reful than usual to soothe his wounded friend; but he was very
anxious, and his thoughts, even while the two young men were with him,
secretly followed his brother along the unknown paths, of which he had
such a superficial knowledge. Not that Edwin would have concealed where
he went, and that he was daily becoming more and more ensnared by the
magic of this singular relation, but he could not reconcile his mind to
confess the full extent of his weakness, for in so doing he would have
been obliged to have acknowledged it to himself, and against such an
acknowledgement all the pride and manliness in his nature struggled.

How contemptible he appeared to himself when at night, after he had
wandered about, long and aimlessly, he again turned his steps toward
the house in Jaegerstrasse, instead of going home, to stand on the
opposite side of the street pressed against the wall in some dark
corner, until her carriage brought her back from the theatre, and then
to wait hour after hour at his post, to see whether the door would not
open again and allow some more fortunate person admittance or egress,
until the light behind her curtain vanished, and every thing around him
was hushed to repose in the coolness of the autumnal night, except the
fever in his blood. How he cursed the hour which had first brought him
to her presence, and made the firmest resolutions to put an end to this
madness and never cross that fatal threshold again!

But the next, day would find him once more at the little table, envying
the birds that pecked their food in happy ignorance and in freedom from
suffering like his.

The young girl herself seemed to have no suspicion of how little
prudence her "wise friend" possessed. She treated him on the tenth day
exactly as she had done on the first, with the same frank cordiality,
the same careless confidence; as if it were impossible he could ever
become more distant or approach her nearer. When he came and went, she
gave him her hand like an old friend, scolded him if he kept her
waiting, questioned him, after she had once discovered that his nerves
were disordered, most sympathizingly about his health, and urged him to
use all sorts of remedies and medicines, of which she had read or
heard. More than once she acknowledged that she did not understand how
she had ever got through the long days before making his acquaintance,
and only dreaded the moment when he would grow weary of wasting his
time on such a f