For the first time since she awoke to the carefree joy of budding youth, the ball of crystal that was her soul seemed stained and darkened; it no longer swam in the sunlight, shot through and through by the rays. About nine o'clock, when the rain was coming down in torrents, and it had been proposed that the Kirsten girls should spend the night with Beate, their three comrades and Frau Kummerfelden at the Sperbers', while the suitors would have to accustom themselves gradually to the idea of going out into the wind and wet, there came a loud ring at the gate of the courtyard. "For heaven's sake!" cried the Raven-mother. The rest sat in silent wonder; their number was complete--who could it be? "Perhaps it's another one coming over from the Sperbers'," said Röse. "Heaven forbid!" said Beate. She was thinking, "It will be no life at all if I marry one of these--it would be a hopeless business." And she felt again the strength of her longing, hungry young soul, which yearned to grow and yet no one would give it its food. She was lost in these thoughts, in her new strange pain, when the stable-girl came in out of breath and said, "I've just let in a strange gentleman, who asks leave to wait a little while till the weather's not so bad. He's come across country, he says." "Well," said the Raven-mother, "is he a proper sort of a person?" "Oh yes!" The stable-girl brought her hand down on her thigh in emphatic assurance. "He's certainly a gentleman, even if he is wet through." All laughed loudly. The sudden burst of laughter rose up as unexpectedly as a covey of birds startled by a pedestrian in a quiet stubble-field. Before it had died away, Beate said to the girl, "Bring him in and do what you can for him." The Raven-mother also rose, saying, "We'll have a look at him. Didn't he give his name?" "Engraver Kosch, he said three times--and how he said it!" answered the sturdy girl, grinning. "And he said other things too ... that he came from White of Egg, he said, and Ashes or ... I don't know what all else." The girl rubbed her arms and kept on grinning. "I was to tell you that, he said. He was brewed and baked, he said just the same way as the people up here." The courtier jumped up, crying, "We can't have him in here--he's a lunatic! It's quite impossible, my dear Mamsell Rauchfuss." Beate smiled. "If he's brewed and baked in the same way as all of us, why not?" "Because that's foolishness," said the Sperbers' nephew. "Foolish?" said the much-courted one, laughing. "Are we then from White of Egg?" "But, my dear Mamsell," said Herr von Mengersen, "these are things ..." "And he said more ... other kinds of things," said the maid, laughing. "Be quiet!" commanded the courtier. "No, no," said the girl, "I wasn't going to say anything. That was just for us." "Go!" cried the courtier, stretching out his long, soft hands as if to ward off some danger. "Remember that there are young ladies present."