Hitherto they have exchanged no caresses—indeed, Metta has often been deeply hurt by Olga’s show of brusque coldness. Now at last she learns the true significance of her own feelings and of the older girl’s previous restraint. Though Olga felt a reciprocal passion, she has had previous difficulties because of an affair with a woman, and she dreaded risking another such ordeal. She declares that never again can she endure “to be stripped naked in public.” Once enlightened, Metta determines that they shall never be separated. Within six months she will attain her majority and be mistress of a large maternal inheritance. She writes her father of her whereabouts and her intentions, asking for temporary funds, but assuring Olga that if they are refused she will raise money on her expectations. Her answer is a telegram from the aunt telling her that her father has had a stroke occasioned by the shock of her “robbing” her uncle, and that he is dying. Metta suspects a trap, but returns to find the news true, and lives through several hideous days before her father’s death ends the nightmare. During the subsequent night, half-delirious from exhaustion and her aunt’s vicious reproaches, she slips away to Olga’s rooms for solace. Here she is found at dawn by the aunt, the wronged uncle, and detectives. She declares her intention of never leaving her friend, but Olga, in the face of public denunciation, fails to come to her support, merely insisting that she is without responsibility in the whole matter. Confined at home and half-ill, Metta finds herself suddenly surrounded by medical books and pamphlets on homosexuality, all condemnatory or scandalmongering. Despite the bitter blow dealt her love and pride by her friend’s defection, she writes Olga repeatedly, but receives no answer. After a time, sickened by her reading and wounded by Olga’s silence to the point of apathy, she allows herself, under pressure from her aunt, to become engaged. The socially noteworthy match is featured in the news, and on the eve of her marriage she has word from Petermann of Olga’s suicide. Olga had, of course, none of her letters, but had received many scurrilous anonymous threats in which Metta recognizes the hand of her hated aunt, and Olga had, moreover, been prosecuted by the Rudloff estate which held her debts. Shocked into sudden hard maturity, Metta sells the family house, settles an allowance on her aunt, and leaves Berlin, her only mementos Olga’s “scorpion” cigaret case and the revolver with which she shot herself.