Daniel wished to see Eleanore skate; he went out to the Maxfeld at a time he knew she would be there.

He saw her quite soon, and was delighted when she glided by; but when she was lost in the crowd, he frowned. High school boys followed her with cowardly and obtrusive forwardness. One student, who wore a red cap, fell flat on his stomach as he bowed to her.

She ran into two army officers, or they into her; this put an end for the time being to the inspired grace of her movement. When she started off a second time, drawing a beautiful circle, she saw Daniel and came over to him. She smiled in a confidential way, chatted with him, glided backwards in a circle about him, laughed at his impatience because she would not stand still, threw her muff over to him, asked him to throw it back, and, with arms raised to catch it, cut an artistic figure on the ice.

The picture she offered filled Daniel with reverence for the harmony of her being.

II

They frequently took walks after sunset out to the suburbs and up to the castle. Gertrude was pleased to see that Daniel and Eleanore were good friends again.

One time when they walked up the castle hill, Eleanore told Daniel that there was where she had taken leave of Eberhard von Auffenberg. She could recall everything he said, and she confessed with marked candour what she had said in reply. The story about the old herb woman Daniel did not find amusing. He stopped, and said: “Child, don’t have anything to do with spirits! Never interfere with your lovely reality.”

“Don’t talk in that way,” replied Eleanore. “I dislike it. The tone of your voice and the expression on your face make me feel as if I were a woman of worldly habits.”

They went into the Church of St. Sebaldus, and revelled in the beauty of the bronze castings on the tomb of the saint. They also went to the Germanic Museum, where they loved to wander around in the countless deserted passage-ways, stopped and studied the pictures, and never tired of looking at the old toys, globes, kitchen utensils, and armour.

Eleanore’s greatest pleasure, however, was derived from sauntering through the narrow alleys. She like to stand in an open door, and look into the court at some weather-beaten statue; to stand before the window of an antique shop, and study the brocaded objects, silver chains, rings with gaudy stones, engraved plates, and rare clocks. All manner of roguish ideas came to her mind, and around every wish she wove a fairy tale. The meagrest incident sufficed to send her imagination to the land of wonders, just as if the fables and legends that the people had been passing on from hearth to hearth for centuries were leading a life of reality over there.

The tailor sitting with crossed legs on his table; the smith hammering the red-hot iron; the juggler who made the rounds of the city with the trained monkey; the Jewish pawnbroker, the chimney sweep, the one-legged veteran, an old woman who looked out from some cellar, a spider’s nest in the corner of a wall—around all these things and still others she wound her tale of weal or woe. It seemed that what she saw had never been seen by mortal eyes before. It seemed that the things or people that attracted her attention had not existed until she had seen them. For this reason she was never in a bad humour, never bored, never lazy, never tired.

There was something about her, however, that Daniel could not understand. He did not know wherein the riddle lay, he merely knew that there was one. If she gave him her hand, it seemed to him that there was something unreal about it. If he requested that she look at him, she did so, but it seemed that her glance was divided, half going to the left, half to the right, neither meeting his. If she came so close to him that their arms touched, he had the feeling that he could not take hold of her if he wished to.

He struggled against the enticement that lay in this peculiarity.

Her presence ennobled his ambition and dispelled his whims. She gave him the beautifully formed cloud, the tree covered with young foliage, the moon that rises up over the roofs of the houses—she gave him the whole earth over which he was hastening, a stranger to peace, unfamiliar with contentment.

He cherished no suspicion; he had no foreshadowing of his fate. And Eleanore was not afraid of him; she, too, was without a sense of danger.

III

One Sunday afternoon in April they took a walk out into the country. Gertrude had been suffering for weeks from lassitude and could not go with them.

Eleanore was a superb walker. It gave Daniel extreme pleasure to walk along with her, keeping step, moving hastily. The quick movement increased his susceptibility to the charm of the changing landscapes. It was quite different when he walked with Gertrude. She was slow, given to introspection, thoughtful, and not very strong.

In the course of an hour clouds gathered in the sky, the sun disappeared, big drops began to fall. Eleanore had taken neither umbrella nor rain coat along; she began to walk more rapidly. If they tried, they could reach the inn beyond the forest, and find shelter from the storm.

Just as they slipped through the crowd that had hurried up the road to the same refuge and entered the inn, the sluices of heaven seemed to open, and a cloud-burst followed. They were standing in the hall. Eleanore was warm, and did not wish to remain in the draught. They went into the restaurant; it was so full that they had considerable trouble to find seats. A working man, his wife, and four sickly-looking children squeezed up more closely together; the two youngest boys gave them their chairs and went to look for others.

The clouds hung low, causing premature darkness. Lamps were lighted, and their odour mingled freely with the other odours of this overcrowded room. A few village musicians played some unknown piece; the eyes of the workingman’s children shone with delight. Because they sat there so quietly—and because they looked so pale—Eleanore gave each of the children a sandwich. The mother was very grateful, and said so. The father, who said he was the foreman in a mirror factory, began to talk with Daniel about the troubles of the present era.

All of a sudden Daniel caught sight of a familiar face at a nearby table. As it turned to one side, he saw in the dim, smelly light another face he knew, and then a third and a fourth. It was all so ghost-like in the room that it was some time before he knew just where to place them. Then it occurred to him where they came from.

Herr Hadebusch and Frau Hadebusch, Herr Francke and Benjamin Dorn were having a little Sunday outing. The brush-maker’s wife was radiant with joy on seeing her old lodger. She nodded, she blinked, she folded her hands as if touched at the sight, and Herr Hadebusch raised his beer glass, eager to drink a toast to Daniel’s health.

They could not quite make out who Eleanore was; they took her for Daniel’s wife. This misunderstanding, it seemed, was then cleared up by the Methodist after he had craned his neck and called his powers of recognition into play. The demoniac woman nodded, to be sure, and kept on blinking, but in her face there was an expression of rustic disapproval. Her mouth was opened, and the tusks of her upper jaw shone forth uncannily from the black abyss.

The swan neck of the Methodist was screwed up so hardily and picturesquely above the heads of the others that Eleanore could not help but notice his physical and spiritual peculiarities. She wrinkled her brow, and looked at Daniel questioningly.

She looked around, and saw a great many people from the city whom she knew either by name or from having met them so frequently. There was a saleswoman from Ludwig Street; a clerk with a pock-marked face from a produce store; the dignified preceptress of a Kindergarten; an official of the savings bank; the hat-maker from the corner of the Market Place with his grown daughter; and the sergeant who invariably saluted when he passed by her.

All these people were in their Sunday clothes and seemed care-free and good natured. But as soon as they saw Eleanore a mean expression came over them. The fluttering of the lights made their faces look ghastly, while partial intoxication made it easy to read their filthy, lazy thoughts. Full of anxiety, Eleanore looked up at Daniel, as if she felt she would have to rely on his wealth of experience and greater superiority in general.

He was sorry for her and sorry for himself. He knew what was in store for him and her. When he looked over this Hogarthian gathering, and saw, despite its festive, convivial mood, hidden lusts of every description, crippled passions, secreted envy, and mysterious vindictiveness spread about like the stench of foul blood, he felt it was quite futile to cherish delusions of any kind as to what was before him. To spare Eleanore and to defend her, to leave her rather than be guilty of causing the child-like smile on her lips to die out and disappear forever—this he believed in the bottom of his heart he could promise both her and himself.

The working man and his family had left; and as it was no longer raining, most of the other guests had also gone. Up in the room above people were dancing. The lamps were shaking, and it was easy to hear the low sounds of the bass violin. Daniel took out his pencil, and began writing notes on the table. Eleanore bent over, looking at him, and, like him, fell to dreamy thinking.

Neither wished to know what the other was thinking; they entertained themselves in silence; inwardly they were drawn closer and closer together, as if by some mysterious and irresistible power. They had not noticed that it was evening, that the room was empty, that the waiters had taken the glasses away, and that the dance music in the room above had stopped.

They sat there in the half-lighted corner side by side, as if in some dark, deserted cavern. When they finally came out of their deep silence and looked at each other, they were first surprised and then dismayed.

“What are we going to do?” asked Eleanore half in a whisper, “it is late; we must be going home.”

The sky was clouded, a warm wind swept across the plains, the road was full of puddles. Here and there a light flashed from the darkness, and a dog barked every now and then in the distant villages. When the road turned into the forest, Daniel gave Eleanore his arm. She took it, but soon let go. Daniel stopped, and said almost angrily: “Are we bewitched, both of us? Speak, Eleanore, speak!”

“What is there for me to say?” she asked gently. “I am frightened; it is so dark.”

“You are frightened, Eleanore, you? You do not know the night. It has never yet been night in your soul; nor night in the world about you. Now you appreciate perhaps how a being of the night feels.”

She made no reply.

“Give me your hand,” he said, “I will lead you.”

She gave him her hand. Soon they saw the lights of the city. He took her to her house; but when they reached it, they did not say good-bye: they looked at each other with dazed, helpless, seeking eyes; they were both pale and speechless.

Eleanore hastened into the hall, but turned as she reached the stairs, and waved to him with a smile, as if the two were separated by a hazy distance. As he fixed his eyes on the spot where he saw the slender figure disappear, he felt as if something were clutching his throat.

IV

Without the slightest regard for time, without feeling tired, without definite thoughts, detached from the present and all sense of obligation, Daniel wandered aimlessly through the streets. A low dive on SchÜtt Island saw him as a late guest. He sat there with his hands before his eyes, neither seeing nor hearing nor feeling, all crouched up in a bundle. Dirty little puddles of gin glistened on the top of the table, the gamblers were cursing, the proprietor was drunk.

The fire alarm drove him out: there was a fire in the suburbs of Schoppershof. The sky was reddened, it was drizzling. It seemed to Daniel that the air was reeking with the premonition of a heart-crushing disaster. Above the Laufer Gate a sheaf of sparks was whirling about.

Just then the melody for which he had waited so long throughout so many nights of restless despair arose before him in a grandiose circle. It seemed as if born for the words of the “Harzreise”: “With the dim burning torch thou lightest for him the ferries at night over bottomless paths, across desolate fields.”

In mournful thirds, receding again and again, the voices sank to earth; just one remained on high, alone, piously dissociated from profane return.

He hummed the melody with trembling lips to himself, until he met the nineteenth-century Socrates with his followers in the Rosenthal. They were still gipsying through the night.

They all talked at once; they were going to the fire. Daniel passed by unrecognised. The shrill voice of the painter Kropotkin pierced the air: “Hail to the flames! Hail to those whose coming we announce!” The laughter of the slough brothers died away in the distance.

Gertrude was standing at the head of the stairs with a candle in her hand; she had been waiting there since twelve o’clock. At eleven she had gone over to her father’s house and rung the bell. Eleanore, frightened, had raised the window, and called down to her that Daniel had left her at nine.

He took the half-inanimate woman into the living room: “You must never wait for me, never,” he said.

He opened the window, pointed to the glowing sky beyond the church, and as she leaned her head, with eyes closed, on his shoulder, he said with a scurrilous distortion of his face: “Behold! The fire! Hail to the flames! Hail to those whose coming we announce!”

V

The following morning Eleanore had no time to think of why Daniel had not gone home.

Jordan had just finished his breakfast when some one rang the door bell with unusual rapidity. Eleanore went to the door, and came back with Herr Zittel, who was in a rare state of excitement.

“I have come to inquire about your son, Jordan,” he began, clearing his throat as though he were embarrassed.

“About my son?” replied Jordan astonished, “I thought you had given him three days’ leave.”

“I know nothing about that,” replied Herr Zittel.

“Last Saturday evening he went on a visit to his friend Gerber in Bamberg to celebrate the founding of a club, or something of that sort; we are not expecting him until to-morrow. If you know nothing about this arrangement, Herr Diruf must have given him his leave.”

The chief of the clerical department bit his lips. “Can you give me the address of this Herr Gerber?” he asked, “I should like to send him a telegram.”

“For heaven’s sake, what has happened, Herr Zittel?” cried Jordan, turning pale.

Herr Zittel stared into space with his gloomy, greenish eyes: “On Saturday afternoon Herr Diruf gave your son a cheque for three thousand seven hundred marks, and told him to cash it at the branch of the Bavarian Bank and bring the money to me. I was busy and did not go to the office in the afternoon. To-day, about a half-hour ago, Herr Diruf asked me whether I had received the money. It turned out that your son had not put in his appearance on Saturday, and since he has not shown up this morning either, you will readily see why we are so uneasy.”

Jordan straightened up as stiff as a flag pole: “Do you mean to insinuate that my son is guilty of some criminal transaction?” he thundered forth, and struck the top of the table with the bones of his clenched fist.

Herr Zittel shrugged his shoulders: “It is, of course, possible that there has been some misunderstanding, or that some one has failed to perform his duty. But in any event the affair is serious. Something must be done at once, and if you leave me in the lurch I shall have to call in the police.”

Jordan’s face turned ashen pale. For some reason or other he began to fumble about in his long black coat for the pocket. The coat had no pocket, and yet he continued to feel for it with hasty fingers. He tried to speak, but his tongue refused to obey him; beads of perspiration settled on his brow.

Eleanore embraced him with solicitous affection: “Be calm, Father, don’t imagine the worst. Sit down, and let us talk it over.” She dried the perspiration from his forehead with her handkerchief, and then breathed a kiss on it.

Jordan fell on a chair; his powers of resistance were gone; he looked at Eleanore with beseeching tenseness. From the very first she had known what had happened and what would happen. But she dared not show him that she was without hope; she summoned all the power at her resourceful command to prevent the old man from having a paralytic stroke.

With the help of Herr Zittel she wrote out a telegram to Gerber. The answer, to be pre-paid, was to be sent to the General Agency of the Prudentia, and Eleanore was to go to the main office between eleven and twelve o’clock. She accompanied Herr Zittel to the front door, whereupon he said: “Do everything in your power to get the money. If the loss can be made good at once, Herr Diruf may be willing not to take the case to the courts.”

Eleanore knew full well that it would be exceedingly difficult to get such a sum as this. Her father had no money in the bank; his employer had lost confidence in him because he could no longer exert himself; what he needed most of all was a rest.

She entered the room with a friendly expression on her face, and remarked quite vivaciously: “Now, Father, we will wait and see what Benno has to say; and in order that you may not worry so much, I will read something nice to you.”

Sitting on a hassock at her father’s feet she read from a recent number of the Gartenlaube the description of an ascent of Mont Blanc. Then she read another article that her eye chanced to fall upon. All the while her bright voice was ringing through the room, she was struggling with decisions to which she might come and listening to the ticking of the clock. That her father no more had his mind on what she was reading than she herself was perfectly clear to her.

Finally the clock struck eleven. She got up, and said she had to go to the kitchen to make the fire. A maid usually came in at eleven to get dinner for the family, but to-day she had not appeared. Out in the hall Eleanore took her straw hat, and hastened over to Gertrude’s as fast as her feet could carry her. Daniel was not at home; Gertrude was peeling potatoes.

In three sentences Eleanore had told her sister the whole story. “Now you come with me at once! Go up and stay with Father! See that he does not leave the house! I will be back in half an hour!”

Gertrude was literally dragged down the steps by Eleanore; before she could ask questions of any kind, Eleanore had disappeared.

At the General Agency Herr Zittel met her with the reply from that Gerber, Benno’s friend. It bore Gerber’s signature, and read: “Benno Jordan has not been here.”

Benjamin Dorn stood behind Herr Zittel; he displayed an expression of soft, smooth, dirge-like regret.

“Herr Diruf would like to speak to you,” said Herr Zittel coldly.

Eleanore entered Herr Diruf’s private office; her face was pale. He kept on writing for about three minutes before he took any notice of her. Then his plum-like eyes opened lazily, a rare, voluptuous smile sneaked out from under his moustache like a slothful flash of heat lightning; he said: “The sharper has gone and done it, hasn’t he?”

Eleanore never moved.

“Can the embezzled money be returned within twenty-four hours?” asked the pudgy, purple prince of pen-pushers.

“My father will do everything that is humanly possible,” replied Eleanore anxiously.

“Be so good as to inform your father that to-morrow morning at twelve o’clock the charge will be preferred and placed in the hands of the police, if the money has not been paid by that time.”

Eleanore hastened home. Now her father had to be brought face to face with the realities of the case. He and Gertrude were sitting close to each other in terrible silence. Eleanore revealed the exact state of affairs; she had to.

“My good name!” groaned Jordan.

He had to save himself from disgrace; the twenty-four hours seemed to offer him a sure means of doing this. He had not the remotest doubt but that he could find friends who would come to his aid; for he had something of which he could boast: a blameless past and the reputation of being a reliable citizen.

Thus he thought it over to himself. And as soon as he made up his mind to appeal to the friends of whom he felt he was certain, the most difficult part of his plan seemed to have been completed. The suffering to which he was condemned by his wounded pride and his betrayed, crushed filial affection he had to bear alone. He knew that this was a separate item.

He went out to look up his friends.

VI

The first one he appealed to was the brother-in-law of his sister, First Lieutenant Kupferschmied, retired. His sister had died six months ago, leaving nothing; the lieutenant, however, was a well-to-do man. He had married into the family of a rich merchant. Jordan’s relation to him had always been pleasant; indeed the old soldier seemed to be very fond of him. But hardly had Jordan explained his mission when the lieutenant became highly excited. He said he had seen this disaster coming. He remarked that any man who brings up his children in excessive ease must not be surprised if they come to a bad end. He remarked, too, that no power on earth could persuade him to invest one penny in Jordan’s case.

Jordan went away speechless.

The second friend he appealed to was his acquaintance of long standing, Judge RÜbsam. From him he heard a voluble flow of words dealing with regrets, expressions of disgust, one lament after the other, a jeremiade on hard times, maledictions hurled at dilatory creditors, infinite consolation—and empty advice. He assured Jordan that yesterday he had almost the requisite sum in cash, and that he might have it again some time next month, but to-day—ah, to-day his taxes were due, and so on, and so on.

Oppressed by the weight of this unexpected humiliation, he went to the third friend, a merchant by the name of Hornbusch, to whom he had once rendered invaluable assistance. Herr Hornbusch had forgotten all about this, though he had not forgotten that he had vainly sounded in Jordan’s ears a warning against the ever-increasing flippancy of young Benno. He told Jordan that he himself was just then in urgent need of money, that he had only last month been obliged to sacrifice a mortgage, and that his wife had pawned her diamonds.

Thus it went with the fourth friend, an architect who had told him once that he would sacrifice money and reputation for him if he ever got into trouble. And it was the same story with the fifth and sixth and seventh. With a heart as heavy as lead, Jordan decided to take the last desperate step: He went to Herr Diruf himself. He asked for a three days’ extension of time. Diruf sat inapproachable at his desk. He was smoking a big thick Havana cigar, his solitaire threw off its blinding fireworks, he smiled a cold, tired smile and shook his head in astonishment.

When Jordan came home that evening he found Daniel and Gertrude in the living room. Gertrude went up to him to support him; then she brought him a glass of wine as a stimulant: he had not eaten anything since breakfast.

“Where is Eleanore?” he murmured, but seemed to take no interest in the reply to his question. He fell down on a chair, and buried his face in his hands.

Gertrude, who saw his strength leaving him as the light dies out of a slowly melting candle, became dizzy with compassion. Her last hope was in Eleanore, who had left at five o’clock simply because she found it intolerable to sit around, hour after hour, doing nothing but waiting for the return of her father. At every sound that could be heard in the house, Gertrude pricked up her ears in eager expectancy.

Daniel stood by the window, and looked out across the deserted square into the dull red glow of the setting sun.

It struck seven, then half past seven, eight, and Eleanore had not returned. Daniel began to pace back and forth through the room; he was nervous. If his foot chanced to strike against a chair, Gertrude shuddered.

Shortly after eight, steps were heard outside. The key rattled in the front gate, the room door opened, and in came Eleanore—and Philippina Schimmelweis.

VII

Everybody looked at Philippina; even Jordan himself honoured her with a faint glance. Daniel and Gertrude were amazed. Daniel did not recognise his cousin; he knew nothing about her; he had seen her but once, and then he was a mere child. He did not know who this repulsive-looking individual was, and demanded that Eleanore give him an explanation. As he did this, he raised his eyebrows.

Eleanore was the only one Philippina looked at in a kindly way; in Philippina’s own face there was an expression of curiosity.

Philippina’s whole bearing had something of the monstrous about it. Even her dress was picturesque, adventuresome. Her great brown straw hat, with the ribbon sticking straight up in the air, was shoved on to the back of her head so as not to spoil the effect of the fashionable bangs that hung down over her forehead. Her loud, checkered dress was strapped about her waist with a cloth belt so tightly that the contour of her fat body was made to look positively ridiculous: she resembled a gigantic hour glass. In her rough-cut features there was an element of lurking malevolence.

After a few minutes of painful stillness she walked up to Daniel, and plucked him by the coat-sleeve: “Eh, you don’t know who I am?” she asked, and her squinty eyes shone on him with enigmatic savagery: “I am Philippina; you know, Philippina Schimmelweis.”

Daniel stepped back from her: “Well, what of it?” he asked, wrinkling his brow.

She followed him, took him by the coat-sleeve again, and led him over into one corner: “Listen, Daniel,” she stammered, “my father—he must give you all the money you need. For years ago your father gave him all the money he had, and told him to keep it for you. Do you understand? I happened to hear about it one time when my father was talking about it to my mother. It was a good seven years ago, but I made a note of it. My father spent the money on himself; he thinks he can keep it. Go to him, and tell him what you want; tell him how much you want, and then go help these people here. But you must not give me away; if you do they’ll kill me. Do you understand? You won’t say a word about it, will you?”

“Is that true?” Daniel managed to say in reply, as a feeling of unspeakable anger struggled with one of indescribable disgust.

“It is true, Daniel, every word of it; ’pon my soul and honour,” replied Philippina; “just go, and you’ll see that I have told you the truth.”

During the conversation of the two, of which she could hardly hear a single syllable, Eleanore never took her eyes off them.

VIII

Since the day Philippina had made her little brother Markus a cripple for life, she had been an outcast in the home of her parents.

To be sure, she had had no great abundance of kindness and cheerfulness before the accident took place. But since that time the barbarous castigation of her father had beclouded and besmirched her very soul. From her twelfth year on, her mind was ruled exclusively by hate.

Hatred aroused her; it gave birth to thoughts and plans in her; it endowed her with strength of will and audacity; and it matured her before her time.

She hated her father, her mother, her brothers.

She hated the house with all its rooms; she hated the bed in which she slept, the table at which she ate. She hated the people who came to see her parents, the customers who came into the shop, the loafers who gathered about the window, the tall lanky Zwanziger, the books and the magazines.

But the day she overheard her father and mother talking about that money, a second power had joined the ranks of hate in her benighted, abandoned soul. With her brain on fire she stood behind the door, and heard that she was to be married to Daniel. This remark had filled the then thirteen-year-old girl with all the savage instincts of a bound and fettered woman, with all the crabbedness of an unimaginative person of her standing.

In her father’s remark she did not see merely a more or less carefully outlined plan; she heard a message from Fate itself; and from that time on she lived with an idea that brought light and purpose into her daily existence.

Shortly after his arrival in Nuremberg, she saw Daniel for the first time as he was standing by a booth in the market place on SchÜtt Island. Her father had pointed him out to her. She knew that he wished to become a musician; this made no special impression on her. She knew that he was having a hard time of it; this filled her neither with sympathy nor regret. When she later on saw him in the concert hall, he was already her promised spouse; he belonged to her. To capture him, to get him into her power, it made no difference how, was her unchanging aspiration, in which there was a bizarre mixture of bestiality and insanity.

The thieving, which she decided upon at once and practised with perfect regularity, netted her in the course of time a handsome sum. She did not become bolder and bolder as she continued her evil practices, but, unlike thieves generally, she grew to be more and more cautious. She acquired in time remarkable skill at showing an outwardly honest face. Indeed she became such an adept at dissimulation that the suspicion of even Jason Philip, aroused as it had been during the course of a careful investigation, was dispelled by her behaviour.

Her plan was to gain a goodly measure of independence through the money she had stolen. For she always felt convinced that the day would come when her parents would debar her from their home. She was convinced that her father and mother were merely waiting for some plausible excuse to rid themselves of her for good and all.

Moreover, she had two pronounced passions: one for candy and one for flashy ribbons.

The candy she always bought in the evening. She would slip into the shop of Herr Degen, and, with her greedy eyes opened as wide as possible, buy twenty pfennigs’ worth of sweets, at which she would nibble until she went to bed.

The ribbons she sewed together into sashes, which she wore on her hat or around her neck or on her dress. The gaudier the colour the better she liked it. If her mother asked her where she got the ribbons she was forced to lie. Although she had no girl friends, as a matter of fact no friends of any kind, she would say that this or that girl had given them to her. When her wealth became too conspicuous, she would leave the house and not tie her sashes about her until she had reached some unlighted gateway or dark corner.

She never dared go to the attic more than once a week; she did this when her brothers were at school and her parents in the shop. The fear lest some one find her out and take her stolen riches from her made her more and more uneasy, lending to her face an expression of virulent distrust.

She would go up the thirteen steps from the landing to the attic with trembling feet. The fact that there were exactly thirteen was the first thing that awakened her superstition. As the months crept on, she resigned to this superstition with the abandon of an inveterate voluptuary. If she chanced to put her left foot first on the bottom step and not to notice it until she was half way up, she would turn around, come down, and relinquish the pleasure of seeing her treasures for the rest of that week.

She was afraid of ghosts, witches, and magicians; if a cat ran across the street in front of her, she turned as white as chalk.

Theresa did not keep a maid; Philippina helped in the kitchen; this ruined her complexion, and made her skin rough and horny. Frequently she got out of washing dishes by simply running away. On these occasions Theresa would create such an uproar that the neighbours would come to the window and look out. Philippina avenged herself by purposely ruining the sheets, towels, and shirts that lay in the clothes basket. When in this mood and at this business, she made use of a regular oath that she herself had formulated: it consisted of sentences that sounded most impressive, though they had no meaning.

She cherished the odd delusion that it lay in her power to bring misfortune to other people. The time Jason Philip complained of poor business she felt an infernal sense of satisfaction. His change of political views had driven away his old customers, and the new ones had no confidence in him. He had to go in for the publication of dubious works, if he wished to do any business at all. The result of this was that when people passed by the Schimmelweis bookshop, they stopped before the window, looked at his latest output, and smiled contemptuously. The workman’s insurance no longer paid as it used to, for the credit of the Prudentia and its agents had suffered a violent setback.

The rise and fall in bourgeois life follows a well established law. In a single day the honesty and diligence of one man, the tricks and frauds of another, grow stale, antiquated. Thus Jordan’s affairs started on the down grade, and Jason Philip’s likewise.

Philippina ascribed their failure to the quiet influence of her destructive work. Every bit of misfortune in the life of her father loosened by that much the chain that prevented her from complete freedom of movement. In her most infamous hours she would dream of the hunger and distress, bankruptcy and despair of her people. Once this state of affairs had been realised, she would no longer have to play the rÔle of Cinderella; she would no longer have to be the first one up in the morning; she would no longer have to chop wood, and polish her brothers’ boots: she would have a fair field and no favours in her campaign to capture Daniel.

IX

At times she thought she could simply go to him and stay with him. At times she felt that he would come and get her. One thing or the other had to take place, she thought.

One Sunday afternoon—it chanced to be her eighteenth birthday—a junior agent of Jason Philip, a fellow by the name of Pfefferkorn, came to the house, and in the course of the conversation remarked rather casually that the elder of the Jordan sisters was engaged to the musician Nothafft, that the engagement had been kept secret for a while, but that the wedding was to take place in the immediate future.

“By the way, I hear that the musician is your nephew,” said Pfefferkorn at the close of his report.

Jason Philip cast a gloomy look into space, while Theresa, then sipping her chicory coffee, set her cup on the table, and looked at the man with scornful contempt.

Philippina broke out in a laughter that went through them like a knife. Then she ran from the room, and banged the door behind her. “She seems a bit deranged,” murmured Jason Philip angrily.

Then came that June night on which she did not come home at all. Jason Philip raged and howled when she returned the next morning; but she was silent. He locked her up in the cellar for sixteen hours; but she was silent.

After this she did not leave the house for months at a time; she did not wash or comb her hair; she sat crouched up in the kitchen with her long, dishevelled, unwashed hair falling in loose locks down over her neck and shoulders.

A feeling of consuming vengeance seethed in her heart; the patience she was forced to practise, much against her will, petrified in time into a mien of hypocritic sottishness.

Suddenly she took to dressing up again and sauntering through the streets in the afternoon. Her loud ribbons awakened the mocking laughter of young and old.

She had learned that Eleanore Jordan was attending the lectures in the Cultural Club. She went too; she always crowded up close to Eleanore, but she could not attract her attention. One time she sat right next to Eleanore. A strolling pastor delivered a lecture on cremation. Philippina took out her handkerchief, and pressed it to her eyes as though she were weeping. Eleanore, somewhat concerned, turned to her, and asked her what was the matter. She said that it was all so sad what the old gentleman was saying. Eleanore was surprised, for nothing the speaker had said was sad or in any way likely to bring tears to the eyes of his auditors.

At the end of the lecture she left the hall with Eleanore. When the ugly, disagreeable creature told her of the wretchedness of her life, how she was abused by her parents and brothers, and that there was not a soul in the world who cared for her, Eleanore was moved. The fact that Philippina was Daniel’s blood cousin made her forget the aversion she felt, and drew from her a promise to go walking with her on certain days.

Eleanore kept her promise. She was not in the least disconcerted by the queer looks cast at her by the people they met. With perfect composure she walked along by the side of this strapping, quackish young woman dressed in the oddest garments known to the art of dress-making. At first they strolled in broad daylight through the park adjoining the city moat. Later Eleanore arranged to have the walks, which were to take place two or three times a month, postponed until after sunset.

This was quite agreeable to Philippina. She threw out a hint every now and then that there was a mysterious feud between the Schimmelweis family and the Nothaffts, and implored Eleanore never to let Daniel know that she was taking these walks with her. It was painful to Eleanore to have Philippina make such requests of her. The lurking manner in which she would turn the conversation to the affairs of Daniel and Gertrude had an element of offensive intrusiveness in it. She wanted to know first this, then that. She even had the impudence to ask about Gertrude’s dowry; and finally she requested that Eleanore bring her sister along some time when they went walking.

Eleanore came to have a feeling of horror at the sight or thought of Philippina; she was dismayed too when, despite the darkness, she noticed the shrewish look of incorrigible wickedness in Philippina’s face. An ineluctable voice put her on her guard. In so far as she could do it without grievously offending Philippina, she withdrew from further association with her. And even if she had not promised her absolute silence, a feeling half of fear and half of shame would have prevented her from ever mentioning Philippina’s name in Daniel’s presence.

She never once suspected that Philippina was spying on her. Philippina soon found out just when, how often, and where Daniel and Eleanore met; and wherever they went, she followed at a safe distance behind them. Why she did this she really did not know; something forced her to do it.

What she had succeeded in doing with Eleanore she now wished to do with Gertrude. She would bob up all of a sudden in the butcher shop, at the vegetable market, in the dairy, anywhere, stare at Gertrude, act as though she were intensely interested in something, and make some such remarks as: “Lord, but beans are dear this year”; or “That is a nasty wind, it is enough to give you the colic.” But Gertrude was far too lost to the world and much too sensitive about coming in contact with strangers to pay any attention to her awkward attempts at approach.

“Just wait,” thought Philippina, enraged, “the penalty of your arrogance will some day descend upon your head.”

X

On that Monday so fatal for the Jordan family, Philippina had another violent quarrel with her mother. Theresa was still shrieking, when Jason Philip came up from the shop to know what could be wrong.

“Don’t ask,” cried Theresa at the top of her shrill voice, “go teach your daughter some manners. The wench is going to end up in jail; that’s what I prophesy.”

Philippina made a wry face. Jason Philip, however, was little inclined to play the rÔle of an avenging power: he had something new on the string; his face was beaming.

“I met Hornbusch,” he said, turning to Theresa, “you know him, firm of Hornbusch heirs, bloody rich they are, and the man tells me that young Jordan has embezzled some money from the Prudentia and left the country. I went at once to the Prudentia, and Zittel told me the whole story, just as I had heard it. It is almost four thousand marks! Jordan has been requested to make good the deficit; but he hasn’t a penny to his name and is in a mighty tight place, for Diruf is threatening to send him to jail. You know, Diruf is hard-boiled in matters of this kind. What do you think of that?”

Theresa wrapped her hands in her apron, and looked at Jason Philip out of the corner of her eye. She guessed at once the cause of his joy, and hung her head in silence.

Jason Philip smirked to himself. Leaning up against the Dutch tiles of the stove, he began to whistle in a happy-go-lucky mood. It was the “Marseillaise.” He whistled it partly out of forgetfulness and partly from force of habit.

He had not noticed how Philippina had listened to every syllable that fell from his lips; how she was holding her breath; that her features were lighted up from within by a terrible flame of fire. He did notice, however, that she got up at the close of his remarks and left the room with rustling steps.

Five minutes later she was standing before Jordan’s house. She sent a small boy in with the request that FrÄulein Eleanore come down at once. The boy came back, and said that FrÄulein Eleanore was not at home. She took her position by the front gate, and waited.

XI

Driven by the torment of her soul, Eleanore had gone to Martha RÜbsam’s only to hear that her father had been there three hours earlier. From the confused and embarrassed conduct of her friend she learned that her father had made a request of Judge RÜbsam, and a fruitless one at that.

Then she stood for a while on one of the leading streets, and stared in bewilderment at the throngs of people surging by. It was all so cruelly real.

She thought of whom she might go to next. A wave of purple flashed across her face as she thought of Eberhard. Involuntarily she made a passionate, deprecating gesture, as if she were saying: No, no, not to him! The first ray of this hope was also the last. Her conscience struck her; but she was helpless. Here was a feeling impervious to reason; armed ten times over against encouragement. Anyhow, he was not at home. She thought of this with a sigh of relief.

Would Daniel go to the Baroness? No; that could not be thought of for a minute.

She could no longer endure the city nor the people in it. She walked through the park out into the country. She could not stand the sight of the sky or the distant views; she turned around. She came back to The FÜll, entered the Carovius house, and rang Frau Benda’s bell. She knew the old lady was away, and yet, as if quite beside herself, she rang four times. If Benda would only come; if the good friend were only sitting in his room and could come to the door.

But there was not a stir. From the first floor the sounds of a piano floated out the window; it was being played in full chords. Down in the court CÆsar was howling.

She started back home with beating heart. At the front gate she saw Philippina.

“I have heard all about your misfortune,” said Philippina in her shrill voice. “Nobody can help you but me.”

“You? You can help?” stammered Eleanore. The whole square began to move, it seemed, before her.

“Word of honour—I can. I must simply have a talk with Daniel first. Let’s lose no time. Is he upstairs?”

“I think he is. If not, I will get him.”

“Let’s go up, then.”

They went up the stairs.

XII

Jason Philip had been invited to a sociable evening in the Shufflers’ Club. He was now enjoying his siesta after his banquet by reading an editorial in the Kurier. One of Bismarck’s addresses had been so humorously commented on that every now and then Jason Philip emitted a malevolent snarl of applause.

He had brought a lemon along home with him; it was lying on a plate before him, sliced and covered with sugar. From time to time he would reach over, take a piece and stick it in his mouth. He smacked his tongue with the display of much ceremony of his kind, and licked his lips after swallowing a piece. His two sons gaped at his hand with greedy eyes and likewise licked their lips.

Willibald was groaning over an algebraic equation. In his pale, pimpled face were traces of incapability and bad humour. Markus, owing to his physical defect, was not allowed to study by artificial light. He helped his mother shell the peas, and in order to make her angry at Philippina, kept making mean remarks about her staying out so long.

Just as the last piece of the lemon disappeared behind Jason Philip’s moustache, the door bell rang.

“There is a man out there,” said Markus, who had gone to the door and was now standing on the threshold, stupidly staring with his one remaining eye.

Jason Philip stretched his neck. Then he got up. He had recognised Daniel standing in the half-lighted hall.

“I have something to say to you,” said Daniel, as he entered the room. His eyes gazed on the walls and at the few cheap, ugly, banal objects that hung on them: a newspaper-holder with embroidered ribbons; a corner table on which stood a beer mug representing the fat body of a monk; an old chromic print showing a volunteer taking leave of his big family as he starts for the front. These things appealed to Daniel somewhat as an irrational dream. Then, taking a deep breath, he fixed his eyes on Jason Philip. In his mind’s eye he looked back over many years; he saw himself standing at the fountain in Eschenbach. Round about him glistened the stones and cross beams of the houses. Jason Philip was hurrying by at a timid distance. There was bitterness in his face: he seemed to be fleeing from the world, the sun, men, and music.

“I have something to say to you,” he repeated.

Theresa felt that the worst of her forebodings were about to be fulfilled. With trembling knees she arose. She did not dare turn her eyes toward the place in the room where Daniel was standing. She did not see, she merely sensed Jason Philip as he beckoned to her and his sons to leave the room. She took Markus by the hand and Willibald by the coat-sleeve, and marched out between the two.

“What’s the news?” asked Jason Philip, as he crossed his arms and looked at the pile of beans on the table. “You have a—what shall I say?—a very impulsive way about you. It is a way that reminds me of the fact that we have a law in this country against disturbing the peace of a private family. Your stocks must have gone to the very top of the market recently. Well, tell me, what do you want?”

He cleared his throat, and beat a tattoo on the elbows of his crossed arms with his fingers.

Daniel felt that his peace was leaving him; his own arm seemed to him like a shot-gun; it itched. But thus far he could not say a thing. The question he had in mind to put to Jason Philip was of such tremendous import that he could not suppress his fear that he might make a mistake or become too hasty.

“Where is the money my father gave you?” came the words at last, rolling from his lips in a tone of muffled sullenness.

The colour left Jason Philip’s face; his arms fell down by his side.

“The money? Where it’s gone to? That your father—?” He stuttered in confusion. He wanted to gain time; he wanted to think over very carefully what he should say and what he could conceal. He cast one glance at Daniel, and saw that it was not possible to expect mercy from him. He was afraid of Daniel’s bold, lean, sinewy face.

He nearly burst with anger at the thought that this young man, for whom he, Jason Philip, was once the highest authority, should have the unmitigated audacity to call him to account. In this whole situation he pictured himself as the immaculate man of honour that he wished he was and thought he was in the eyes of his fellow citizens. At the same time he was nearly stifled with fear lest he lose the money which he had long since accustomed himself to regard as his own, with which he had worked and speculated, and which by this time was as much a part of his very being as his own house, his business, his projects. He buried his hands in his pockets and snorted. His cowardly dread of the consequences of fraud forced him into a half confession of fraud, but in his words lay the feverish pettifogging of the frenzied financier who fights for Mammon even unto raging and despair.

“The money is here; of course it is. Where did you think it was? My books will show exactly how much of it has found its way over to Eschenbach in the shape of interest and loans. My books are open to inspection; the accounts have been kept right up to this very day. I have made considerable progress in life. A man who has lived as I have lived does not need to fear a living soul. Do you imagine for a minute that Jason Philip Schimmelweis can be frightened by a little thing like this? No, no, it will take more of a man than you to do that. Who are you anyhow? What office do you hold? What authority have you? With what right do you come rushing into the four walls of my home? Do you perhaps imagine that your artistic skill invests you with special privileges? I don’t give a tinker’s damn for your art. The whole rubbish is hardly worth spitting on. Music? Idiocy. Who needs it? Any man with the least vestige of self-respect never has anything to do with music except on holidays and when the day’s work is done. No, no, you can’t impress me with your music. You’re not quite sane! And if you think that you are going to get any money out of me, you are making the mistake of your life. It is to laugh. If a man wants money from me, he has to come to me at least with a decent hair-cut and show me at least a little respect. He can’t come running up like a kid on the street who says: ‘Mumma, gif me a shent; I want to buy some tandy.’ No, no, son, you can’t get anything out of me that way.”

The smile that appeared on Daniel’s face filled Jason Philip with mortal terror. He stopped his talk with incriminating suddenness. He decided to hold in and to promise Daniel a small payment. He hoped that by handing over a few hundred marks he could assure himself the desired peace of mind.

But Daniel never felt so certain of himself in his life. He thought of the hardships he had had to endure, and his heart seemed as if it were on fire. At the same time he was ashamed of this man and disgusted with him.

He said quietly and firmly: “I must have three thousand seven hundred marks by ten o’clock to-morrow morning. It is a question of saving an honourable and upright family from ruin. If this sum is handed over to me promptly, I will waive all rights to the balance that is due me, in writing. The receipt will be filled out ready for delivery in my house. If the money is not in my hands by the stipulated time, we will meet each other in another place and in the presence of people who will impress you.”

He turned to go.

Jason Philip’s mouth opened wide, and he pressed his fist to the hole made thereby. “Three thousand seven hundred marks?” he roared. “The man is crazy. Completely crazy is the man. Man, man, you’re crazy,” he cried in order to get Daniel to stop. “Are you crazy, man? Do you want to ruin me? Don’t you hear, you damned man?”

Daniel looked at Jason Philip with a shudder. The door to the adjoining room sprang open, and Theresa rushed in. Her face was ashen pale; there were just two little round red spots on her cheek bones. “You are going to get that money, Daniel,” she howled hysterically, “or I am going to jump into the Pegnitz, I’ll jump into the Pegnitz and drown myself.”

“Woman, you...” he gnashed his teeth, and seized her by the shoulder.

She sank down on a chair, and, seizing her hair, continued: “He is everywhere, and wherever he is, our dear Gottfried, he is looking at me. He stands before the clothes press, at the cupboard, by my bedside, nods, exhorts, raises his finger, finds no peace in his grave, and does not let me sleep; he has not let me sleep all these years.”

“Now listen, you had better think of your children,” snapped Jason Philip.

Theresa let her hands fall in her lap, and looked down at the floor: “All that nice money, that nice money,” she cried. Then again, this time with a face distorted beyond easy recognition and at the top of her voice: “But you’ll get it, Daniel; I’ll see to it that you get it: I’ll bring it to you myself.” Then again, in a gentle voice of acute lamentation: “All that nice money.”

Daniel was almost convulsed. It seemed to him as if he had never rightly understood the word money before, as if the meaning of money had never been made clear to him until he heard Theresa say it.

“To-morrow morning at ten o’clock,” he said.

Theresa nodded her head in silence, and raised her hands with outstretched fingers as if to protect herself from Jason Philip. Willibald and Markus had crept under the door. The gate must not have been closed, for just then Philippina came in. She had come over with Daniel, but had remained outside on the street. She could not wait any longer; she was too anxious to see the consequences of her betrayal.

She looked around with affected embarrassment. Was it merely the sight of her that aroused Jason Philip’s wrath? Was it the half-cowardly, half-cynical smile that played around her lips? Or was it the cumulative effect of blind anger, long pent up and eager to be discharged, that made Jason Philip act as he did? Or did he have a vague suspicion of what Philippina had done? Suffice it to say, he leapt up to her and struck her in the face with his fist.

She never moved a muscle.

Indignant at the rudeness of his conduct, Daniel stepped between Jason Philip and his daughter. But the venomous scorn in the girl’s eyes stifled his sympathy; he turned to the door, and went away in silence.

“All that nice money,” murmured Theresa.

When Daniel told the Jordans that the money would be there the next morning, Jordan looked at him first unbelievingly, and then wept like a child.

Eleanore reached Daniel both her hands without saying a word. Gertrude, who was lying on the sofa, straightened up, smiled gently, and then lay down again. Daniel asked her what was the matter. Eleanore answered for her, saying that she had not felt well since some time in the afternoon. “She must go to bed, she is tired,” added Eleanore.

“Well, come then,” said Daniel, and helped Gertrude to get up. But her legs were without strength; she could not walk. She looked first at Daniel and then at Eleanore; she was plainly worried about something.

“You won’t care, will you, Father, if I go home with them?” asked Eleanore in a tone of flattery.

“No, go, child,” said Jordan, “it will do me good to be alone for a few minutes.”

Daniel and Eleanore took Gertrude between them. At the second landing in their apartment, Daniel took Gertrude in his arms, and carried her into the bedroom. She did not want him to help her take off her clothes; she sent him out of the room. A cup of warm milk was all she said she wanted.

“There is no milk there,” said Eleanore to Daniel, as she entered the living room. He stopped suddenly, and looked at her as if he had awakened from a fleeting dream: “I’ll run down to Tetzel Street and get a half a litre,” said Eleanore. “I’ll leave the hall door open, so that Gertrude will not be frightened when I come in.”

She had already hastened out; but all of a sudden she turned around, and said with joyful gratitude, her blue eyes swimming in the tears of a full soul: “You dear man.”

His face took on a scowl.

There was a fearful regularity in his walking back and forth. The chains of the hanging lamp shook. The flame sent forth a thin column of smoke; he did not notice it. “How long will she be gone?” he thought in his unconscious, drunken impatience. He felt terribly deserted.

He stepped out into the hall, and listened. There hovered before him in the darkness the face of Philippina. She showed the same scornful immobility that she showed when her father struck her in the face. He stepped to the railing, and sat down on the top step; a fit at once of weakness and aimless defiance came over him. He buried his face in his hands; he could still hear Theresa saying, “All that nice money.”

There were shadows everywhere; there was nothing but night and shadows.

Eleanore, light-hearted and light-footed, returned at last. When she saw him, she stopped. He arose, and stretched out his arms as if to take the milk bottle. That is the way she interpreted his gesture, and handed it to him in surprise. He, however, set it down on the landing beside him. The light from the living room shone on it and made it look sparkling white. Then he drew Eleanore to him, threw his arms around her, and kissed her on the mouth.

Merely a creature of man, only a woman, nothing but heart and breath, all longing and forgetting, forgetting for just one moment, finding herself for a moment, knowing her own self for a moment—she pressed close up to him. But her hands were folded between her breast and his, and thus separated their bodies.

Then she broke away from him, wrung her hands, looked up at him, pressed close up to him again, wrung her hands again—it was all done in absolute silence and with an almost terrible grace and loveliness.

Everything was now entirely different from what it had been, or what she had formerly imagined it to be; there were depths to everything now. She lost herself; she ceased to exist for a moment; darkness enveloped her much-disciplined heart; she entered upon a second existence, an existence that had no similarity with the first.

To this existence she was now bound; she had succumbed to it: the law of nature had gone into effect. But the glass case had been shattered; it was in pieces. She stood there unprotected, even exposed, so to speak, to men, no longer immune to their glances, an accessible prey to their touch.

She went into the kitchen, and heated the milk. Daniel returned to the living room. His veins were burning, his heart was hammering. He had no sense of appreciation of the time that had passed. When Eleanore came into the room, he began to tremble.

She came up to him, and spoke to him in passionate sadness: “Have you heard about Gertrude? Don’t you know, really? She is with child—your wife.”

“I did not know it,” whispered Daniel. “Did she tell you?”

“Yes, just now.”