but
she was silenced by Wilhelmine's angry retort and reminder of Mueller's
misdeeds. The Sunday afternoon and evening had passed without any
unwonted occurrence. Wilhelmine was tortured by the fact that she had not
told her mother of Friedrich's letter; she had not recovered it from
Mueller, though twice she had sent the servant-maid to demand its
restitution.

She intended to reveal the whole story to her mother, when Monsieur
Gabriel returned with the promised money; for she guessed that the object
of his journey to Schwerin was the procuring of the sum. The light was
failing rapidly, and Wilhelmine felt intensely dreary and sad. She turned
over the leaves of the book which lay on her lap; it was a volume lent
her by Monsieur Gabriel, a book written by Blaise Pascal. Her eye was
caught by a sentence, and she read the wise words of the great thinker:
'Love hath its reasons which reason knoweth not.' Again her attention
wandered from the page; her thoughts were busy with the possibilities of
her destiny. With bitterness she realised that, for her, Love must be
either a renunciation of ambition, a life passed with some simple
countryman, or else a career, a profession, an abnegation of quiet days.
Which should she strive for? 'What does it avail a man though he gain the
whole world and lose his own soul?' The words came back to her; but no,
she was not made for peaceful days, she would weary of them inevitably.

She heard a knock on the house door and, shaking off her unusual
depression, she hurried downstairs. Monsieur Gabriel stood in the
corridor explaining in his scholarly foreign German to the servant-maid,
that it was absolutely necessary for him to see Fraeulein von Graevenitz,
even if madame her mother could not receive him, as he had a matter of
importance to communicate. He smiled when he saw Wilhelmine--that good
smile of his, which was at once so kind, so bright, and yet so
unutterably sad.

'Ah! dear child!' he said, in French, 'I bring you good news. I have
procured the money.'

Wilhelmine went quickly up to him, and taking his hand in both of hers,
she drew him into the prim little dwelling-room where Frau von Graevenitz
received her rare guests. 'How can I ever thank you?' she said as she
closed the door.

'By thinking of me when you are far away,' he answered, 'and sometimes by
sending me a letter to lighten my gloom.'

'Yes!' she said eagerly; 'but tell me how you procured this great sum?'

'I