is coat pocket, grasping the knife. His
eyes began to blaze and he nerved himself to seize her--

Both heard her father's voice in the hall leading to the sitting-room.
"You must go," she cried, hastily retreating.

"Hilda," he pleaded rapidly, "there is something I must say to you. I
can not say it here. Come over to Meinert's as soon as you can. I
shall be in the sitting-room. Just for a moment, Hilda. It might save
my life. If not that, it certainly would make my death happier."

Brauner was advancing into the shop and his lowering face warned Mr.
Feuerstein not to linger. With a last, appealing look at Hilda he
departed.

"What was HE doing here?" growled Brauner.

"He'd just come in," answered Hilda absently. "He won't bother us any
more."

"If he comes again, don't speak to him," said Brauner in the commanding
voice that sounded so fierce and meant so little. "Just call me or
August."

Hilda could not thrust him out of her mind. His looks, his tones, his
dramatic melancholy saddened her; and his last words rang in her ears.
She no longer loved him; but she HAD loved him. She could not think of
him as a stranger and an enemy--there might be truth in his plea that
he had in some mysterious way fallen through love for her. She might
be able to save him.

Almost mechanically she left the shop, went to Sixth Street and to the
"family entrance" of Meinert's beer-garden. She went into the little
anteroom and, with her hand on the swinging door leading to the
sitting-room, paused like one waking from a dream.

"I must be crazy," she said half aloud. "He's a scoundrel and no good
can come of my seeing him. What would Otto think of me? What am I
doing here?" And she hastened away, hoping that no one had seen her.

Mr. Feuerstein was seated at a table a few feet from where she had
paused and turned back. He had come in half an hour before and had
ordered and drunk three glasses of cheap, fiery brandy. As the moments
passed his mood grew wilder and more somber. "She has failed me!" he
exclaimed. He called for pen, ink and paper. He wrote rapidly and,
when he had finished, declaimed his production, punctuating the
sentences with looks and gestures. His voice gradually broke, and he
uttered the last words with sobs and with the tears streaming down his
cheeks. He signed his name with a flourish, added a postscript. He
took a stamped envelope from his pocket, sealed the letter, addressed
it and