"It would remain between us two, you know, Hans," she says coaxingly. He closes his eyes. How delightful it would be to have a secret with her! "And after all, what is there in it?" she continues. "Why should he be so mysterious about it, especially to us two, who are his next of kin in the world?" "That's just why we ought not to deceive him!" he replies. She stamps her foot on the ground. "Deceive indeed! It's a shame to use such a nasty expression!" Then she says, pouting: "Well, then don't!" and prepares to return the key to its hiding-place. But she turns it about in her fingers three or four times, and finally remarks, laughing, "Perhaps it isn't the right one after all." She goes up to the door and with a shake of her head compares the keyhole and the shape of the key--but,--then, with a sudden jerk, she pushes the key into the lock. "It fits, after all," she says, and looks with apparent disappointment back over her shoulder at Johannes, who is standing behind her, anxiously watching the movements of her hands. "Turn it!" she says in jest, and steps back from the door. A tremor passes through his body. Ah, Eve, thou temptress! "Turn it and let me put my head in," she laughs, "you needn't look at anything yourself." Then a sudden rage takes hold of him; he lets the key fly back with a jerk and pushes the door wide open, so that a bright stream of light from the window floods towards them. Trude makes a disappointed face. All they see is a plain, business-like room with bare, whitewashed wooden walls. In the middle stands a large, roughly painted writing-table on which lie samples of grain and ledgers. On one wall hangs a bundle of old clothes, and on the opposite one a wooden shelf with some blue exercise-books and a few plainly bound volumes upon it. Johannes casts a few timid glances around, then steps up to the book-shelf and begins turning over the title-pages. What an uncanny collection! There are medical works on brain diseases, fractures of the skull and the like, philosophical treatises on the heredity of passion, a "History of Passion and its Terrible Consequences." "Method for Self-Restraint," and Kant's "Art of Overcoming Morbid Feeling by Pure Force of Will." There are literary works, too, but they nearly all treat of fratricide as their subject. Side by side with such thrilling romances as "The Tragic Fate of a Whole Family at Elsterwerda," are Schiller's "Bride of Messina," and Leisowitz's "Julius of Tarent." Even theology is represented by a number of little tracts on the deadly sins and their remission. Besides these, the blue exercise-books contain carefully made extracts and dissertations and morbid reflections upon things experienced and mused over. Johannes lets his hands drop. "My poor, poor brother!" he murmurs with a deep sigh. Then he feels Trude's hand on his shoulder. She points to a tablet hanging above the door, and asks in an anxious whisper: "What does that signify?"