It was Frida LÄmke's birthday. "If you may come we are to have buns with raisins in, but if you mayn't there'll only be rolls like we have every day," she said to her friend Wolfgang. "Mind you get them to let you come." It was of most importance to her that Wolfgang came; no differences were made on account of Flebbe, although he always said he was going to marry her.

And Wolfgang teased his mother. "Let me go--why not? I should like to so much--why mayn't I?"

Yes, why not? He had kept dinning this "why not?" into her ears for the last twenty-four hours; it had quite worn her out. What should she say to him? that she disliked Frida? But what had the girl done that she had taken a dislike to her? Nothing. She always curtseyed politely, was always tidily dressed, had even plaited the blue ribbon into her fair hair with a certain taste. The parents were also quite respectable people, and still--these children always hung about the streets, always, both summer and winter. You could pass their house whenever you liked, those LÄmkes were always outside their door. Was it the life of the streets this snub-nosed girl, who was very developed for her age, reminded her of? No, he must not go to those people's house, go down into the atmosphere of the porter's room.

"I don't wish you to go there," she said. She had not the heart to say: "I won't allow it," when he looked at her with those beseeching eyes.

And the boy saw his advantage. He felt distinctly: she is struggling with herself; and he followed it up with cruel pertinacity.

"Let me--oh, do let me. I shall be so sorry if I can't. Then I shan't care to do anything. Why mayn't I? Mammy, I'll love you so, if you'll only let me go. Do let me--will you? But I will."

She could not escape from him any more, he followed her wherever she went, he took hold of her dress, and even if she forbade him to ask her any more, she felt that he only thought of the one thing the whole time. So he forced her in that way.

Paul Schlieben was not so averse to his accepting the invitation from the LÄmkes. "Why not? They're quite respectable people. It won't harm the boy to cast a glance at those circles for once in a way. I also went to our hall-porter's home as a boy. And why not?"

She wanted to say: "But that was something quite different, there was no danger in your case"--but then she thought better of it and said nothing. She did not want to bring him her fears, her doubts, her secret gnawing dread so soon again, as there was no manifest reason for them, and they could not be explained as every other feeling can be after all. Something like a depressing mist always hung over her. But why should she tell him so? She neither wanted to be scolded nor laughed at for it; she would resent both. He was not the same man he used to be. Oh--she felt it with a slight bitterness--how he used to understand her. He had shared every emotion with her, every vibration of her soul. But he had not the gift of understanding her thoughts now--or did she perhaps not understand him any longer?

But he was still her dear husband, her good, faithful husband whom she loved more than anyone else in the world--no, whom she loved as she loved WÖlfchen. The child, oh, the child was the sun round which her life revolved.

If Paul only had been as he was formerly. She had to cast a covert glance at him very frequently now, and, with a certain surprise, also grow accustomed to his outward appearance. Not that his broadening-out did not suit him; the slight stoutness his slender figure with its formerly somewhat stiff but always perfect carriage had assumed suited his years, and the silver threads that commenced to gleam in his beard and at his temples. It suited also the comfortable velvet coat he always put on as soon as he came home, suited his whole manner of being. Strange that anybody could become such a practical person, to whom everything relating to business had formerly been such a burden, nay, even most repugnant. He would not have picked up the strange child from the Venn now, and--KÄte gave her husband a long look--he would not have taken it home with him now as a gift from fairyland.

Had the years also changed her in the same manner? Her looking-glass did not show her any very great change. There was still the same girlish figure, which seemed twice as slender beside her husband's stoutness. Her hair was still fair, and she still blushed like a young girl to whom a stray look is enough to make the blood, that flows so easily, invade her delicate cheeks. Yes, she had still remained young outwardly. But her mind was often weary. Wolf caused her too much anxiety. A mother, who was ten, fifteen years younger than she, would not perhaps feel how every nerve becomes strained when dealing with such a child as she did. Would not such a mother often have laughed when she felt ready to cry?

Oh, what a boisterous, inexhaustible vital power there was in that boy! She was amazed, bewildered, exhausted by it. Was he never tired? Always on his legs, out of bed at six, always out, out. She heard him tossing about restlessly at daybreak. He slept in the next room to theirs, and the door between the rooms always stood open, although her husband scolded her for it. The boy was big enough, did not want supervising. They need not have that disturbance at night, at any rate.

But she wanted to watch over his sleep too; she must do so. She often heard him talk in his dreams, draw his breath so heavily, as though something were distressing him. Then she would slip out of bed, softly, softly, so that her husband should not hear her; she did not light any candle, she groped her way into the other room on bare feet. And then she would stand at his bedside. He still had the pretty railed cot from his first boyhood--but how long would it be before it was too small? How quickly he was growing, how terribly quickly. She passed her hand cautiously and lightly over the cover, and felt the boy's long body underneath it. Then he began to toss about, groan, stiffen himself like one who is struggling with something. What could be the matter with him? Then he spoke indistinctly. Of what was he dreaming so vividly? He was wet through with perspiration.

If only she could see him. But she dared not light a candle. What should she say to her husband if he, awakened by the light, asked her what she was doing there? And WÖlfchen would also wake and ask her what she wanted.

Yes, what did she really want? She had no answer ready even for herself. She would only have liked to know what was occupying his mind in his dream to such an extent that he sighed and struggled. Of what was he dreaming? Of whom? Where was he in his dream?

She trembled as she stood at his bedside on her bare feet listening. And then she bent over him so closely that his breath, uneven and hot, blew into her face, and she breathed on him again--did not they mingle their breath in that manner? Was she not giving him breath of her breath in that manner?--and whispered softly and yet so earnestly, imploringly and at the same time urgently: "Your mother is here, your mother is near you."

But he threw himself over to the other side with a jerk, turned his back on her and mumbled something. Nothing but incomprehensible words, rarely anything that was distinct, but even that was enough; she felt he was not there, not with her, that he was far away. Did his soul seek the home he did not know in his dreams? that he could not even know about, and that still had such a powerful influence that it drew him there even unconsciously?

KÄte stood at Wolfgang's bedside tortured by such an anxiety as she had never felt before: a mother and still not mother. Alas, she was only a strange woman at the bedside of a strange child.

She crept back to her bed and buried her throbbing brows deep in the pillows. She felt her heart beat tumultuously, and she scolded herself for allowing her thoughts to dwell on such unavailing things. She did not change anything by it, it only made her weary and sad.

When KÄte rose after such a night she felt her husband's eyes resting on her anxiously, and her hands trembled as she coiled up her thick hair. It was fortunate that she dropped a hair-pin, then she could stoop quickly and withdraw her tired face with the dark lines under the eyes from his scrutinising glance.

"I'm not at all satisfied with my wife's health again," Paul Schlieben complained to the doctor. "She's in a terribly nervous state again."

"Really?" Dr. Hofmann's friendly face became energetic. "I'll tell you one thing, my dear friend, you must take vigorous measures against it at once."

"That's no use." The man shook his head. "I know my wife. It's the boy's doing, that confounded boy!"

And he took Wolfgang in hand. "Now listen, you must not always be worrying your mother like that. If I notice once more that she is grieving about you because you are naughty, you shall see what I'll do to you."

Did he worry his mother? Wolfgang looked very blank. And surely it was not naughty of him to want to go to the LÄmkes? It worried him to have to sit indoors, whilst the wind was whistling outside and playing about with one's hair in such a jolly manner. And it worried him, too, that he was not going to the LÄmkes that day.

"Well then, go," said KÄte. She even drove into Berlin before dinner and bought a doll, a pretty doll with fair locks, eyes that opened and shut, and a pink dress. "Take it to Frida for her birthday when you go," she said in the afternoon, putting it into the boy's hands. "Stop! Be careful!"

He had seized hold of it impetuously, he was so delighted to be able to bring Frida something. And in a rare fit of emotion--he was no friend of caresses--he put up his face in an outburst of gratitude and let his mother kiss him. He did not want her kiss, but he submitted to it, she felt that very well, but still she was glad, and she followed him with her eyes with a smile that lighted up her whole face.

"But you must be home again before dark," she called out to him at the last moment. Had he heard her?

How he ran off, as light-footed as a stag. She had never seen any child run so quickly. He threw up his straight legs that his heels touched his thighs every time. The wind blew his broad-brimmed sailor hat back, then he tore it off and ran on bareheaded, he was in such a hurry.

What was it that drew him so powerfully to those people?

The smile disappeared from KÄte's face; she left the window.

Wolfgang was happy. He was sitting with the LÄmkes, in the room in which they also did the cooking when the weather was cold. The parents' bed was divided off by means of a curtain, Frida slept on the sofa, and Artur in the little room next to it in which were also kept the shovels and brooms which LÄmke used for cleaning the house and street.

It was not winter yet, still pleasant autumn, but the room was already warm and cosy. The stronger smell of the coffee, which Frau LÄmke was making in the large enamelled pot, mingled with the delicate fragrance of the pale monthly rose and carnation, myrtle and geranium, which had been pushed close to the window that was almost level with the ground and were all in flower. At home Wolfgang never got coffee, but he got some there; and he sipped it as he saw the others do, only he was even more delighted with it than they. And no fine pastry had ever tasted so good as did that plain bun, that was more like bread than like a cake. He ate it with his mouth open, and when Mrs. LÄmke pushed a second one to him, the guest of honour, he took it with radiant eyes.

Frau LÄmke felt much flattered at his visit. But she had not made much of the doll; she had taken it from Frida at once and locked it into the cupboard: "So that you don't smash it at once. Besides, your father isn't a gentleman that you can play with dolls every day." But later on when her husband came down from the lodge, in which he sat in his leisure hours mending boots and shoes, to drink a cup of coffee and eat a bun on Frida's birthday, the doll was fetched out again and shown him.

"Fine, isn't it? She's got it from Wolfgang's mamma. Just look, LÄmke"--the woman lifted the doll's pink dress up and showed the white petticoat trimmed with a frill edged with narrow lace--"such trimming. Just like that I sewed round the dress Frida wore at her christening. She was the first one; bless you, and you think at the time it's something wonderful. Oh dear!"--she sighed and laid the doll back in the cupboard in which the clean pillowcases and Frida's and her Sunday hats were together with all kinds of odds and ends--"how time flies. Now she's already nine."

"Ten," corrected Frida. "I'm ten to-day, mother."

"Right--dear me, are you already ten?" The woman laughed and shook her head, surprised at her own forgetfulness. And then she nodded to her husband: "Do you still remember, LÄmke, when she was born?"

"If I remember!" he said, pouring another cup out of the inexhaustible coffee-pot. "Those were nice carryings-on when she was born--none of that again, thanks. The girl gave you a lot of trouble. And me too; I was terribly afraid. But that's ten years since, old woman--why, it's almost forgotten."

"And if it had happened a hundred years ago I shouldn't have forgotten it, oh no." The woman put out her hand as though to ward off something. "I was just going to make myself some coffee about four o'clock in the afternoon, like to-day, I had got such a longing for it, and then it started. I just got as far as the passage--do you remember, you were still working in Stiller's workshop at the time, and we lived in the Alte Jakob, fifth storey to the left?--and I knocked at Fritze's, the necktie maker's, whose door was opposite ours, and said: 'Oh, please,' I said, 'send your little one as quickly as you can to Frau Wadlern, 10, Spittelmarkt, she knows all about it'--oh dear, how bad I felt. And I fell down on the nearest chair; they had the greatest difficulty to get me home again. And now it began, I could not control myself however much I tried; I believe they heard me scream three houses off. And it lasted, it lasted--evening came on--you came home--it was midnight--five, six, seven in the morning--then at last at nine o'clock Frau Wadlern said: 'The child, it'll soon be----'"

"That's enough now, mother," interrupted the man, glancing sideways at the children, who were sitting very quietly round the table listening, with wide-open, inquisitive eyes. "All that's over long ago, the girl's here, and has been a credit to you so far."

"She was born at eleven sharp," said Frau LÄmke dreamily, nodding her head at the same time and then drawing a deep breath as if she had climbed a high mountain. And then, overwhelmed by the pain and pleasure of a memory that was still so extremely vivid after the lapse of ten years, she called her daughter, her first-born, to come to her on this her tenth birthday.

"Come here, Frida." And she gave her a kiss.

Frida, who was quite abashed at this unexpected caress, giggled as she cast a glance at her brother Artur and the two other boys, and then ran to the door: "Can we go and play now?"

"Be off with you."

Then they rushed out of the dark cellar, where the LÄmkes lived, in high spirits.

It was so light in the street, the sun shone brightly, a fresh wind was blowing and somebody was flying a kite far away across the field. There were very few people on foot and no carriages. The road belonged to them, and they rushed to it with a loud hallo. The one who reached the lamp-post at the corner first was captain.

Wolfgang had never allowed anyone to deprive him of this honour before, but he had to be policeman to-day, he had been the last. He had followed the others slowly and silently. He had got something in his head to think about, which made him dull and hindered him from running; he had to think about it the whole time. He could not get rid of it even when he was in the midst of his favourite game; the only time he forgot it was when he was having a good scuffle with Hans Flebbe. The latter had scratched him in the face, and so he tore a handful of his hair out. They gripped hold of each other near the next garden-gate.

Artur, a feeble little creature, had not taken part in the fight, but he stood with his hands in his pockets giving advice in a screeching voice to the two who fought in silence.

"Give him it hard, Flebbe. Your fist under his nose--hard."

"On with you, Wolfgang. Settle him. Show him what you can do."

Frida hopped from one leg to the other, laughing, her fair plait dancing on her back. But all at once her laugh became somewhat forced and anxious: Hans, who was several years older than Wolfgang, had got him down on the ground and was hammering him in the face with his fist.

"Flebbe, you--!" She pulled his blouse, and as that did not help she nimbly put her foot out. He stumbled over it, and Wolfgang, quickly taking advantage of it, swung himself up and belaboured his enemy.

It was no game any longer, no ordinary scuffle between two boys. Wolfgang felt his face burn like fire, he had a scratch on his cheek that went down to his chin, there were sparks before his eyes. All that had made him so silent before was forgotten, he felt a wild delight and gave a loud roar.

"Wolfgang, Wolfgang, no, that's not fair," cried the umpire. "That's no longer fun." Artur prepared to catch hold of Wolfgang, who was kneeling on his opponent's chest, by his two legs.

A jerk and off he flew. Wolf now turned against him, trembling with rage; his black eyes gleamed. This was no longer a well-dressed child of better-class parents, this was quite an elementary, unbridled, unconquered force. He snorted, he panted--at that moment somebody called.

"Wolfgang, Wolfgang."

"Wolfgang," cried Frida warningly, "mother's calling. And your maid is standing near her beckoning."

Frau LÄmke's voice was again heard, coming from the door of her house: "Wolfgang, Wolfgang." And now Lisbeth's sharp tones were also heard: "Well, are you soon coming? You're to come home."

Frau LÄmke laughed. "Oh, leave them, they were so happy." But she got a fright all the same when she saw the boy's dirty clothes, and began to brush them. "My goodness, what a sight your pretty blouse looks--and the trousers." She turned red, and still redder when she noticed the fiery scratch on the young gentleman's cheek. "They've made a nice mess of you, the brats. Just you wait until I get hold of you." She shook her fist at Hans Flebbe and her own children, but her threat was not meant seriously. Then she said to Lisbeth in an undertone and with a twitching smile round the corners of her mouth, as she stood there motionless with indignation: "Wild brats, aren't they? Well, it'll always be like that, we were all like that when we were young." And, turning to Wolfgang again, she passed her gnarled hand over his fiery scratch: "That was fine fun, eh, Wolfgang?"

"Yes," he said from the bottom of his heart. And when he saw her looking at him with eyes so friendly and full of comprehension, a great liking for the woman sprang up in his heart.

It had been a splendid afternoon. But he did not speak of it as he went home with Lisbeth; she would have been sure to have turned up her nose at it.

"Hm, the mistress is nice and angry," said Lisbeth--she never said anything but "the mistress" when speaking to the boy. "Why did you stop there such an everlasting time? Didn't you hear the mistress say you were to come home before it was dark?"

He did not answer. Let her chatter, it was not at all true. He stared past her into the twilight. But when he came into the room on reaching home, he noticed that his mother had waited for him. She was certainly not angry, but his evening meal, an egg, a ham sandwich, the milk in a silver mug, everything neatly prepared, was already there, and she sat opposite his place with her hands folded on the white table cloth, frowning impatiently.

The large hanging-lamp, which cast a bright light on the table and made her bent head gleam like gold, did not brighten up her face.

His mother was in silk, in light silk, in a dress trimmed with lace, which only had something that looked like a very transparent veil over the neck and arms. Oh, now he remembered, she was to meet his father, who had not come home to dinner that day, in town at eight o'clock, and go to a party with him. Oh, that was why he had had to come home so early. As if he could not have got into bed alone.

"You've come so late," she said.

"You could have gone," he said.

"You know, my child, that I'm uneasy if I don't know that you are at home." She sighed: "How could I have gone?"

He looked at her in surprise: why did she say that? Had somebody been telling tales about him again? Why was she so funny?

He gazed at her with wide-open eyes, as though she were a perfect stranger to him in that dress that left her neck and arms so bare. He put his food into his mouth lost in thought, and munched it slowly. All at once he had to think a great deal of what he had heard Frau LÄmke tell. His father and mother had never told anything about when he was born.

And suddenly he stopped eating and launched the question into the stillness of the room, into the stillness that reigned between him and her: "When I was born, did it last such a long time too?"

"When what?--who?--you?" She stared at him.

She did not seem to have understood him. So he quickly swallowed the food he still had in his mouth and said very loudly and distinctly: "Did it last such a long time when I was born? It lasted very long when Frida was. Did you scream too, like Frau LÄmke?"

"I?--who?--I?" She turned crimson and then very pale. She closed her eyes for a moment, she felt dizzy; there was a buzzing in her ears. She jumped up from her chair, she felt she must run away, and still she could not. She clutched hold of the table with shaking hands, but the strong oak table had turned into something that shook uncertainly, that moved up and down, slid about. What--what was the boy saying? O God!

She bit her lips, drew a deep breath, and was about to say: "Leave off asking such stupid questions," and yet could not say it. She struggled with herself. At last she jerked out: "Nonsense. Be quick, finish eating. Then off to bed at once." Her voice sounded quite hoarse.

The boy's astonished look fell on her once more. "Why are you all at once so--so--so horrid? Can't I even ask a question?" And he pushed his plate aside sulkily and stopped eating.

Why did she not answer him? Why did she not tell him something like what Frau LÄmke had told her Frida? Had he not been born as well? And had not his mother been pleased, too, when he was born? It was very nasty of her that she did not tell him anything about it. Could she not see how much, how awfully much he wanted to know something about it?

A burning curiosity was aroused in the child all at once. It tortured him, positively devoured him. He would not be able to sleep the whole night, he would have to think of it again and again. And he wanted to sleep, it was tiresome to lie awake--he wanted to know it he must know it.

KÄte saw how gloomy the boy's face had grown. Oh, the poor, poor boy. If only she had not let him go to those people. What had he been told there? What did he know? Had they made him suspicious? What

did those people know? Oh, they had made him suspicious, otherwise why should he have tormented her with such questions?

A burning dread filled her mind, and yet her hands and feet were growing as cold as ice. But her compassion was even greater than her dread--there he sat, looking so sad and with tears in his eyes. The poor child, who wanted to know something about his birth, and whom she could not, would not, dared not tell anything. Oh, if only she could think of something to say, only find the right word.

"WÖlfchen," she said gently, "you are still too young to hear about it--I can't tell you about it yet. Another time. You don't understand it yet. When you're older--I'll tell you it another time."

"No, now." She had gone up to him, and he caught hold of her dress and held her fast. He persisted with the dull obstinacy that was peculiar to him: "Now. I will know it--I must know it."

"But I--I've no time, WÖlfchen. I have to go--yes, I really must go, it's high time." Her eyes wandered about the room, and she felt quite flustered: "I--no, I can't tell you anything."

"You will not," he said. "And still Frau LÄmke told her Frida it." The sulky peevish expression had disappeared from the boy's dark face, and made way for one of real sadness. "You don't love me half so much, not in the same way as Frau LÄmke loves her Frida."

She did not love him?--she did not love him?--KÄte could have screamed. If any mother loved her child it was surely she, and still this child felt instinctively that something was wanting. And was not that mysterious bond wanting that binds a real mother so indissolubly and mysteriously, so intimately to her real child?

"WÖlfchen," she said in a soft tremulous voice, "my dear WÖlfchen," and she stroked his hot forehead with her icy cold hand. "You don't mean what you are saying. We love each other so much, don't we? My child--my darling child, tell me."

She sought his glance, she hung on his answer.

But the answer she longed for did not come. He looked past her. "You see, you won't tell me anything."

He seemed to harp on that. This burning desire had taken possession of him all at once. Somebody had instilled it into him, there could be no other explanation for it. "Who--" she asked hesitatingly--"who has told you--you should question me in this manner? Who?"

She had taken hold of his shoulders, but he wriggled away from under her touch. "Oh, why are you so funny? No-nobody. But I should like to know it. I tell you, I should like to know it. It worries me so. I don't know why it worries me, that's all."

It worried him--already? So early? Oh, then it was a suspicion, a suspicion--who knew from whence it came? He suspected what had happened in his earliest childhood unconsciously. What would happen? "O God, help me!" she cried to herself. The point now was to invent something, make something up, devise something. Those torturing questions must never, never be asked again.

And she forced herself to smile, and when she felt that her smile was no smile, she stepped behind his chair and laid her cheek on the top of his head and both her hands round his neck. He could not look round at her in that way. And she spoke in the low voice in which fairy tales are told to children.

"Father and I had been married a long time--just think, almost fifteen years!--and father and I wanted so much to have a dear boy or a dear little girl, so that we should not be so much alone. One day I was very sad, for all the other women had a dear child, and I was the only one who had not, and I walked about outside and cried, and then I suddenly heard a voice it came from heaven--no, a voice--a voice that--and--and----" She got bewildered, stammered and hesitated: what was she to say now?

"Hm," he said impatiently. "And--? Tell me some more. And--?"

"And next day you were lying in our cradle," she concluded hastily and awkwardly, in an almost stifled voice.

"And"--he had pushed her hands away, and had turned round and was looking into her face now--"that's all?"

"Well--and we--we were very happy."

"How stupid!" he said, offended. "That's not 'being born.' Frau LÄmke told it quite differently. You don't know anything about it." He looked at her doubtfully.

She evaded his glance, but he kept his eyes fixed on hers. It seemed to her as if those scrutinising eyes were looking right down into her soul. She stood there like a liar, and did not know what more to say.

"You don't know anything about it," he repeated once more, bitterly disappointed. "Good night." And he slouched to the door.

She let him go, she did not call him back to give her his good-night kiss. She remained sitting without moving. She heard his steps in the room above. Now he opened the door to throw his boots into the corner outside, now she heard them fall--now everything was quiet.

Oh, what was she to say to him later on when he asked her questions with full knowledge, a man justified in asking questions and demanding an answer to them? She let herself fall into the chair on which he had been sitting, and rested her head in her hands.