A burning curiosity was aroused in the child all at once. It tortured him, positively devoured him. He would not be able to sleep the whole night, he would have to think of it again and again. And he wanted to sleep, it was tiresome to lie awake--he wanted to know it he must know it. Kate saw how gloomy the boy's face had grown. Oh, the poor, poor boy. If only she had not let him go to those people. What had he been told there? What did he know? Had they made him suspicious? What did those people know? Oh, they had made him suspicious, otherwise why should he have tormented her with such questions? A burning dread filled her mind, and yet her hands and feet were growing as cold as ice. But her compassion was even greater than her dread--there he sat, looking so sad and with tears in his eyes. The poor child, who wanted to know something about his birth, and whom she could not, would not, dared not tell anything. Oh, if only she could think of something to say, only find the right word. "Woelfchen," she said gently, "you are still too young to hear about it--I can't tell you about it yet. Another time. You don't understand it yet. When you're older--I'll tell you it another time." "No, now." She had gone up to him, and he caught hold of her dress and held her fast. He persisted with the dull obstinacy that was peculiar to him: "Now. I will know it--I must know it." "But I--I've no time, Woelfchen. I have to go--yes, I really must go, it's high time." Her eyes wandered about the room, and she felt quite flustered: "I--no, I can't tell you anything." "You will not," he said. "And still Frau Laemke told her Frida it." The sulky peevish expression had disappeared from the boy's dark face, and made way for one of real sadness. "You don't love me half so much, not in the same way as Frau Laemke loves her Frida." She did not love him?--she did not love him?--Kate could have screamed. If any mother loved her child it was surely she, and still this child felt instinctively that something was wanting. And was not that mysterious bond wanting that binds a real mother so indissolubly and mysteriously, so intimately to her real child? "Woelfchen," she said in a soft tremulous voice, "my dear Woelfchen," and she stroked his hot forehead with her icy cold hand. "You don't mean what you are saying. We love each other so much, don't we? My child--my darling child, tell me." She sought his glance, she hung on his answer. But the answer she longed for did not come. He looked past her. "You see, you won't tell me anything." He seemed to harp on that. This burning desire had taken possession of him all at once. Somebody had instilled it into him, there could be no other explanation for it. "Who--" she asked hesitatingly--"who has told you--you should question me in this manner? Who?"