Hertha, who sat by the window, in hat and cloak, heard him, and looked surprised as her eyes wandered out into the pouring rain, and Johanna, who seemed to understand his reasons, smiled sourly to herself. The family coach started with its freight of ladies, and Leo followed a quarter of an hour later. Wrapped in his mackintosh, with his Scotch cap pressed far back on his neck, chewing his extinguished cigar, he drove along the spongy roads. He had left his man behind, for he wished to be alone. He was approaching the religious business as an adventure--an adventure on the result of which the weal or woe of his whole future depended. The strength that he no longer found in himself should descend on him from Heaven in this mystery of incarnation. Either the grace of God would endue him with peace now and henceforth, or it would be lost to him for ever. He drove by the Wengern Parsonage with averted face, as if he were a thief slinking by. And in reality it was rather like it. Stealthily and by a back way he was going to creep into the circle of the divine forgiveness, and try and obtain by a miracle what others struggled for with clean hands and hearts, and by dint of strong effort. The wheels rattled down into the ferry ruts. Old Jürgens informed him respectfully, that the ladies had just been taken across. "Ah! the one who will be the gnädiger Herr's young bride is an angel," he added, beaming, while he let the dripping rope glide through his horny fingers. "Bride? Which do you mean?" "Why, gnädiger Herr the young gracious countess, of course!" replied Jürgens, and winked slyly, as people are wont to do when talking of a well-matched pair. "Is the fellow mad?" he thought. But fear disarmed his anger. What would happen to Hertha if this gossip was already afloat? Since that last encounter, they had been as strangers to each other, and had scarcely exchanged a morning or evening salutation, and now there could be no further question between them of two souls seeking a common ground of agreement. That which their silence concealed meant an eternal estrangement. But what did it all matter, compared with that great daily-growing need of his, which swallowed all minor cares, losses and trials, as if they had never existed? Peace, peace, at any price! The Halewitz and Uhlenfelde carriages were drawn up tractably side by side at the Münsterberg church door, and a few peasant equipages modestly brought up the rear. He stepped into the grey bare church. The first thing his eye lighted on were the words in gigantic, gold letters, "Peace be with you," which shone above the altar in a half-circle. They seemed the solitary decorations which this bare God's house, stuffed with pitch-pine benches, contained. But what more did it want? What they promised to the pious worshipper, as a matter of course, was the one essential for which he was striving.