And then he laid his arm round her narrow
shoulders and drew her towards him. And she let him draw her.

They stood in the public street, where the bushes that grew on both
sides of it were already in bud and the elder was swelling with the
first sap, and clung to each other.

"Come back quite well," she sobbed.

And he kissed her tenderly on her cheek: "Frida, I really have to
thank you."

When Frida went to business next morning--it was half past
seven--she said to her mother: "Now he's gone," and she remained
thoughtful the whole day. She had not spoken to Wolfgang for many weeks
and she had not minded it at all during the time but since the evening
before she had felt sad. She had thought much of him, she could not
forget him at all.

CHAPTER XVIII

Kate was alone with her son. Now she had him all to herself. What she
had striven for jealously before had now been given to her. Not even
nature that looked in at the windows with such alluring eyes could
attract him. It surprised her--nay, it almost saddened her now--that he
did not show more interest. They travelled through Switzerland--he saw
it for the first time--but those high mountains, whose summits were
lost in the snow and the clouds and that moved her to tears of adoring
admiration the first time she saw them, hardly wrung a glance from him.
Now and then he looked out of the carriage window, but he mostly leant
back in his corner reading, or dreaming with open eyes.

"Are you tired?"

"No," he said; nothing but "no," but without the surly abruptness
which had been peculiar to him. His tone was no longer unpleasant and
repellent.

Kate looked at her son with anxious eyes: was the journey tiring
him? It was fortunate that she was with him. It seemed to her that she
was indispensable, and a feeling of heartfelt satisfaction made her
insensible to the fatigue of the long journey.

Wolfgang was not much interested in the cathedral at Milan. "Yes,
grand," he said when she grew enthusiastic about the marvellous
structure. But he would not go up to the platform with her,
from which they would have a magnificent view all round as far as the
distant Alps, as the weather was so clear. "You go alone, leave me
here."

At first it seemed ridiculous to her that she, the old woman, should
go up whilst he, the young man, remained below. But at last she could
not resist the desire to see all those marvellous things again that she
had already once enjoy