"The 'fetters' shall not press upon you any longer, Reinhold. You can attain your object unhindered, and your--prize. Good-night." She opened the door quickly and went out. The moonlight fell brightly on the slight figure in the darkness, upon the sad pale face and the blond plaits. In the next moment she had disappeared. Reinhold stood alone. * * * * * "This house is miserable now," said the old bookkeeper in the office, as he put his pen behind his ear, and closed the account book. "The young master away for three days without giving any signs of his being alive, without enquiring for wife or child. The Herr Captain does not set his foot across the threshold; the principal goes about in such a rage that one hardly dares to go near him; and young Frau Almbach looks so wretched that one's heart aches to see her. Heaven knows how this unhappy story will end." "But how, then, did this disturbance come so suddenly?" asked the head clerk, who also--it was the hour for closing the office--put his writing aside and shut his desk. The bookkeeper shrugged his shoulders. "Suddenly? I do not believe it was unexpected by any of us. It has been smouldering in the family for weeks and months; only the spark was wanting in all this inflammable matter, and it came at last. Frau Almbach brought the news home from some lady's party, and thus her husband learned what half the town knew already, and what no one hears willingly, of his son-in-law. You know our chief, and how he always looked upon all this artist business with dislike; how he fought against it--and now this discovery! He sent for the young master, and then there was such a scene--I heard part of it in the next room. If Herr Reinhold had only behaved sensibly and given in in this case when he really was not innocent, perhaps the affair might have been set aside, instead of which he put on his most obstinate manner, told his father-in-law to his face that he would not remain a merchant, would go to Italy, would become a musician; he had endured the slavery here long enough, and much more of the same kind. The chief could not contain himself for rage; he forbade, threatened, insulted at last, and then, of course, came the end. The young master broke out so wildly that I thought something would happen. He stamped his foot like a madman, and cried--'And if the whole world set itself in opposition, it will still be. I will not be domineered over anyhow, nor allow my thoughts and feelings to be prescribed for me.' And it went on in this tone. An hour later he stormed out of the house, and has not let himself be heard of since. God protect everyone from such family scenes."