the Way_. Innstetten turned the
shade slowly from left to right and studied each individual picture.
Then he gave that up and, as the air was so sultry, opened the balcony
door and finally took up the package of letters again. He seemed to
have picked out a few and laid them on top the first time he looked
them over. These he now read once more in a half audible voice:

"Come again this afternoon to the dunes behind the mill. At old Mrs.
Adermann's we can see each other without fear, as the house is far
enough off the road. You must not worry so much about everything. We
have our rights, too. If you will say that to yourself emphatically, I
think all fear will depart from you. Life would not be worth the
living if everything that applies in certain specific cases should be
made to apply in all. All the best things lie beyond that. Learn to
enjoy them."

"'Away from here,' you write, 'flight.' Impossible. I cannot leave my
wife in the lurch, in poverty, along with everything else. It is out
of the question, and we must take life lightly, otherwise we are poor
and lost. Light-heartedness is our best possession. All is fate; it
was not so to be. And would you have it otherwise--that we had never
seen each other?"

Then came the third letter:

"Be at the old place again today. How are my days to be spent without
you here in this dreary hole? I am beside myself, and yet thus much of
what you say is right; it is salvation, and we must in the end bless
the hand that inflicts this separation on us."

Innstetten had hardly shoved the letters aside when the doorbell rang.
In a moment Johanna announced Privy Councillor Wuellersdorf.
Wuellersdorf entered and saw at a glance that something must have
happened.

"Pardon me, Wuellersdorf," said Innstetten, receiving him, "for having
asked you to come at once to see me. I dislike to disturb anybody in
his evening's repose, most of all a hard-worked department chief. But
it could not be helped. I beg you, make yourself comfortable, and
here is a cigar."

Wuellersdorf sat down. Innstetten again walked to and fro and would
gladly have gone on walking, because of his consuming restlessness,
but he saw it would not do. So he took a cigar himself, sat down face
to face with Wuellersdorf, and tried to be calm.

"It is for two reasons," he began, "that I have sent for you. Firstly,
to deliver a challenge, and, secondly, to be my second in the
encounter itself. The first is not agreea