is more terrible, a lost son or a lost daughter!

Kate cried bitterly. But when the tears stole from under her closed
lids and ran down her cheeks, she became calmer. Now that she no longer
saw the long procession in the street, did not see what went on there
every night, her fear disappeared. Her courage rose again; and as it
rose the knowledge came to her, that she was only a weak and timid
woman, but he a robust youth, who was to be a man, a strong swimmer.
There was no need to lose all hope yet.

By the time the first pines in the quiet colony glided past to the
right and left of her and the moonshine showed pure white on their
branches, Kate had made up her mind. She would go to the Laemkes next
day and speak to the mother, and she would not say anything to her
husband about it beforehand. The same fear that now so often made her
mute in his presence took possession of her once more: he would never
feel as she felt. He would perhaps seize the boy with a rough hand, and
that must not be. She was still there, and it was her duty to help the
stumbling lad with gentle han