From the kitchen came the odours of the choicest autumn dishes--roast duck with apples and a grape-cake, such as she alone knew how to prepare. Two bottles of precious Rhine wine stood in the cool without the window. She did not want to welcome him with champagne. The memories of its subtle prickling, and of much else connected therewith, nauseated her. If he left his village at six in the morning he must arrive at noon. And she waited even as she had waited seven years. This morning seven hours had been left, there were scarcely seven minutes now. And then--the door-bell rang. "That is the new uncle," she said to Amanda who was handling her finery, flattered and astonished, and she wondered to note her brain grow suddenly so cool and clear. A gentleman entered. A strange gentleman. Wholly strange. Had she met him on the street she would not have known him. He had grown old--forty, fifty, an hundred years. Yet his real age could not be over twenty-eight! ... He had grown fat. He carried a little paunch about with him, round and comfortable. And the honourable scars gleamed in round red cheeks. His eyes seemed small and receding.... And when he said: "Here I am at last," it was no longer the old voice, clear and a little resonant, which had echoed and re-echoed in her spiritual ear. He gurgled as though he had swallowed dumplings. But when he took her hand and smiled, something slipt into his face--something affectionate and quiet, empty and without guile or suspicion. Where was she accustomed to this smile? To be sure; in Amanda. An indubitable inheritance. And for the sake of this empty smile an affectionate feeling for this stranger came into her heart. She helped him take off his overcoat. He wore a pair of great, red-lined rubber goloshes, typical of the country doctor. He took these off carefully and placed them with their toes toward the wall. "He has grown too pedantic," she thought. Then all three entered the room. When Toni saw him in the light of day she missed the blue white golden scarf at once. But it would have looked comical over his rounded paunch. And yet its absence disillusioned her. It seemed to her as if her friend had doffed the halo for whose sake she had served him and looked up to him so long. As for him, he regarded her with unconcealed admiration. "Well, well, one can be proud of you!" he said, sighing deeply, and it almost seemed as if with this sigh a long and heavy burden lifted itself from his soul. "He was afraid he might have to be ashamed of me," she thought rebelliously. As if to protect herself she pushed the little girl between them. "Here is Amanda," she said, and added with a bitter smile: "Perhaps you remember." But he didn't even suspect the nature of that which she wanted to make him feel.