The silver gleamed on the table ... the tea-kettle puffed out delicate
clouds ... exquisitely tinted apples, firm as in Autumn, smiled
at him.

A word of admiration escaped him. And then, once more, he saw that
tragic smile on her lips--sad, wistful, almost compassionate.

"My darling," he said with sudden tenderness and caressed her
shoulder.

She nodded and smiled. That was all.

At table her mood was an habitual one. Perhaps she was a trifle
gentler. He attributed that to his approaching departure.

She drank a glass of Madeira at the beginning of the meal, the light
Rhine wine she took in long, thirsty draughts, she even touched the
brandy at the meal's end.

An inner fire flared in her. He suspected that, he felt it. She had
touched no food. But she permitted nothing to appear on the surface.
On the contrary, the emotional warmth that she had shown earlier
disappeared. The play of her thoughts grew cooler, clearer, more
cutting, the longer she talked.

Twice or thrice quotations from Goethe were about to escape her, but
she did not utter them. Smiling she tapped her own lips.

When he observed that she was really restraining a genuine impulse he