Spring had come again. Two years had passed since that evening. In BÜtze Manor-house there was a vaulted, out-of-the-way room, which was entered by a low, small door at the end of a dark passage; the windows looked out upon the garden. Tall trees forbade entrance to the light, which had to seek admission through an artistic old lattice-work as well. This had been the lumber-room from time immemorial. All sorts of things lay, hung, and stood there, in perfect confusion. Old presses and chests, old spinning-wheels with yellowed ivory decorations, and dark oil portraits on which one could hardly detect the trace of a face; a huge bedstead with heavy gilt knobs—a French general had slept on it in the year nine, and the late Herr von Hegewitz had banished the bed to the lumber-room as a desecrated object after that, for it had originally been made to shelter a prince of the royal family for a night. The wings of the gilded eagle who sat so proudly at the top were broken off, and his beak held now only a shred of the crimson curtain, as the last remnant of former splendor. Fine cobwebs reached from one piece of furniture to another, and yellowish dust lay on the floor, a sign that the wood-worm was undisturbed here.

Here Anna Maria stood and looked about her, as if in search of something. She scarcely knew herself just why she had come in here; she had happened to go by, and then it had flashed across her mind that it might be well to give the old lumber-room a breath of fresh spring air, and she had taken the bunch of keys from her belt and come in. The young linden leaves outside let one or two inquisitive sunbeams through the window, and myriads of grains of dust floated up and down in them. It was so quiet in the room, among the antique furniture. Anna Maria was just in the mood for it; she sat down in an arm-chair and leaned her head against the moth-eaten cushion, her eyes half-closed, her hands folded in her lap.

She felt so peaceful; the old furniture seemed to preach to her of the perishable nature of man. Where were all the hands that had made it? the eyes that had delighted in it? She thought how some time her spinning-wheel, too, would stand here, and how many days and hours must pass before strange hands would bring it here, as superfluous rubbish. Strange hands! She felt a sudden fear. Strange hands! For centuries BÜtze had descended in direct line from father to son—and now?

Anna Maria rose quickly and went to the window, as if to frighten away unpleasant thoughts; the soft, mild spring air blew toward her and reminded her of the most unhappy hour of her life, and again she turned and walked quickly through the room. Then her foot struck against something, and she saw the cradle, lightly rocking in front of her—the heavy, gayly painted old cradle in which the Hegewitzes had had their first slumber for more than two hundred years—Klaus too, and she too. And Anna Maria knelt down and threw her arms about the little rocking cradle, and kissed the glaring painted roses and cherubs, and a few bitter tears flowed from under her lashes, the first that she had shed since that day.

"Why did I, too, have to lie there in the cradle? It might have been so different, so much better," she thought. "Poor thing, you must decay and fall to dust here, and at last irreverent hands will take you and throw you into the fire. Poor Klaus! For my sake!" And almost tenderly she wiped the dust from the arabesques on the back, and shook up the little yellow pillows.

Just then came the sound of a quick, manly step in the passage, and before Anna Maria had time to rise, Klaus stood in the open door.

"Do I find you here?" he asked in astonishment, and at first laughing, then more serious, he looked at Anna Maria, who rose and came toward him.

"I wanted to let some fresh air in here, and found our old cradle, Klaus," she said quietly.

"Yes, Anna Maria—but you have been crying," he rejoined.

"Oh, I was only thinking that it was quite unnecessary that the poor thing should have been hunted up again for me!" The bitterness of her heart pressed unconsciously to her lips to-day.

"Anna Maria! What puts such thoughts into your head?" asked Klaus von Hegewitz, in amazement. And drawing his sister to him, he stroked her hair lovingly. "What should I do without you?"

She made a slight convulsive movement, and freed herself from his arms.

"But, listen, sister," he continued, "I know whence such feelings come. You must become low-spirited in this old nest; you have no companions of your own age, you withdraw more and more from every youthful pleasure, and, although you think you can do without these things, you will have to pay for it some day."

Anna Maria shook her head.

"Yes, yes!" he continued, stepping in front of the window, and his tall figure obstructed the sunlight so that the room grew dark all at once. "I have seen more of life, I know it. What should you think, Anna Maria, if you—" He paused and drew a letter from his pocket. "I had better read the letter to you. I was just looking for you, to talk with you about it. Professor Mattoni is dead!"

Anna Maria looked over to him sympathetically. Klaus had turned around and was looking out of the window; the paper in his hand shook slightly. She knew how deeply the news of this death touched him. Professor Mattoni had been his tutor, had lived in BÜtze for years, and the pleasantest memories of his boyhood were connected with this man. As a youth he had had in him a truly fatherly friend and adviser, and had since visited him every year, in Berlin, where he held a position as professor in the E—— Institute.

Anna Maria took her brother's hand and pressed it silently. "Yet one true friend less," she then said; "we shall soon be quite alone, Klaus!"

"He was more than a friend to me, Anna Maria," he replied gently, "he was a father to me."

She nodded; she knew it well. "And the letter?" she asked.

"A last request, almost illegible; he wishes that I should take charge of his little daughter, till she—so he writes—till she is independent enough to take up the battle of life."

"His little daughter?" asked Anna Maria. "Had he still so young a child?"

"I am sorry to say," said Klaus, "that I know nothing at all of his family affairs. He married late in life, and probably had every reason for not presenting his better half: some said he picked her up somewhere in Hungary; others, that she had been a chorus singer in one of the inferior theatres in Berlin. I never spoke to him about it, and when I went to his house I saw in his study no indications that any female being presided there. I have never noticed anything on my frequent visits to show that such a person lived with Mattoni, and remember just once that while we were having a pleasant hour's chat, a child's cry came from the next room, whereupon he got up and knocked emphatically on the door. The screaming child was probably carried to a back room, for it grew still next door, and we talked on. Then I once heard that his wife was dead; I have never seen any outward tokens of affliction on him, but the child seems to be alive."

"And now, Klaus?"

The tall man had turned, and was looking absently at the little wooden cradle.

"And now, Anna Maria? I owe him so much"—he spoke almost imploringly—"may I impose such a burden upon you?"

"Klaus, what a question! Of course! Please take the necessary steps at once, and have the child come."

"The child, Anna Maria? Why, I think she must have reached the limits of childhood now!"

"That doesn't matter, Klaus. Then I will instruct her in housekeeping, and all sorts of things which she may find useful in her life."

"I thank you sincerely, Anna Maria," he replied; "I hope you will take pleasure in the girl." He said this with a sigh of relief, which did not escape Anna Maria's ear.

"You act exactly as if you had been afraid of me, Klaus," she remarked, with a passing smile; "as if I should not always wish anything that seemed desirable to you."

"Just because I know that, Anna Maria," he said, grasping her hands affectionately, "I wish, too, that you might do it gladly, that it might be no sacrifice to you——"

"I am really and truly glad the child is coming," she said honestly. And so they stood opposite each other in the forsaken lumber-room; it was now flooded with sunshine, and the two strong figures stood out from a golden background. The shadows of the young leaves about the window played lightly over them, and the call of the thrush echoed from the woods far away without.

"A sacrifice!" he had said, and yet they had each already made the greatest sacrifice of which a human heart is capable, and each thought it unknown to the other. And at their feet rocked the heavy cradle, moved by Anna Maria's dress, and it rocked on, long after the two had left the room.