Kate Schlieben was ill in bed. The doctor shrugged his shoulders: there was not much to be done, it was a question of complete apathy. If only something would happen that would rouse her, something for which it would repay her to make an effort, she would be all right again. At present he prescribed strengthening food--her pulse was so bad--every hour a spoonful of puro, essence of beef, eggs, milk, oysters and such like. Paul Schlieben was sitting near his wife's bed; he had just come home from town. He was sitting there with bent head and knit brows. "Still nothing about him? What did the woman say--nothing at all about him?" Kate had just whispered in a feeble voice. His only answer was: "We shall have to communicate with the police after all now." "No, no, not with the police. Should we have him sought as though he were a criminal? You're terrible, Paul. Be quiet, Paul." Her voice that had been so feeble at first had almost become a scream. He shrugged his shoulders. "There's nothing left for us to do but that," and he looked at her anxiously and then lowered his head. It seemed to him as though he could not realise the calamity that had overtaken him, as though it were too great. It was now a week since Wolfgang had gone away--the misery that fellow had brought on them was terrible, terrible. But his wife's condition made him still more uneasy. How would it end? Her increased nervousness was dangerous; and then there was her complete loss of strength. Kate had never been a robust woman, but now she was getting so thin, so very thin; the hand that lay so languidly on the coverlet had become quite transparent during the last week. Oh, and her hair so grey. The man sought for the traces of former beauty in his wife's face with sad eyes: too many wrinkles, too many lines graven on it, furrows that the plough of grief had made there. He had to weep; it seemed too hard to see her like that. Turning his head aside he shaded his eyes with his hand. He sat thus in silence without moving, and she did not move either, but lay as though asleep. Then somebody knocked. The man glanced at his wife in dismay: had it disturbed her? But she did not raise her eyelids. He went to the door on tip-toe and opened it. Friedrich brought the post, all sorts of letters and papers. Paul only held out his hand to take them from habit, he took so little interest in anything now. During the first days after Wolfgang's disappearance Kate had always trembled for fear there should be something about him in the newspaper, she had been tortured by the most terrible fears; now she no longer asked. But it was the man's turn to tremble, although he tried to harden himself: what would they still have to bear? He never took up a paper without a certain dread.