When the Director entered the dining room in the morning, such a beautiful duet resounded from the next room that he was compelled to draw nearer. Agnes and Cornelli were both singing a lovely song with such deep feeling that the Director could hardly speak. When they had ended, he patted them both on the shoulder with fatherly tenderness and then passed into the next room. Here Mux approached him and said his verse faultlessly in a loud, clear voice. On the table the Director found two beautiful drawings of his brown horses, and his joy over them was so great that he did not put them down for quite a while. But finally he saw all at once a large picture resting in the middle of the table. His house, with the surrounding garden, the luminous meadow with the view toward the valley and the distant mountains beyond, was painted in such fresh and absolutely natural colors that Mr. Hellmut was quite overcome. This was the view he had loved so passionately from his childhood. “Cornelli, come here!” the father called. “Just look at this picture! Don’t you have a beautiful home? Do you love your home as much as your father loves it?” “Oh yes, Papa, I love it so much!” said Cornelli. “And I have to think every day that I never knew how beautiful it was before I went away. But ever since I came home again, I know. Oh, how beautiful it looks in the picture!” Agnes had been standing behind Cornelli. Suddenly she exclaimed passionately: “Oh, Cornelli, if only you didn’t have such a beautiful home!” “Agnes,” the mother said in alarm, “what unseemly words are you saying?” The Director looked in astonishment at Agnes, whose eyes were flashing fire while she regarded the painting. “Have you had a disagreement with Cornelli? Is that the reason why you don’t want her to have such a beautiful home?” he asked with a sly smile. Agnes flushed scarlet. “Oh no, Mr. Hellmut, I did not mean it that way. I have never fought with Cornelli, and I only fight with Dino because he wants to have Cornelli all the time. If Cornelli didn’t have this beautiful home and if she were like me and had to give up all her music lessons and had to earn her living, we could do fine things together. She has such a beautiful voice that we could hire a harp and could travel into strange cities and sing before the houses. Later on we could give concerts and begin a singing school. But I can’t do anything alone.” At this outbreak, which no sign from her could check, the mother became alternately hot and cold from fright. Agnes’ eyes still flashed with passionate excitement like burning coals.