They lived in a small, old house on the marketplace, next door to Fürst's. The queer building, with a narrow alley on one side and a large door leading to the rambling courtway on the other, was the inheritance which Laura had expected, and now possessed. She was a slender but well-grown woman, with an open countenance. Some people considered her sullen, some thought her shy: that depended very much on what was passing. By some she was called talkative, by others sparing of her words. She took both people and circumstances into consideration. The friends had not met for five years. Laura sat sewing in the room behind the shop, the one with the window towards the alley. She rose, astonished, flushed, and somewhat agitated. Tomasine was really once more in her house. They were both a little stiff at first. A little dark-haired, thickset girl sat on a stool learning to sew. She looked solemnly up at them, but was soon sent out of the room. Her mother understood at once that they two, friends of old days, must be alone, and make it up together. And they did so. After several introductory remarks, Tomasine laid her complaint against Laura and her other friends, considerately, but still clearly. Laura answered: "When a girl does not allow herself to be hindered by the kind of life that John Kurt led, there is no use in any one else talking to her about it." Laura, for her part, had refused several men just because their conduct in that particular had been doubtful, or more than doubtful. But Hansen, she knew, was honourable in that respect as in others. The tall Tomasine felt very small under little Laura's steady gaze and quiet words. She fell from the position of accuser to that of accused, and her fall was no trifling one. She had felt very superior up there for several years, and a few words spoken in the course of a minute or two had laid her low. She did not feel much respect for her own powers; nay, for a moment, it made her unhappy to think how short-sighted she had been. She actually felt anxious to discover if she were equally stupid in other things, but she soon so far regained her balance as to understand that to look only at one side of things may be partly the fault of circumstances.