e,
silent creature."

He smiled at the reproach, but it hurt his feelings all the same.

The apprehensions entertained about the manufactory for clocks proved
quite unfounded, for, on the contrary, the business for private hands
never had been so flourishing. Lenz was very proud of having prophesied
this. He received much praise on this account, but Annele saw nothing
remarkable in such a proof of his foresight: of course it is but
natural that each should understand his own business, but one thing was
quite certain, that the Techniker and the Doctor's son were fast making
money, while the original clockmakers were thankful and content to
remain in the old beaten path.

Annele frequently praised Proebler now, who at least tried to make new
discoveries.

Lenz, however, was quite engrossed with his work, and said to Annele:
"When I think each morning I rise--you may work honestly to day, and
your work will prosper and be completed,--I feel as if I had a sun in
my heart that never set."

"You have a talent for preaching, you ought to have been a pastor,"
said Annele, leaving the room and privately thinking---"There, that's a
hit at you; we are all to listen to him, but what any one else says is
of no consequence at all; that was a capital hit at him."

It was not revenge, but pure forgetfulness, that made Lenz often, when
Annele was relating some anecdote, start and say, as if just waking up,
"Don't be angry, but I have not heard one word you have been saying,
that beautiful melody is running in my head. I wish I could make it
sound as it ought! How clever the way in which the key changes from
sharps to flats!"

Annele smiled, but she did not soon forgive such absence of mind.

The pendulums continued to diverge still further.

Formerly, when Lenz used to come home from the brassfounder or the
locksmith, or from any expedition, his mother used to sit by him while
he was at dinner, and was interested in all he related; he enjoyed over
again with her the very glass of wine he had drunk away from her, and
the friendly greetings of those he had met during his absence. All that
Lenz detailed seemed of consequence to his mother, because it had
happened to her son. Now, when he came home, Annele had seldom time to
sit down beside him, and when she did so, and he began to tell her his
news, she would interrupt him, saying: "Oh! what does that signify to
me? I don't care at all about it. Other people may live just as the