g led over to the table.

Suddenly she fixed her silent gaze on Daniel. He got up involuntarily,
and seized the back of his chair. His colour changed; he distorted the
corners of his mouth; he was nervous. But when Gertrude withdrew her
hand from her father's and extended it to him, and when he took it and
his eye met hers--he could not help but look at her--his solicitude
vanished. For what he read in her eyes was an unreserved and irrevocable
capitulation of her whole self, and Daniel was the victor. His face grew
gentle, grateful, dreamy, and resplendent.

It was not merely the sensuous charm revealed in the feeling which
Gertrude betrayed that moved him: it was the fact that she came as she
had come, a penitent and a convert. The sublime conviction that he had
been able to transform a soul and awaken it to new life touched him
deeply.

This it was that drew him to Gertrude more than her countenance, her
expression, and her body combined. And now he saw all three--her
countenance, her expression, and her body.

Jordan had a foreboding of something. He felt that he would have to take
the girl in his arms and flee with her. Pictures of future misfortune
crowded upon his imagination; the hope he had cherished for Gertrude was
crushed to the earth.

Benda stared at his plate in silence. Nevertheless, just as if he had
other eyes than those with which he saw earthly things, he noticed that
Eleanore's hands and lips were trembling, that with each succeeding
second she grew paler, that she cast a distrustful glance first at her
father, then at her sister, and then at Daniel, and that she finally, as
if overcome with a feeling of exhaustion, slipped away from her place by
the table lamp, stole into a corner, and sat down on the hassock.

But after they had all resumed their seats at the table, Gertrude
sitting between Benda and her father, Eleanore came up and sat down next
to Daniel. She never took her eyes off Gertrude; she looked at her in
breathless surprise, Gertrude smiled as she had smiled when leaning
against the door, timidly and passionately.

From that moment on, the conversation lagged, Benda suggested to his
friend that it was time for them to leave. They thanked Jordan for his
hospitality and departed. Jordan accompanied them down the stairs and
unlocked the front door. When he returned, Eleanore was just going to
her room: "Well, Eleanore, are you not going to say good-night?" he
called after her.

S