"A young man turned up. His name don't matter now, poor fellow. He was just a clever all-over-the-place young man like so many of them, thinking they know more about everything than God Almighty;--like this young man in a way, only not a bad young man like him;--and downright sick with love of Mercedes. He followed her about all over Europe and went to every concert she gave and laid himself out to please her in all the ways he could. And he had a great charm of manner--he was a Russian and very high-bred--and he sort of fascinated her, and she liked it all, I can tell you. Her youth was beginning to go, and the Baron was mighty gloomy, and she just basked in this young man's love, and pretty soon she began to think she was in love with him--perhaps she was--and had never loved before, and she certainly worked herself up to suffer considerably. Well, the Baron saw it. He saw she didn't treat him the way she'd treated the others; she was kind of humble and tender and distracted all the time. The Baron saw it all, but she never noticed that he was getting gloomier and gloomier. I sometimes wonder if things might have been different if he'd been willing to confide in me some. It does folks a sight of good if there's someone they can tell things to. But the Baron was very reserved and never said a word. And at last she burst out with a dreadful scene. You were with them; yes, it was that summer at Felsenschloss; but you didn't know anything about it of course. I was pretty much in the thick of it all, as far as Mercedes went, and I tried to make her see reason and told her she was a sinful woman to treat her husband so; but I couldn't hold her back. She broke out at him one day and told him he was like a jailor to her, and that he suffocated her talent and that he hung on her like a vampire and sucked her youth, and that she loved the other man. I can see her now, rushing up and down that long saloon on that afternoon, with the white blinds drawn down and the sun filtering through them, snatching with her hands at her dress and waving her arms up and down in the air. And the Baron sat on a sofa leaning on his elbow with his hand up over his eyes and watched her under it. And he didn't say one word. When she fell down on another sofa and cried and cried, he got up and looked at her for a moment; but it wasn't the scornful, loving look; it was a queer, dark, dead way. And he just went out. And we never saw him alive again.