coming to a stop of its own accord beneath the overhanging bushes. Suddenly Agnes asked about Diederich's mother and sisters. He said that they had always been good to him and that he loved them. He was going to have his sisters' photographs sent. They had grown up into pretty girls, or perhaps not pretty, but so nice and gentle. One of them, Emma, read poetry like Agnes. Diederich was going to look after them both and get them married. But he would keep his mother with him, for he owed to her all that was best in his life until Agnes came. He told her about the twilight hours, the fairy tales beneath the Christmas trees of his childhood, and even about the prayers which he said "from his heart." Agnes listened, sunk in thought. At last she sighed: "I would like to meet your mother. I never knew my own." Full of pity he kissed her respectfully and with an obscure sense of uneasy conscience. He felt that he had now to say but one word which would console her for ever. But he could not speak, and put it off. Agnes gave him a profound look. "I know," she said slowly, "but you are good at heart, only sometimes you must act differently." Her words made him start. Then she concluded by way of apology: "I am not afraid of you to-day.
"Are you afraid at other times?" he questioned remorsefully.
"I am always afraid when other people are jolly and in the highest spirits. Formerly with my friends I often used to feel as if I could not keep pace with them, and that they would notice it and despise me. But they did not notice anything. When I was a child I had a doll with big, blue glass eyes, and when my mother died I had to sit in the next room with my doll. It kept staring at me with its hard, wide-open eyes that seemed to say to me: 'Your mother is dead. Now every one will look at you as I do.' I would like to have laid it on its back so that the eyes would close. But I didn't
