The latter staggered out, hardly knowing what he did. The cold night air brought him to his senses. He paused under the courtyard gateway and considered. Then, instead of taking the road home to Wengern, he skirted the park palings in the deep snow and went to the dower-house. There he thundered with the knocker till he brought a maid-servant, half asleep, to the door, and asked to speak to old Frau Gräfin instantly. The next morning at eight o'clock a telegram was despatched from the post-office at Münsterberg by Pastor Brenckenberg. "_To Baron Kletzingk, Königsberg_, "_Hotel Deutches Haus_. "_Come home at once. Your house is in danger_. "_Johanna_." XXXVIII Felicitas returned from her last interview with Leo, glowing and intoxicated with the idea of death. What a harmonious ending it would be to die in the arms of her lover, breathing her last breath on his lips. She recalled a picture that she had once seen in Königsberg, afterwards famous all over the continent It was called "Tired of Life," and represented a man and a woman who had bound themselves together with ropes, and were about to hurl themselves from some steps in the foreground into the sea. She had felt an envious tremour then, and now all at once the old foolish dream was to be fulfilled at Leo's side. She had nothing to bind her to life; in every way it would be best to quit it. Ulrich became more and more of an invalid, and less and less disposed to make things bearable for her. The society of the neighbourhood afforded her no consolation; the women hated her, the men persecuted her with their love; and one was as unsatisfying and dull as the other. The future promised her nothing. She saw herself slowly fading away, bored to extinction by discussion about the crops and new scientific theories of drainage, of farm and dairy management. To die now would be a thousand times preferable. "If only I had my little Paul," she thought, "there would at least be something to live for," and the momentary re-awakening of the maternal instinct within her filled her eyes with hot tears. But in the midst of her tender compassion for herself and her dead child, the thought seized her like an icy hand, that in a few days, she, like him, would be lying in the dark damp earth. Was it possible? could it be? In a year--or better still in ten years' time, after this love had burned itself out, it would be all very well. But now, when a new ready-made happiness lay before them, and would have to be left untasted, unenjoyed? Would it not be folly? Once more she thought of the picture "Tired of life," and derived a little solace from it.