“Feed my sheep,” Michael almost sang the words out into the snow. “Feed my sheep.” “It is an awakening,” Johanna thought, with faint horror and envy. “He has been awakened.” The boy’s impassioned attachment to Christian became ever clearer to her. When they waited at the locked door in Stolpische Street and Christian came out with Niels Heinrich and passed the two without noticing them, without glance or greeting, and went off with that shaking, shuffling, distorted creature, Michael limped behind him for a few paces, stared into the dark yard filled with the whirl of snow, and then returned to Johanna and said beseechingly: “He mustn’t go with that man. Do run after him and call him back. He mustn’t, for God’s sake, go with him.” Johanna, although she was herself perturbed, soothed the overwrought boy. She remained for half an hour, forced herself to a natural cheerfulness, chatted pleasantly as she made tea and laid the cloth for a cold supper. Then she went home. At eight o’clock the next morning Michael rang the bell at her dwelling. She had scarcely finished dressing. She met him in the hall. He was pale, sleepless, struggling for words. “Wahnschaffe hasn’t come home yet,” he murmured. “What shall we do?” Fighting down her first consternation, Johanna smiled. She took Michael’s hand and said: “Don’t be afraid. Nothing will happen to him.” “Are you so sure of that?” “Quite sure!” “Why are you?” “I don’t know. But it would never occur to me to be afraid for him. That would be a sheer waste of emotional energy.” Her calm and assurance impressed Michael; yet he asked her to come with him and stay with him if she could. After a moment’s reflection she consented. On the way back they entered a bookshop and bought the volumes that Lamprecht had suggested. Christian had given Michael money for the purchase. He wanted to begin his studies alone and at once, but he could not collect his thoughts. He sat at the table, turned the leaves of books, arranged paper, lifted his head and listened, pressed his hands together or jumped up and walked to and fro in the room, looked out into the yard, gazed searchingly at Johanna, who was working at a piece of embroidery and sat shivering and worn in a corner of the sofa, gnawing at her lip with her small white teeth. Thus that day passed and another night, and yet Christian did not return. The impatience and anxiety of the boy became unrestrainable. “We must bestir ourselves,” he said. “It is stupid to sit here and wait.” Johanna, who was also beginning to grow anxious, prepared to go either to Botho von Thüngen or to Dr. Voltolini. While she was putting on her hat Lamprecht came in. When he had been told of the situation he said: “You’re doing Wahnschaffe no favour by raising an alarm. If he doesn’t come, it is for reasons of his own. Your fear is childish and unworthy of him. We’d better start at something useful, my boy.”