esi, you are still a child."

"I know."

"There are things which cannot yet be explained to you."

"On such subjects you may hold your peace."

"You have spoken with that woman's husband?"

"He said, you had eloped with his wife."

"And that is why you came after me?"

"Yes."

"Now what do you want?"

"I want you to leave that woman."

"Have you lost your senses?"

"Mine? Not yet."

"You wish perhaps to hint that I have lost mine: it is possible, very
possible."

Therewith he sat down beside the table, and leaning his chin on his
hands, began to gaze abstractedly into the candle-flames like some real
lunatic.

I stepped up to him, and laid my head on his shoulder.

"Dear Lorand, you are angry with me."

"No. Only tell me what else you know."

"If you wish I will leave you here and return."

"Do as you wish."

"And what shall I tell dear mother, if she asks questions about you?"

Lorand dispiritedly turned his head away from me.

"You wrote to me to cheer and comfort mother and grandmother:--tell me
then, what shall I write to them, if they enquire after you?"

Lorand answered defiantly,

"Write that Lorand is dead."

At his answer the blood boiled within me. I seized my brother's hands
and cried to him:

"Lorand, till now the fathers were suicides in our family: do you wish
that the mothers should continue the list?"

It was a pitiless remark of mine, I knew. Lorand commenced to shiver, I
felt it. He stood up before me and became so pale.

I wished I had addressed him more gently.

"My dear brother Lorand, could you bear to become responsible for a
mother, who left her child, and for another who died for her child?"

Lorand clasped his hands and bowed his head.

"If you only knew what you are saying to me now?" he said with such
bitter reproach that I can never forget it.

"But I have not yet told you all I know."

"What do you know? As yet you are happy--your life mere play--passion
does not yet trouble you. But I am already lost, through what, you have
no idea, and may you never have!"

How he must love that woman!

It would have cost me few words to make him hate and despise her, but I
did not wish to break his heart. I had other means with which to steel
his heart, that he might wake up, as from a delirious dream, to another
life.

I too had had visions about my piano-playing beauty: but I had forgotten
that ideal for ever and ever, for being able to play, after she kn