"These letters had become such a necessity to me that I could hardy imagine how I should ever be able to exist without them. Under pretext of telling him all about Martha, I most cunningly understood how to prattle away the cares that filled his heart--childishly and foolishly (as men like to hear it from us, so that they may feel themselves our superiors), and again at other times seriously and knowingly beyond my years--just as I felt in the mood. He willingly submitted to my chatter in all its different keys, as one submits to the piping of a singing-bird, and more I did not ask. For I was already so grateful that he allowed me--a silly young girl who had still to leave the room when grown-up people had serious questions to discuss--to participate in his great, grave love. All my dignity and self-consciousness were based upon this _rôle_ of guardian. And thus I grew up with and by this love, of which never a crumb might fall for me beneath the table. * * * * * "When the following autumn approached, I noticed that Martha manifested a peculiar restlessness. She ran about her room with excited steps, remained for half the nights at the open window, gesticulated and spoke loudly when she thought herself alone, and was violently startled whenever she found herself caught in the act. "I faithfully informed Robert of what I saw, and added the question whether he had perhaps held out any hope of his coming at this particular time; for Martha's whole condition seemed to me to be produced through painfully overwrought expectation. "I had every reason to be satisfied with the shrewdness of my seventeen years, for my observations proved correct. "Deeply contrite, he wrote to me that he had indeed at parting expressed a hope of being able to return with a cheerful face in the following autumn, but that he had deceived himself, that he was more encumbered by cares and debts than ever before, that he was working like a common labourer, and did not see a ray of hope anywhere. "'Then at least release her from the torture of waiting,' I wrote back to him, 'and cautiously inform our parents how you are placed.' "He did so; two days later already, papa, in a bad humour, brought the letter along, which I--on account of my childish want of judgment--was not allowed to read. "On Martha it operated in a way which terrified and deeply moved me. The excitement of the last weeks there and then disappeared. In its place there showed itself again that despairing listlessness which once before, in the days preceding Robert's coming, had worn her to a shadow; once more she fell away; once more deep blue rings appeared round her eyes; once more an odour of valerian proceeded from her mouth while she often writhed in pain. Added to this was the constant desire to weep, which at the smallest provocation, found vent in a torrent of tears.