"But he does _love_ me," she said to herself, altogether unaware of the smallness of the place in the world occupied by negative persons like sisters--"he does _love_ me." She said it several times a day, hugging it to herself as the weeks went on in much the same way that a coachman, growing cold on his box, hugs his chest, not having anything else to hug, at intervals to keep his circulation going; and particularly she said it on her way up to the attic after the administration of the good-night kiss. In spite of this assurance, she found herself presently beginning to hesitate before she spoke to him or touched him, wondering whether he would like it. She tried to shake off these increasing timidities, and once or twice intrepidly stroked his hair; but his head, bent over his dinner or his book, seemed unconscious that she was doing it, and she felt unable to go on. "But he does _love_ me," she said to herself. It was not long before she perceived definitely that she had ceased to amuse him, and the moment she discovered this she ceased to be amusing: her gaiety went out like a light. "But he does _love_ me," she still said to herself. He called her Ingeborg regularly, never wife or Little One, and it soon came to be unthinkable that she should ever have been his treasure, snail, or sheep. He did it, however, quite kindly, with no trace of the rebuke it used invariably to contain. "But he does _love_ me," she still said to herself. Puzzled, she racked her brain to think of ways to please him, and tried to make his house as comfortably perfect for him as possible, performing every duty she could find or invent with a thoroughness that by eleven o'clock in the morning had exhausted the supply. Herr Dremmel, however, was not accessible by ways of order and good food; he had never noticed their absence, and he did not now notice their presence. She saw after a while herself that his sum of happiness was not in the least increased by them. How could she make him happy, then? What could she do to make his life the brightest serene thing? It was a shock to her, an immense and shattering surprise, the day she realised that all this time he was, in fact, being happy. She walked in the garden long that day, staring hard at this new perception, pondering, astonished. "But he does _l_--" she began; and stopped.