had had breakfast with them, and was now strolling
about the garden; but she scarcely heeded the young splendor of spring
about her. The thought of the guest in the spare room made her heart
beat. Yes ... she ought not to have done it. She ought not to have
plucked up courage and said, "Herr Kosch will stay here."

Meantime Herr Kosch was roaming about the courtyard and stables, and
finally, coming into the garden, he spied his young hostess. "Well," he
said to himself, "suppose we make an exception, and see how long it
will be before she begins the yawning game. It'll be worth the trouble,
after all."

So it came about that he talked to her as to one of his own kind, as he
would have talked with his comrades over the familiar table in the
tavern of an evening--although he had never got further with them than
to be considered an eccentric, possibly dangerous fellow: on two
very different grounds, first because they didn't understand him, and
then ... he went easily for this reason into a passion.

So now he took from his young hostess's heart the weight that he had
put there the previous evening by his mocking and contemptuous manner.
He let himself go, spoke after his own manner, and gave up the jesting,
playful tone which he always had ready for women. She listened to him
with silent attention, no matter what he talked about. The wide leaps
his mind took did not seem to weary her in the following. To his
astonishment, she did not yawn once. "She must be very much in love,"
he said to himself.

To her, among other things, he said: "I'm glad you've got your garden
so wild and natural--nothing clipped and trimmed, no rectangles,
circles, or other geometrical figures, from which one deduces at once
that one has to do with men of a very low grade of intelligence. To
take delight in squares and circles is a bad sign. Who wants to have
intercourse with cave-men? No--you've got a very decent garden that
betrays nothing."

"But I know," said Beate, "that people have lived here who got no great
pleasure out of life. If my mother had been happier, I believe she
would have laid out a few tulip-beds--which might have been round or
square, as the notion took her."

"Yes--well," said the engraver, "one must allow people to be happy in
their own way. But it's a horrible way. Just think--a poor devil wants
to create something in the joy of his heart; and he scratches like a
chicken in the earth, longish or oval, until he makes