For a long time Kurt stared blankly after her. The slender, upright, girlish figure was silhouetted in picturesque outline against the sulphur-coloured sky, and then vanished behind the churchyard wall. "What a dog's life it is!" he murmured. "One begins to think one has a heart, and then it all comes to nothing." He sat down on the edge of a grave and brooded. The wind howled, and the dry leaves came whirling down like autumnal spirits. He reflected on fame, heroism, the madness of love, and the perishableness of all earthly things. "When a man has no money, he is nearly as good as dead," he quoted sadly, and then stood up, for supper-time was drawing near. XXVIII One afternoon Ulrich rode over to Halewitz with the news that a meeting of the Reichstag had been called for the third week in November. Leo was alarmed, for it meant nothing less than being left ten days alone with Felicitas. In every limb he felt the shock which seemed to be propelling him several steps nearer the unknown fate that loomed in front of him. He could have caught Ulrich's hands and cried in his ears, "If you value both our lives, stay here!" And he was still in this frame of mind when his friend approached him with an extraordinary proposal. "Felicitas has begged me," he said, with his quiet friendly smile in which pure goodness of heart put to flight all gravity, "to be spokesman for her in giving expression to a desire which she has long had very much at heart, a desire shared by your sister Johanna. Both wish that our respective families should partake together of the holy sacrament on the day before my departure." Leo was filled with joy. It seemed to him as if a sustaining hand had been stretched out to him from the clouds, to afford him anchor and refuge in the whirlwind by which he had been threatened. This ceremony would be a protection in the hours to be passed alone with her, it would be the highest consecration of his purer will. "And what do you think about it, Uli?" he asked, looking inquiringly at his friend. "I for my part seek and value every opportunity," he replied, smiling back at Leo, "which lifts me above the barren level of every-day thoughts. Were my breathing apparatus like other people's, I should love to climb to high places and get a wider outlook. Such an outlook over what has been and is to be is found in preparing for the sacrament. I have heavy work in prospect, this winter, and shall be obliged in my section to offer opposition to the tactics of my friends--it will do me good to travel to Golgotha beforehand, to prove whether I am fit for it." "What worlds he is above me," thought Leo. "He lives in the heart of his ideals, and suspects nothing of the pack of impure thoughts some people have to drag about with them."