As Tomasine returned along the avenue, where the road was guttered by the rain, and the storm whistled through the old trees, she felt as though she had just come from a mausoleum. In it she had met one single living man, wandering round and gazing on his dead. She had not the slightest desire to join him there. She turned and looked back at the great, dirty, plastered building, with its small windows. "No," she said aloud. Next morning, when she came into the parlour, John Kurt's bouquet had not arrived. It gave her a pang, she hardly knew why, for that was after all exactly what she wished. But was it? She was trying to make this clear to herself, when her father came in from his morning walk. He was very pale--he told her that old Kurt had died in the night. They had found him in the morning, lifeless, in his chair before the table. John Kurt came in a few minutes later; he did not speak, but flung himself down, crying. He cried so violently that both she and her father were frightened. Then--the self-accusation that followed! He came again every day and poured out his heart with affecting vehemence. He went nowhere else, spoke to no one but to them. Just to them and his own people. With these he worked day and night to build a temple of flowers on the great flight of steps before the house, down which the old man would be carried. This erection of flowers was wonderfully lovely; it was talked of far and near, and the evening before the funeral, numbers came up to see it, Tomasine and her father among them. The dead man's friend, Dean Green, was one of the first to come up the avenue, and after him, half the inhabitants of the mountain, both grown people and children, to look, to show their gratitude, and to say "Good-bye." They had been to see the clergyman first. Old Green stood on the steps, and spoke of him who had loved flowers so dearly, who had gone from our spring to the eternal one. Every one was moved, and the son was obliged to go away. The next day John went straight from the funeral to the Rendalens'. But he did not find Tomasine at home. He was so disappointed at this, so honestly distressed, that he stood silent for a long time, and at last let fall that he had no one now--no, not one single being. He only wished with all his heart that he could be laid in his grave too. He was nothing but a trouble even to those he cared for most. He saw that now. And he turned away. This quite touched old Mariane, to whom it had all been said, and when Tomasine came in at last, she related it so feelingly that her mistress was touched as well. The fact was that Tomasine had not wished to be at home. She feared him. She had not the courage to face his emotion, which might perhaps lead him in a special direction. She repented it now. She hastily took off her spectacles and wiped them, put them on again, and looked at herself in the glass. Was not she big and strong enough to hazard it? She stood there and weighed the question.