There is not much to be said of the period which now ensued. Outwardly everything went on as usual. The void made by the flight of the insubordinate member of the family seemed to be felt by no one except myself and the silent Uncle Joachim; at least, her name was never mentioned. True, pauses in the conversation at table were more frequent, and were usually broken--not always with much taste--by a remark from my little pupil. There had been no gayety before in this strangely constituted circle, and I don't remember ever having heard a really hearty laugh. But, since the event, the master of the house seemed to desire to keep his family under still more rigid spiritual control. The blessing invoked upon the food often extended into a short homily, and on Sunday afternoons he held services of his own, by the aid of some Lutheran tracts, from which he extracted so confused a theology that I was often compelled to exercise great self-control in order not to give the rein to my old love for debate. On such occasions he indulged in rancorous allusions to stray sheep and lost souls, spite of the presence of the servants, who nudged one another, and afterward let their tongues wag freely in the servants' hall. I wished myself a hundred miles away, for it seemed to me as if the veil, which hitherto had only allowed me to see the vague outlines of persons and things in the household, was suddenly torn away, and I experienced a sense of almost physical discomfort, which increased with every passing week. The most puzzling thing was that, spite of the promise I had given my worshiped idol at our last meeting, I had become suspicious even of her. When I imagined her in the society of the strange actor, my hand involuntarily clinched, and I was strongly inclined to pronounce the whole female sex, which had seemed to me so supernatural and adorable in this individual, nothing better than the body-guard of the enemy of mankind. I was by no means reconciled to her, but on the contrary still more deeply wounded, when, a fortnight after her disappearance, I received the printed announcement of her marriage to Herr Konstantin Spielberg, theatrical manager. I had still cherished a secret hope that she would repent the false step into which her exaggerated sense of justice had led her, and withdraw from the turbid, bottomless swamp she had entered, pure as a swan that needs only to shake its wings to cast off everything that could besmirch it. True, with my knowledge of her, I ought not to have been surprised that she should take upon herself all the consequences of her hasty step, yet it roused a feeling of such intense bitterness that it made me fairly ill, and for twenty-four hours I would see no one, as if the sight of any human face must awaken a sense of shame.