"She sobbed violently in my arms, and made me the fairest promises. I almost believe that at that moment she did indeed mean what she said, for there was a sound spot in her that had not yet been touched by the worm--a longing for what was pure and good. If this had not been the case, how would it have been possible for me to have continued in my blindness longer than the few weeks of the honey-moon? But she herself seemed so happy in those first months, though we lived quite by ourselves--for I had broken with my old cronies, and had no particular desire to form new acquaintances, whom I could only have found among the Philistine class that I so heartily despised. Then, too, she grew more charming with each day. Once in a while, however, I caught her poring over her prompt-books; and then I told her bluntly, for I could see that her eyes were red with weeping, that she longed to be back behind the foot-lights again, that she missed the applause and grieved because she could not any longer turn the heads of the whole parquet. 'What can you be thinking of!' she laughed. 'In my condition! Why, I should feel like sinking through the deepest trap-door, I should be so ashamed!' In this way she would drive away my suspicions; and when at length her child was born, I really thought she was so taken up with household joys and cares that she cared for nothing else. "It is true she was not such a foolish mother as to think her child an angel of beauty. It was a rather plain, unattractive-looking little thing--'the father over again,' remarked the women, very justly. But she played the _rôle_ of mother with considerable talent; and not until a long time later, when she was sent to the sea-shore to recuperate, did it occur to me that she parted without any particular grief from the laughing and cooing little creature that clung so tightly to her. I staid at home and let her go over to Heligoland by herself, in the charge of an elderly friend of hers--an actress, but a woman bearing an irreproachable name. I happened to have a few orders that it was necessary to execute just as soon as possible--among others two busts of a rich wharfinger and his wife--and as our household, small as it was, made pretty heavy drains upon my purse, I felt that I ought not to let these chances slip through my fingers. It was our first separation, and I found it hard enough to bear. But, as I had to work hard and also to fill a mother's place toward the child, the first two weeks passed pretty quickly. "But after that the little one began to give me a great deal of anxiety. Teething set in, there were bad days and worse nights, and the letters I received from my wife--in which she said she was doing admirably and had grown quite young again--did not tend to raise my spirits especially, for it appeared as if nothing were wanting to her happiness, not even her husband and child.