At the same time a year later Hedwig was sitting in the same room--but alone. He had meant to be there by Christmas, but then had postponed his coming until New Year, and by New Year's eve he had not yet arrived. Instead a letter had come. She had been reading it over and over again for hours. She had aged greatly and bore the marks of intense suffering. A hard bitter smile hovered about her lips. Her cheeks were aflame with the fires of death, while she stared at the phrases in the letter, forced hollow phrases of tenderness, forced because he was embarrassed. She sank down in front of the settee on the same spot on which he had kneeled a year before, a woman tortured and humbled to death; and hiding her face in the cushions, she murmured: "One more!" * * * * * Dear lady, why are you looking at me so mournfully? What's the story to us? In the first place _I_ am not a genius; secondly, _you_ haven't got the talent for being deserted, and, thirdly, we shall stay the same good old friends we've always been even after New Year. THE NEW YEAR'S EVE CONFESSION Ah, dear lady, it's good to be here with you again, sitting so peacefully in this comfortable chair, ready for a cosy chat. Thank goodness, the holiday hubbub is over and done with and you have a little leisure for me again. Oh, the Christmas season! I do believe it was invented by the devil especially for the annoyance of us bachelors, to impress upon us the dreariness of our homeless lives. The thing that is a source of delight to others is a torture to us. Of course, of course, we're not all of us lonely. The joy of bestowing joy blooms for most of us, too. But the pure pleasure of sharing pleasure with others is embittered partly by a dose of ironical self-criticism, partly by that acid yearning which I might call, instead of homesickness, marriage-sickness. Why did I not come and pour my heart out to you? you ask, you sympathetic soul, who bestow consolation as generously as most of your sex bestow petty spite. Ah, but you see, the matter is not so simple. Don't you know what Speidel says in his charmingly chatty "Lonely Sparrows," which you, correctly divining the state of my soul, sent me on the third day of the holiday? He says, "The genuine bachelor does not want to be consoled. Once having become unhappy, he wants to indulge his unhappiness." Beside Speidel's lonely sparrow, there is also a species of confirmed old bachelors, family friends. I do not mean those professional destroyers of the family who insinuate themselves hypocritically with evil intent while making themselves comfortable at the hospitable hearth. I mean the good old uncle, papa's whilom schoolmate, who dandles baby on his knees while respectably reading aloud to mamma the story in the evening paper with omission of the indecent passages.