gether. All of a sudden he felt tongue-tied and kept looking about as if he had lost his way. They were alone amongst the leafless trees and the wet, withered foliage. Where was all the manly rapture which had previously filled him? Diederich felt embarrassed, as he had been during that last walk with Agnes, when Mahlmann had warned him, and he had jumped on a bus, torn himself away and disappeared. Agnes was just saying: "It is a very, very long time since you came to see us. Didn't papa write to you?" Somewhat confused, Diederich explained that his own father had died. Now Agnes hastened to express her sympathy, then she went on to ask why he had suddenly disappeared three years ago.
"Isn't that so? It is nearly three years now."
Diederich recovered his self-possession and explained that his student life had taken up all his time, that it was a jolly strenuous business. "And then I had to do my military service."
"Oh!"—Agnes stared at him. "What a great man you have become! And now I suppose you have got your doctor's degree?"
"That will come very soon now."
He gazed discontentedly in front of him. The scars on his face, his broad shoulders, all the signs of his well-earned manliness—were these nothing to her? Did she not even notice them?
"But what about you?" he said suddenly. A faint blush suffused her thin, pale face and even the bridge of her small, aquiline nose, with its freckles.
"Yes, sometimes I don't feel very well, but I'll be all right again."
Diederich expressed his regrets.
"Of course I meant to say that you have become prettier"—and he looked at her red hair which escaped from under her hat, and seemed thicker than formerly because her face had become so thin. He was reminded of his former humilia-
