Beate Rauchfuss felt as if some one who belonged to her had come home. She would not have been surprised if the visitor had said to her, "Well, how is it? Have I changed much in all this time? I hope you will understand me as well as you used to." She spoke no word, or as good as none. If she had let herself go, she would have had to pour out her whole heart to him. This was a man--a live man. She knew it. None of the people of her acquaintance, it seemed to her, had ever been so much alive. They were all lulled into a stupor by habit becoming second nature. Her father? She half suspected that he might have been alive, if he had chosen. But it hadn't suited him to, and he had drunk to stupefy himself. It was no doubt from him that she inherited the longing to be alive and to live among the living. She could not take her eyes from the keen, alert face, and she felt a stream of life and power flowing to her from him. But he scarcely noticed her, and went on arguing in his curt, pugnacious way with the suitors, who looked at him as if he were some mad animal. When the party began to break up, she said to the Raven-mother firmly and audibly, so that they all heard it, "Herr Kosch will stay here. It is too late now for him to go down into Weimar to find an inn. Have the guest-room got ready for him." These words forced themselves out of her very soul. She seemed to have to lift a ton's weight to speak them. She would not give him up! And he stayed. When all had gone, she had a few short moments alone with him in the living-room. He stood with his back to the window and looked about the room. "What will these gentlemen say to your entertaining a chance stranger here? And what do _you_ think of it?" "I? I think that it is too late for you to find lodgings down in Weimar." "Oh," he said, "I'm not a princess. I'd have crept into any hole that offered me shelter." She gazed at him in silence, and blushed a rosy red. There was something of merry mockery in the glance that he fixed on her. "Ah ... women ... women!" he said lightly. It was as if something had seized her by the throat and strangled her. "That is a man who has been through a great deal," she thought to herself; and she remembered the men's tales about women that she had heard in the servants' hall. "What does he think of me?" Hot tears rose to her eyes. She took a step forward, and tried to speak, but found no words. "I know ..." she said, and could get no further. "What do you know, child? What should a pretty child like you know?" She grew deadly pale. "Oh, speak to me as you spoke to the young men! Speak to me as if I were a human being!" There was something beseeching in her voice, and something shy and awkward. She went on hurriedly, like one who has much to say and condenses a great deal into a few words, "Give me your hand, and say quite simply, 'It is good of you to want to keep me here.'"