Annele remained sitting where the minister had left her. She found it hard, for sitting with her hands before her and thinking was not her habit. She forced herself to it now. One sentence of the minister's kept ringing in her ears: "You have often good and pure thoughts,--thoughts of penitence; but they visit you as guests, drink their glass, and are gone. You put the chairs in place again, wipe off the table, and all is as if they had not been." Annele reflected upon it and acknowledged it was true. She could be hard upon herself as well as upon others. Why have you thus misused your life? she asked herself. The child woke up and cried. "The minister has no children; it is very well for him to tell me to sit and think, but I must quiet my child." She took the little girl out of bed and fondled her more tenderly than usual. The child helped to drive away her solitary thoughts. She suddenly remembered the tune that Lenz had played the first time she was at the house, and she sang her baby to sleep by it now: "Love it is the tender blossom." She still sang on after the child was asleep and lying quiet in her arms, and as she sang the words she thought: Whom have I ever loved? whom?--I wanted to marry the landlord's son and the engineer in order to have a good position; but as for loving any man with my whole heart, I never did. And my husband? I married him because one of the doctor's daughters would have taken him, and because I wanted to get away from home, and because he was good-tempered and everybody spoke well of him. Annele started as the child turned in her sleep. She quieted her again, but felt uneasy at being thus alone with her thoughts. There seemed ghosts lurking in all the corners, even in broad daylight. If only some one were here to cheer me up! Come, Lenz; come home! Be kind, and all will go well. We need no priest to help us; we can help ourselves. We are helped; I love you. It was noon, and the sun was shining warm out of doors. Annele wrapped the child carefully up and carried it out in front of the house. Perhaps Lenz was on his way home; she would give him a cordial greeting, bid him the good morning he had forgotten to say, and tell him all should henceforth be peace between them. At this hour, five years ago, they had been married, and now they would be married again. The figure of a man, still too far off to be recognized, was seen coming up the hill. "Call father!" she said to the child. "Father! father!" the little thing cried. The man came nearer. It was not Lenz, but Faller, hurrying up with an extra hat in his hand. "Is Lenz at home yet?" "No." "Good Heavens! this is his hat. My brother-in-law picked it up in the gully where he was cutting wood. If Lenz should have done himself any violence!" Annele's knees shook; she pressed the child to her till it cried. "You are mad, and want to make me mad!" she exclaimed. "What do you mean?" "Is that not his hat?"