He smacked his lips, looked merry and yielding, glanced about him, took up one object after another, pushed his chin forward and reflected, mimicked a whole scale of emotions from puzzled helplessness to anxious serviceableness, and finally struck his forehead with a roguish and graceful gesture. “I have it,” he cried. He opened a little cabinet, and with a bow gave Judith a watch of very old Nürnberger make. Its case was of exquisite old gold filigree work. “How charming,” said Judith, and balanced the watch on the palm of her hand. Lorm said: “Now amuse yourself admiring it. I must go and send those fellows away.” With a swift, resilient tread he left the room. Judith sat down at the great oak table, looked at the engraved ornamentation on the watch, pressed a little spring, and, when the oval sides of the case flew open, gazed into the ancient, lifeless works. “I shall take it all apart,” she determined. “But not now; to-night. I want to see what’s inside.” And she looked forward with a glow to the evening hour when she would take the watch apart. But the present, charming as it was, did not suffice her. When Lorm returned in modern dress, a clean-shaven gentleman and husband, she held out the watch-case from which she had slipped the works, and begged or rather commanded him, who was now the man of common clay: “Fill it with gold pieces, Edgar. That’s what I want.” She was all voracity, avidity, desire. Lorm lowered his head in vicarious shame. In a drawer of his desk he had a little roll of gold-pieces. He filled the watch-case and gave it to her. Then he said, “While you were out driving to-day, your brother Wolfgang called. He stayed about an hour. He seems to have a rather sterile nature. It amused me--the difficulty he had in placing me in some social category whose ways he understood. He’s a born bureaucrat.” “What did he want?” Judith asked. “He wanted to consult you about Christian. He’s coming again to do so.” Judith arose. Her face was pale and her eyes glittered. Her knowledge of Christian’s changed way of life was derived from a talk she had had with Crammon during his visit to Berlin, from the letters of a former friend, and from messages that had come to her directly from her parents. The first news had awakened a rage in her that gnawed at her soul. Sometimes when she was alone and thought of it she gritted her teeth and stamped her feet. Further details she heard made the very thought of him fill her to the brim with bitterness. If she had not possessed the gift of forcing herself to forgetfulness, of commanding it so successfully as to annihilate the things she desired not to be, her inner conflicts over this matter would have made her ill and morose. Every enforced recollection awakened that rage in her, and recoiled against him who caused it.