got up and sauntered along to meet them at
the landing-place. Then he would stand there with his hands in his
trouser pockets, to see what fish they brought ashore. The catches were
not large. Then he took his hands out of his pockets and gave the
fishermen what money he had with him.

If his mother had known what her son was thinking of! If she had
guessed that his soul flew away with weary wings like a gull drifting
over a boundless sea!

Wolfgang was suffering from home-sickness. He did not like being
there. Everything was much too soft, much too beautiful there; he felt
bored. The stone pines with their pungent smell were the only things he
liked; they were even better than the pines in the Grunewald. But he
was not really longing for the Grunewald either. It was always the
same, whether he was here or there he was always racked with longing.
For what? For what place? That was what he pondered over. But he would
not have liked to say it to his mother, for he saw now that she did all
she could for him. And he found an affectionate word to say to her more
frequently than he had ever done before in his life.

So at last, at last I Kate often gave him a covert side-glance: was
this the same boy who had resisted her so defiantly as a child, had
refused her love, all her great love? This boy whose face had moved her
so strangely in Milan Cathedral, was he the same who had lain on the
doorstep drunk?--ugh, so drunk! The same who had sunk, sunk so low,
that he--oh, she would not think of it any more.

Kate wanted to forget; she honestly tried to do so. When she found
him in the cathedral sitting near the pillar, his hands folded, his
eyelids closed dreamily, he had seemed to her so young, still
touchingly young; his forehead had been smooth, as though all the lines
on it had been wiped away. And she had to think: had they not
expected too much of him? Had they always been just to him? Had they
understood him as they ought to have understood him? Doubts arose in
her mind. She had always deemed herself a good mother; since that day
in the cathedral she felt as though she had failed in something. She
herself could not say in what. But sadness and a large amount of
self-torturing pain were mingled with the satisfaction that her son had
now come to her. Ah, now he was good, now he was at least something
like what she had wished him to be--softer, more tractable--but
now--what pleasure had she from it now?

"Wolfgang still