Knips made a piteous face, and dropped his head entirely on one shoulder. "I now appeal to the interest which you take in the studies of my husband, and I appeal to your heart, when I beseech you to give me frankly and straightforwardly the information which must be desirable to us all." She stopped. Knips, with bent head, looked askance at her, and also remained silent. "I beg for an answer," said Mrs. Struvelius, emphatically. "With all my heart," began Knips at last, in a piping voice. "But I do not know what I have to answer to." "My husband received from you the parchment which was the subject of his last treatise." "Did the Professor tell you that?" asked Knips, still more piteously. "No," answered Mrs. Struvelius; "but I heard you come, and I also heard that he promised to be silent about something, and when I entered his room later I saw the parchment lying on his table, and when I enquired about it, he said, 'That is a secret.'" The Magister looked round about uneasily, and at last cast his eyes down on his knees, where his trousers were unusually threadbare and smooth from wear. "If the Professor himself considers that the affair is a secret, it is not for me to speak of it, even if I did know anything about it." "Then you refuse to give us the information?" "Ah, my dear lady, there is no one to whom I would rather make a communication than to the excellent ladies whom I have the honor of seeing here, but I am much too insignificant to be able to serve you in this." "And have you taken into consideration the embarrassing consequences of your refusal, for my husband, for the whole University, and--what you, an advocate of truth, must consider more important than all--for science?" Knips acknowledged himself to be the advocate of truth. Laura remarked that the examination was wandering into by-paths on which the parchment was not to be found; she jumped up, and cried out: "Go out of the room for a little while, Magister Knips, I wish to confer with the Professor's wife." Knips rose very readily and made a bow. "But you must not go away. Go into the next room. Come, I shall call you in again directly." Knips followed her with bowed head, and Laura came back on tiptoes and said, in a low tone: "I have locked him in, that he may not escape." The ladies put their heads together in close consultation. "You deal too tenderly with him, Mrs. Struvelius," whispered Laura. "Offer him money. That will allure him. It is hard for me to say so, but I know the Knips family--they are selfish." "I also have thought of that, for an extreme case," replied Mrs. Struvelius, "only I did not wish to hurt him by such an offer, if there were any manly feeling in him." "Pshaw!" exclaimed Laura, "he is not a man, he is only a coward. If at first he refuses, offer him more. Here is my pocket-book; I beg of you to take it." She ran to her writing-table and fetched out the embroidered purse.