w Susanna drew him into her room,
caressing him, and heard his deep, passionate voice; then the door was
closed behind them. 'Caught!' said I, softly, 'caught, like Tannhaeuser
of old in the Hoerfelsberg!' And bitter tears ran from my old eyes as I
went down-stairs to go to Anna Maria.

"Brockelmann came toward me in consternation. 'The master is here,' she
called to me, 'but Anna Maria will not believe it.' I went into her room
without knocking; she was sitting on the little sofa, her New Testament
before her on the table. In the dying daylight her great blue eyes
looked forth almost weirdly from the face worn with grief.

"'Klaus has come, my child,' I said, going up to her.

"She looked at me incredulously.

"'I have seen him, Anna Maria; it is true.'

"'Where is he, then?' she asked. 'Why does he not come to me?'

"'My dear child'--I took her hand--'Klaus is with Susanna.'

"She let her head drop. 'But then he will come,' she said; 'he must
come, of course! He will want something to eat, and he will want to
scold me. I wish he would tell me how bad I am, how unjustly I have
acted, so that I might tell him everything, everything that lies so
heavily on my heart. Perhaps, perhaps my voice may penetrate him once
more, when he thinks of all that we have lived through in common, when
he thinks how I love him!'

"I pressed her hand and sat down silently beside her; that sweet, clear
'Klaus, Klaus! my dear Klaus!' still rang in my ears, and then the
sobbing. And now, if he should hear from her own lips why she wept? If
he should lift the white cloth from her brow? The calmest man would
become a tiger, and he was not calm, any more than Anna Maria--God help
them! I trembled at the thought of those two standing face to face.

"And the darkness fell and concealed the objects in the room; before the
windows the branches of the old elms swayed, ghost-like, in the wind,
ever bending toward us, as if beckoning with their lean arms. And Anna
Maria waited! At every sound in the house she started up--I thought I
heard her heart beat--and each time she was deceived.

"At last, at last! That was his step on the stairs! She rose, all at
once, to her full, proud height. 'Klaus,' she said, 'my brother
Klaus!'--as if she must be encouraged in mentioning the entire,
intimate, sacred relation in which they stand to each other--'my only
brother!' In these few words lay the destiny of her whole life.

"The sound of Klaus's voice c