Inside, the signals of departure were more evident. The hall had been stripped bare of its scanty decorations, and in the disordered rooms a person of obviously Hebrew origin was to be seen roaming about with a pencil and a greasy note-book, making a careful inventory of the valuables. There was, indeed, only one room where the bustle and the confusion had been vigorously excluded and where the Hebrew gentleman’s foot had not yet ventured to tread. This was Frau von Arnim’s boudoir, and Hildegarde had taken refuge there like a shipwrecked mariner on a friendly island. She lay on her sofa with closed eyes and listened to the hammering and bumping of furniture over the bare boards. Only an occasional contraction of the fine brows and a tightening of the lips betrayed that she was awake, and that the sounds were painful to her. Frau von Arnim, who was working at her accounts by the window, never failed to catch that fleeting expression of suffering. It was as though some invisible nerve of sympathy existed between her and the invalid, and that she knew when the dull ache kindled to poignant pain. For a time she remained silent, ignoring what she saw. Then she rose, and coming to Hildegarde’s side, laid her hand tenderly upon the white forehead. "Does it cost so much?" she asked. "Does it cost too much? Ought I never to have allowed so great a sacrifice?" Instantly Hildegarde’s eyes opened and revealed a brightness that they had not shown since the days when she had ridden at Wolff’s side through the forest, and known neither suffering nor loss. "It’s not a sacrifice," she said, taking her mother’s hand, and holding it in her own. "When I think of what we are going to do, and why we are doing it, I feel as though I were giving myself some selfish pleasure and making you pay the price. After all, from my sofa the world will look much the same in Berlin as it does here, and if I am sorry to leave, it is only because every room has its dear associations. You see, on my side it is only a sentimental sort of pain, which is rather agreeable than otherwise. But for you it is different. It will be so lonely for you, and I know how you hate flats—a suite of lofts in a badly managed hotel is what you used to call them." Frau von Arnim smiled. "You have a bad memory in so far as it retains foolish remarks, better forgotten," she said. "I am sure I shall be very happy in our new home, and in any case, I, too, have my pleasure from our ’plot.’ I have just been reckoning that if we are careful we shall be able to allow them at least 1,000 marks more next year, and that will make all the difference in the world to them. They will not have to worry so much over their pfennige at any rate." "If only Wolff will accept it!" Hildegarde said doubtfully. "He is like the rest of us all; and if he thinks, as I suppose he must, that we are giving up anything, he will call it a sacrifice and will refuse to accept it."