Close by him sat the man against whom he had sinned; not to mention that other who rotted in the earth. A little father away was the woman with whom he had sinned, flooding him with the horror of her presence--and behind her, she who knew all. Everything was just as it had been five minutes ago; yet in spite of that his guilt was to be instantly wiped out, because the quiet man up there, in "virtue of his office," chose to say so, forsooth. How was one to believe it? The organ passed into the arabesques of a florid voluntary. The confession was at an end. As Leo gave the superintendent his hand at parting, he met a friendly, well-meaning glance from behind the eye-glasses, which seemed to say, "Taken altogether, you must be a fine fellow." "I was once," thought Leo, responding mutely to the mute speech, and he resolved on the spot to seek counsel and rest for his soul from this man of peace. Pleading business in the town, he left his party to drive home without him. He promised Ulrich to look in at night, and avoiding a last significant look of Lizzie's, he went to lounge away two unprofitable hours on the tobacco-saturated horsehair cushions of the Prussian Crown, pawing, without appetite, the food which the officious landlord set before him. Then he found his way to the superintendent's house, while the rain still poured from the heavens. The deal floor of the entrance-hall, as he came into it, gleamed silver in its polished cleanliness, as if it had just come from the carpenter's. The same aggressive polish radiated from the steps of the wooden staircase which led to the first floor. Every rib and vein in the boards was visible, though they might have lain there for many years. Biblical pictures in mahogany frames, crowned with wreaths of immortelles, hung on the snow-white chalk of the walls. A distinct odour of freshly roasted coffee permeated the atmosphere; an odour which has a habit of clinging to dwellings in which painful neatness is combined with modest cheer, and thus counts as a guarantee of bourgeois domestic bliss. The door was opened noiselessly by a girl of twelve, who appeared on the threshold in a stiffly starched apron, with lappets which spread over her shoulders like the collar of a mandarin. She giggled artlessly, and then waited silently to hear what he wanted. Her flaxen hair differed so little from the colour of her skin, and was strained back so smoothly and flat over her head, that without the plaits, which formed a nest on her neck, it would have been difficult to see that she was not bald. When Leo had expressed his wishes, she rubbed her nose a moment, and then vanished through another door. Not a sound was now audible. "So this is what peace looks like," thought Leo, glancing round him. He felt as if he were standing at the entrance of the promised land. "Papa says, will you come in, please?" said the little girl, with another spasmodic giggle. He walked in.