u're terrible, Paul. Be quiet, Paul." Her
voice that had been so feeble at first had almost become a scream.

He shrugged his shoulders. "There's nothing left for us to do but
that," and he looked at her anxiously and then lowered his head.

It seemed to him as though he could not realise the calamity that
had overtaken him, as though it were too great. It was now a week since
Wolfgang had gone away--the misery that fellow had brought on them was
terrible, terrible. But his wife's condition made him still more
uneasy. How would it end? Her increased nervousness was dangerous; and
then there was her complete loss of strength. Kate had never been a
robust woman, but now she was getting so thin, so very thin; the hand
that lay so languidly on the coverlet had become quite transparent
during the last week. Oh, and her hair so grey.

The man sought for the traces of former beauty in his wife's face
with sad eyes: too many wrinkles, too many lines graven on it, furrows
that the plough of grief had made there. He had to weep; it seemed too
hard to see her like that. Turning his head aside he shaded his eyes
with his hand.

He sat thus in silence without moving, and she did not move either,
but lay as though asleep.

Then somebody knocked. The man glanced at his wife in dismay: had it
disturbed her? But she did not raise her eyelids.

He went to the door on tip-toe and opened it. Friedrich brought the
post, all sorts of letters and papers. Paul only held out his hand to
take them from habit, he took so little interest in anything now.
During the first days after Wolfgang's disappearance Kate had always
trembled for fear there should be something about him in the newspaper,
she had been tortured by the most terrible fears; now she no
longer asked. But it was the man's turn to tremble, although he tried
to harden himself: what would they still have to bear? He never took up
a paper without a certain dread.

"Don't rustle the paper so horribly, I can't bear it," said the
feeble woman irritably. Then he got up to creep out of the room--it was
better he went, she did not like him near her. But his glance fell on
one of the letters. Whose unformed, copy-book handwriting was that?
Probably a begging letter. It was addressed to his wife, but she did
not open any letters at present; and he positively longed to open just
that letter. It was not curiosity, he felt as if he must do it.

He opened the letter more quickly than he wa