and Adeline and Emilie came to speak to him. Oh, the things of the past—not the past things of which the atoms still hovered about this house, those of the old people, but the things of their own past, of the bygone dead years of all of them, years of a youth not so long ago—how they crowded in amongst them all, how they filled the atmosphere of the faintly sombre room, while the snow reflected its gleams indoors to water away brightly in the old mirrors! . . . How did they all come to be here like this, how did they all come to be here like this, as in a refuge, as in a sanctuary, a silent haven of simple love? . . . How nerveless she became, how nerveless, when she saw her husband and her son come in, those two who . . .! She could not pursue her thoughts of nervelessness and sadness any further. Alex also now entered; and in him, so young, so young, she also saw all the past, flashing at her suddenly out of his eyes, with the vision of his father's death. . . . But now the girls came in too, and, when Guy and Gerdy came, both laughing, she also laughed, because of their gaiety, their flaxen-haired joy in living, young and strong and healthy and simple, both of them. . . . How happy, how happy those two were! Oh, the more the past heaped itself up, the more the present was overcast with shadow; but those two, Gerdy and Guy, were young and strong and healthy and simple! . . . Happy, happy! And, with a laugh almost of happiness, however intensely she might feel all the things of the past, she asked Addie:
"Isn't it too much for Uncle Ernst, now?"
"Yes, I shall take him home," said Addie.
"Can't he stay and dine one day?"
"Perhaps later on; he must get used to it first. The great thing is not to force him."
