happy when, in the morning, she found herself
able to tell us that she had passed a night in dreamless sleep.

Annette suffered greatly from the heat. Bertha, however, said that it
was best to expose one's self to the sun, because the heat would then
be less oppressive. She was quite delighted to see how the sun browned
her own children.

Annette again introduced the subject of the parable of the Prodigal
Son, when Richard, with an ironical smile, replied, "I am glad to see
that you can dwell on a subject and again return to it; and I shall
only add, that in the Old Testament the history of a nation is
conceived in a popular manner, while the New Testament is a history in
which one exalted and idealized man serves as the sole and central
figure. The real life of the family, the relations of parents and
kindred, is not emphasized in the latter. Life, there, is isolated, and
looks only towards heaven.

"In the Old Testament, the life of the family is in constant action,
and superfluous figures which serve no moral in themselves are also
introduced.

"To express myself symbolically, I should say Moses has a brother and a
sister who are also important figures. Jesus, on the other hand, stands
alone against the golden background, and no relationship of His is
mentioned except that to His mother, which was afterward poetically
invested with a higher significance."

"Accept my thanks; I believe I understand you. If one were able always
to regard individual suffering as merely part of the world's
development, one would be saved from all pain," said Annette.

Richard's look was one of surprise, almost of anger, at these words.

When we were together, most of his attentions were for the daughter of
the kreis-director. Her calm and gentle manner seemed to him the very
opposite of Annette's; and it may have been his desire to let Annette
see that cultivated womanhood consists of something more than
incessantly propounding questions, or in keeping a man in a constant
trot to prove his gallantry by providing for the intellectual
requirements of the ladies.

"I greatly fear," said Richard to my wife, "that Annette is one of that
class of beings with whom everything resolves itself into talk, and of
whom one might well say that what to us is a church, is to them a
concert." And he went on to complain that, in the strict sense of the
word, Annette did not have a nice ear; that where she thought she fully
understood one's meani