call
his features to her mind. Singularly enough she met with no great
success. His eyes were all that she could distinctly call up before
her, and his voice seemed always to be close to her ear. She rose and
stepped to the window, and opened the blinds a little to see if the
night were not almost over. She herself did not know why she should
thus look forward to the morning, for there was little hope that it
would bring her anything new or good. But it would bring _him_, she
could count on that. With burning lips she drew in the mild night-air,
and listened to a love-song, which a solitary youth sang as he passed
under her window.

She understood each word, and as he ended she repeated the closing
verses softly, and sighed as she shut the blinds again. Then she lay
down and at last fell asleep.

The day had long dawned outside, but the green twilight in which she
lay caused her to dream on undisturbed. It struck seven, eight, nine,
from the clock on the Theatinerkirche. Then at last she awoke, feeling
as refreshed as if she had just emerged from bathing in the sea. It was
some time before she could think clearly of all that had happened
yesterday and would probably happen today, but as she did so a vague
fear and anxiety came over her. She hastened to dress, so that she
might go out and ask whether any letter had come. When at last she
opened the door into the parlor, her figure wrapped in a loose robe,
and her hair thrust carelessly under a pretty cap, her foot hit against
some heavy object that took up the whole breadth of the threshold. As
the blinds were closed in this room also, she did not see at first,
owing to her short-sightedness, what it was that lay in her way. But
the object immediately began to move of its own accord, and raised
itself up before her, and she felt a cold tongue on her hand and saw
that the intruder was no other than Jansen's venerable Newfoundland
dog. The start he gave her was almost instantly lost in the greater one
with which she found herself saying, "Where the dog is, the master will
not be far away." And she was right, for there, in the back part of the
room, leaning against the stove, was a dark figure with disheveled
hair, standing as immovable in its place as she herself stood in the
doorway, deprived of all power to move a limb or open her lips.

Just at this moment the other door opened, and the old servant stepped
in and turned to the man at the stove with a gesture which wa