There was a deep silence all round. The smiles froze on their faces, first one and then the other looked down upon the ground. “Go on,” cried Elsbeth, nodding to him gently. But a feeling of shame came over him that he thus dared to show his innermost self to these strange people. “I can’t go on,” he said, and rose. This time no one laughed, and for a while there was only a deep, oppressive silence, and then the girl who had been chosen to collect the forfeits came up to him and said, with a polite courtesy, “Then you must pay a forfeit.” “Willingly,” he answered, and detached his watch from the chain. “An uncomfortable fellow,” he heard one of the young gentlemen say low to his neighbor. It was he who had first called up that nickname. Then it was Leo’s turn, who treated them to one of his most racy anecdotes, but the gayety would not come back again. The rain splashed against the window panes with a hollow sound, the shadow of black clouds filled the room. It was as if the gray Dame was gliding through the air and touching the laughing young faces with her wings, so that they looked serious and old. Only when Elsbeth opened the piano and began a merry dance the frozen gayety recommenced. Paul stood in a corner and gazed at the merrymaking. They left him quite to himself, only now and then a shy glance met him. The twins were flying round the room, their curls were loose, and a wild light sparkled in their eyes. “Let them romp about,” thought Paul, “they must return to misery soon enough.” But that there was no misery for them never occurred to him. When Elsbeth was replaced at the piano by somebody else, she came towards him and said, “You are very much bored, are you not?” “Oh no,” he said. “Everything is still so new to me.” “Be merry,” she pleaded; “we only live once.” And at that moment Leo came rushing up to her, seized her round the waist, and danced away with her. “Nevertheless, she is still a stranger to you,” thought Paul. As she passed him again she whispered to him, “Go into the next room; I have something to tell you.” “What can she mean to tell me?” he thought; but he did as he was told. Half hidden by the curtain, he waited, but as she did not come, every minute the bitterness of his soul increased. He remembered his beautiful speeches about the peat-culture and Heine’s “Buch der Lieder,” and shrugged his shoulders contemptuously over his own stupidity. He felt as if he had grown years older and maturer in the course of this one afternoon. And then the questions suddenly arose within him, “What business have you here? What are all those merry people, who laugh and want to please each other, and live thoughtlessly from one day to another--what are all those to you? You were a fool, a miserable fool, when you thought that you had a right to be merry; that you, too, could be what they are.” The ground burned under his feet. He felt as if he were committing a sin by remaining a minute longer in this place.