"Oh, dearest Miss, none will be given you. The man said only his nearest relatives, and those only very seldom--for I asked all I could, I felt the moments were priceless--my dear patron spoke not a word. 'His wife, if he has one,' said the man, making hideous pleasantries--he well knew there is no wife--or his _Braut_, if there is one, or a brother or a sister, but no one else." "Do his brothers and Trudi know?" "I at once telegraphed to them." "Then they will be here to-night." The women and children in the village ran out to look at Anna as she passed. She did not see them. Axel's house stood open. The Mamsell, overcome by the shame of having been in such a service, was in hysterics in the kitchen, and the inspector, a devoted servant who loved his master, was upbraiding her with bitterest indignation for daring to say such things of such a master. The Mamsell's laments and the inspector's furious reproaches echoed through the empty house. The door, like the gate, was garlanded with flowers. Little more than an hour had gone by since Axel passed out beneath them to ruin. Anna went straight to the study. His papers were lying about in disorder; the drawer of the writing-table was unlocked, and his keys hung in it He had been writing letters, evidently, for an unfinished one lay on the table. She stood a moment quite still in the silent room. Manske had gone to find the coachman, and she could hear his steps on the stones beneath the open windows. The desolation of the deserted room, the terrible sense of misfortune worse than death that brooded over it, struck her like a blow that for ever destroyed her cheerful youth. She never forgot the look and the feeling of that room. She went to the writing-table, dropped on her knees, and laid her cheek, with an abandonment of tenderness, on the open, unfinished letter. "How are such things possible--how are they possible----" she murmured passionately, shutting her eyes to press back the useless tears. "So useless to cry, so useless," she repeated piteously, as she felt the scalding tears, in spite of all her efforts to keep them back, stealing through her eyelashes. And everything else that she did or could do--how useless. What could she do for him, who had no claim on him at all? How could she reach him across this gulf of misery? Yes, it was good to be brave in this world, it was good to have courage, but courage without weapons, of what use was it? She was a woman, a stranger in a strange land, she had no friends, no influence--she was useless. Manske found her kneeling there, holding the writing-table tightly in her outstretched arms, pressing her bosom against it as though it were something that could feel, her eyes shut, her face a desolation. "Do not cry," he begged in his turn, "dearest Miss, do not cry--it cannot help him."