It was a large gloomy room; whose bare walls and barred windows caused it somewhat to resemble a prison. No trouble had been taken to impart any comfort or even a pleasant appearance to the office. And what for? What belonged to work was there; the rest was luxury, and luxury was a thing that the house of Almbach and Co., notwithstanding its notoriously not inconsiderable wealth, did not allow itself. At present no one was to be found in the room, excepting the young man, who sat at a desk with a big ledger open before him. He looked pale and as if he had been up late; his eyes, which should have been busy with figures, were fixed on the narrow strip of the sun's rays which fell slantingly across the room. In his gaze was something of the longing and bitterness of a prisoner, to whom the sunshine, penetrating into his cell, brings news of life and freedom from without. He hardly turned his head at the opening of the door, and asked indifferently-- "What is it? What do you want, Ella?" Every other wife at the second question would have gone to her husband and put her arm round his shoulder. Ella remained standing close to the doorway. It sounded far too icily cold, this "What do you want?" she evidently was not welcome. "I wished to ask how your headache is?" she began, shyly. "My headache?" Reinhold recollected himself suddenly. "Ah, yes, I think it has gone." The young wife closed the door and came a step or two nearer. "My parents are very furious again, that you were not at the feast yesterday, and were playing, instead, the whole night long," she told him hesitatingly. Reinhold knitted his brows. "Who told them? you perhaps?" "I?" her voice sounded half like a reproach. "The bookkeeper saw the garden house lighted up, and heard you playing as he returned this morning." An expression of contemptuous scorn played around the young man's lips, "Ah! I certainly had not thought of that. I did not believe that those gentlemen, after their jubilee, would have time or inclination left for observations. To be sure for spying they are always ready enough." "My father thinks--" began Ella, again. "What does he think?" shouted Reinhold. "Is it not enough for him that from morning to evening I am bound to this office; does he even grudge me the refreshment I seek at night in music? I thought that I and my piano had been banished far enough; that the garden house lay so distant and so isolated, that I could run no risk of disturbing the sleep of the righteous in the house. Fortunately no one can hear a sound." "Not so," said the young wife, softly, "I hear every note when all is still around, and I alone lie awake." Reinhold turned round and looked at his wife. She stood with downcast eyes and thoroughly expressionless face before him. His glance swept slowly down her figure as though he were unconsciously drawing some comparison, and the bitterness in his features became more plainly displayed.