With quiet astonishment he regarded the elegant stranger. Coming nearer, however, he recognised him at once in spite of the twilight, and, a little confused with pleasure, stretched out his hand. Upon his tired, peaceful features, there was no sign of any sense of strangeness, any desire for an explanation. Stueckrath realized that toward so simple a nature craft would have been out of place, and simply declared that he had desired to renew an acquaintance which he had always remembered with much pleasure. "I don't want to speak of myself, Baron," the man replied, "but you probably scarcely realise what pleasure you are giving my wife." And he nodded down at her who stood beside him, apparently unconcerned except for her wifely joy. A few friendly words were exchanged. Further speech was really superfluous, since the man's unassailable innocence demanded no caution. But Stueckrath was too much pleased with him to let him feel his insignificance by an immediate departure. Hence he sat a little longer, told of his latest purchases, and was shamed by the satisfaction with which the man rehearsed the history of his stable. He did not neglect the courtesy of asking them both to call on him, and took his leave, accompanied by the couple to the door. He could not decide which of the two pressed his hand more warmly. When in the darkness of the lower hall he looked upward, he saw two faces which gazed after him with genuine feeling. * * * * * Out amid the common noises of the street he had the feeling as though he had returned from some far island of alien seas into the wonted current of life. He shuddered at the thought of what lay before him. Then he went toward the _Tiergarten_. A red afterglow eddied amid the trees. In the sky gleamed a harmony of delicate blue tints, shading into green. Great white clouds towered above, but rested upon the redness of the sunset. The human stream flooded as always between the flickering, starry street-lamps of the _Tiergartenstrasse_. Each man and woman sought to wrest a last hour of radiance from the dying day. Dreaming, estranged, Stueckrath made his way through the crowd, and hurriedly sought a lonely footpath that disappeared in the darkness of the foliage. Again for a moment the thought seared him: "Take her and rebuild the structure of your life." But when he sought to hold the thought and the accompanying emotion, it was gone. Nothing remained but a flat after taste--the dregs of a weary intoxication. The withered leaves rustled beneath his tread. Beside the path glimmered the leaf-flecked surface of a pool. "It would be a crime, to be sure," he said to himself, "to shatter the peace of those two poor souls. But, after all, life is made up of such crimes. The life of one is the other's death; one's happiness the other's wretchedness. If only I could be sure that some happiness would result, that the sacrifice of their idyl would bring some profit."