control.
Not to see her, not to be able to gather fresh strength from each
chance meeting, meant that the grip life had of him would relax--he
grew sick even at the thought of how, in some unknown place, in the
midst of strangers, she would go on living, and giving her hand and her
smile to other people, while he would never see her again. And he said
her name aloud to himself, as if he were in bodily pain, or as if the
sound of it might somehow bring him aid: he inwardly implored whatever
fate was above him to give him the one small chance he asked--the
chance of fair play.

The morning passed, without his knowing it. When, considerably after
his usual dinner-hour, he was back in his room, he looked at familiar
objects with unseeing eyes. He was not conscious of hunger, but going
into the kitchen begged for a cup of the coffee that could be smelt
brewing on Frau Krause's stove. When he had drunk this, a veil seemed
to lift from his brain; he opened and read a letter from home, and was
pricked by compunction at the thought that, except for a few scales run
hastily that morning, he had done no work. But while he still stood,
with his arm on the lid of the piano, an exclamation rose to his lips;
and taking up his hat, he went down the stairs again, and out into the
street. What was he thinking of? If he wished to see Louise once more,
his place was under her windows, or in those streets she would be
likely to pass through.

He walked up and down before the house in the BRUDERSTRASSE, sometimes
including a side street, in order to avoid making himself conspicuous;
putting on a hurried air, if anyone looked curiously at him; lingering
for a quarter of an hour on end, in the shadow of a neighbouring
doorway. Gradually, yet too quickly, the grey afternoon wore to a
close. He had paced to and fro for an hour now, but not a trace of her
had he seen; nor did even a light burn in her room when darkness fell.
A fear lest she should have already gone away, beset him again, and got
the upper hand of him; and wild schemes flitted through his mind. He
would mount the stairs, and ring the door-bell, on some pretext or
other, to learn whether she was still there; and his foot was on the
lowest stair, when his courage failed him, and he turned back. But the
idea had taken root; he could not bear much longer the uncertainty he
was in; and so, towards seven o'clock, when he had hung about for three
hours, and there was still no sign of