That must have been yesterday? It was now irrevocably past. Would the lights of the city never come to release them?
By the time they had arrived they had agreed that it was not worth while getting into the same cab. Diederich took the tram. With the merest glance and touch of the hands they separated.
"Phew!" exclaimed Diederich, when he was alone. "That has settled it." He said to himself: "It might just as well have gone wrong." Then, indignantly: "Such an hysterical person!" She herself would probably have clung to the boat. He would have taken a bath alone. She only hit on the trick because she wanted to be married at all costs! "Women are so impetuous and they are without restraints. We men cannot keep up with them. This time, by God, she led me an even worse dance than formerly with Mahlmann. Well, let it be a lesson to me for life. Never again!" With assured gait he betook himself to the Neo-Teutons. Henceforth he spent every evening there, and in the day time he ground for his oral examination, not at home, as a precaution, but in the laboratory. When he did come home he found it laborious to mount the stairs, and he had to admit that his heart was beating abnormally. Tremblingly he opened the door of his room—nothing. In the beginning, after it had become a little easier, he ended regularly by asking the landlady if any one had called. Nobody had called.
A fortnight later a letter came. He opened it without thinking, then he felt inclined to throw' it into the drawer of his writing table without reading it. He did so, but then took it out again and held it in front of his face at arm's length. His hasty and suspicious glance caught a line here and there. "I am so unhappy. …" "We've heard all that before," Diederich thought in reply. "I am afraid to come to you. …" "So much the better for you!" "It is dreadful to think we have become strangers to one another. …" "Well, you've grasped that much anyhow." "Forgive me for what has hap-
