r head, and her eyes
fastened again on the engraver.

"A man," the latter was just saying to his neighbor, Sperber's nephew,
"in whom one notices by his walk or his bearing or his speech, even to
the slightest degree, that he has taken too much of a good thing--is a
degenerate! In man there is a whole world at war. The microcosm is in
revolution! Storms are raging in the brain--the world is on fire! He
stands unmoved, a god in revolt! What is your opinion? That is the
highest self-conquest, the primeval type of manhood, the struggle and
victory without a parallel!"

"Well, drinking too deep can happen to a fellow ... I don't say no,"
said the nephew very quietly. "But your way of putting it strikes me as
very grand."

"Oho ...!" The engraver stretched himself, disengaged himself, so to
speak, from his own ego, and looked challengingly down the table. His
eye fell upon the beautiful girl who had given him her heart. He was
aware of her deadly pallor, of her eyes fixed desperately upon him.
"God help me--that sweet soul!" he said within himself. "There isn't
half an ounce of strength and sap in a woman like that. Wash me, but
don't make me wet! She wants a man with spirit, but she can't bear to
see the bottling. Ah, there ...!" He pulled himself together and
remained quite silent.

The young hostess rose now, and with her the guests. The last half hour
at the rustic table under the trees, the air had been a little heavy.
Many an eye had seemed to see old Rauchfuss go by and stop to shake the
engraver's hand mysteriously, as though to say that he spoke after his
own heart, and much more forcibly than he had ever been able to do.

The engraver now approached his hostess and said in a rather thick
voice, "To judge the living and the dead. In heaven's name, then, good
night. Tomorrow I go." She looked at him with eyes full of the
deadliest anxiety, but spoke not a word, holding him only with her
eyes. He was silent and gazed straight in front of him. It was evident
that he was making a great struggle, internally and externally, to
control himself. "I am who I am," he said. "There is no interpretation
to that. What has grown so," and he held out his sinewy hands before
him, "has grown so. Farewell ... But oh, your kisses--your royal
kisses! God keep you!"

"Stay," she said, "stay!" But her features grew even paler, she
tottered, and her head sank against the tree-trunk. Herr Kosch caught
her in his arms. The candles on