"I am miserable," she thought, "and I have made him miserable. How will it all end?" In trembling haste she dressed and hurried out. She had a one all-dominating desire to seek help and comfort from some one who could understand her, some one, too, who held Wolff’s happiness higher than her own and could be just to both. She needed a woman’s comfort, and she turned now to Frau von Arnim. Hitherto she had shrunk from the inevitable meeting, now she sought it with the desperation of one who knows no other course. She had indeed no one else to turn to. Before Wolff she was tongue-tied. It was not only that silence was forced upon her by a mingled pride and fear; the subtle understanding between them had been rudely broken, and though their love for each other remained, they had inwardly become something worse than strangers. For there is no reserve so complete, so insurmountable, so surcharged with bitterness as that which follows on a great passion. And then, too, what had she to say to him? "I love you; but I have brought ruin upon your life. I love you; but I am not happy with you." Had she even the right to say that to him? Was it not, in any case, useless? Yet she knew she must unburden her heart, if for no other reason than that the power to keep silence was passing out of her hands. Thus it was natural that her footsteps turned for the first time towards the little flat near the Brandenburger Tor. And on her road she met Arnold himself. It was as though fate pursued her. "I was on my way to you," he said quietly, as he turned to walk by her side. "I have something to tell you, and should have been sorry if we had missed. It is about Miles." Nora glanced at him, and her eyes were full of a miserable gratitude. "How good you are to me!" she said. "I have not deserved it; you are my only friend here." "Surely not," he answered. "What I can do is little enough. I have found out the full extent of Miles’s liabilities and have endeavoured to persuade his creditors to wait. Unfortunately, they are obdurate on the subject. They believe there is going to be war and that your brother might leave Berlin suddenly. It seems to me that you should do one of two things, Nora—either allow me to—to advance the money, or to tell your husband the truth." She put up her hand with a movement of involuntary protest. "You know that the first is out of the question," she said proudly. "And the second! Oh, Robert, I am afraid! It may ruin Wolff, and then—they hate each other so. Wolff will send him away, and——" She broke off with a quick breath that was like a sob. "Isn’t that the best thing that can happen?" Arnold answered. "Your brother will never do any good here. He is better in England."