For Heaven’s sake, thought Daniel, what is he trying to do to me? “I have often thought about it in quiet hours; it gave me the same feeling of satisfaction that I have in a chemical experiment, when the reactions of the various elements take place as they should: what Eleanore says is your word; what you feel is Eleanore’s law.” He is seeing ghosts, cried Daniel, he is tangling up the threads of my life. What does he mean? Why does he do it? “Don’t neglect what I am telling you! Don’t crush that wonderful flower! The girl is a rare specimen; the rarest I know. You need your whole heart with all its powers of love and kindness to appreciate her. But if my words reach you too late, please tear this letter into shreds, and get the whole idea out of your mind as soon and completely as possible.” “Come, let’s eat,” said Gertrude, as she entered the room with a dish of pickled herring. Eleanore was sitting on the sofa looking at Daniel quizzically. He was lost in thought. Daniel looked up, and studied the two women as if they were the figures of a hallucination: the one in dark red, the other in dark blue; minor and major keys. The two stood side by side, and yet so far removed from each other: they were the two poles of his world. XI “What has Benda got to say?” asked Gertrude hesitatingly. “Just think, he is going to Africa,” replied Daniel, with a voice as if he were lying. “Curious, isn’t it? I suppose he is on the ocean by this time.” With an expression on his face that clearly betrayed the fact that he was afraid the sisters might somehow divine or suspect the parts of the letter he wished to keep to himself, he read as much of it as he dared to them. “Why don’t you read on?” asked Eleanore, when he paused. She bent over the table, filled with a burning curiosity to know the whole contents of the letter, and while so doing her hair became entangled in the metal bric-a-brac of the hanging lamp. Gertrude got up and liberated her. Daniel had laid his hand over the letter, and was looking at Eleanore threateningly. His eye and that of the captured girl chanced to meet; she struggled between a feeling of amusement and one of annoyance. It gave Daniel an uncomfortable feeling to have her eyes so close to his. “Don’t you know that that is not polite?” he asked. “We have some secrets, probably, Benda and I.” “I merely thought that Benda had sent me his greetings,” replied Eleanore, and blushed with embarrassment. Daniel then held the letter above the chimney of the lamp, waited until it had caught fire, and then threw it on the floor, where it burned up. “It is late, and father is already waiting,” said Eleanore, after they had eaten in great haste.