“It’s coming, my boy, it’s coming,” the old woman said soothingly. She shuffled the cards again. “Have patience. We’ll get that business with the Jew wench yet.” Niels Heinrich stared into emptiness. Wherever he looked he had seen the same thing for days and days--a young, smooth neck, two young, smooth shoulders, two young, smooth breasts; and all these were strange, of a strange race, and filled with a strange sweet blood. And he felt that if he could not grasp these, grasp them and smell and taste, he would die the death of a dog. He got up and forced himself to a careless gesture. “You can stop,” he said. “It’s all a damn’ swindle. You can keep the tip too. I don’t give a damn.” He passed his stick across the cards, jumbled them together, and went out. The widow Engelschall, left alone, shook her head. The ambition of her calling stirred in her. She shuffled and laid down the cards anew. “We’ll get it yet,” she murmured, “we’ll get it yet....” RUTH AND JOHANNA I It was in the Hotel Fratazza in San Martino di Castrozza that, at the end of years, Crammon and the Countess Brainitz met again. The countess sat on the balcony of her room, embroidering a Slavonic peasant scarf, and searching with her satisfied eyes the craggy mountains and the wooded slopes and paths. As she did so, a dust-covered motor car stopped at the entrance below, and from it stepped two ladies and two gentlemen in the fashionable swathings of motoring. The gentlemen took off their goggles, and made arrangements with the manager of the hotel. “Look down, Stöhr,” the countess turned to her companion. “Look at that stoutish man with a face like an actor. He seems familiar to----” At that moment Crammon looked up and bowed. The countess uttered a little cry. That evening, in the dining-hall, Crammon could not avoid going to the countess’ table and asking after her health, the length of her stay here, and similar matters. The countess rudely interrupted his courteous phrases. “Herr von Crammon, there’s something I have to say to you privately. I’m glad to have this opportunity. I have been waiting for it very long.” “I am entirely at your service, countess,” said Crammon, with ill-concealed vexation. “I shall take the liberty of calling on you to-morrow at eleven.” At ten minutes past eleven on the next day he had himself announced. In spite of the energetic way in which she had demanded this interview, he felt neither curiosity nor anxiety. The countess pointed to a chair, sat down opposite her guest, and assumed the expression of a judge. “My dear sister, whom you, Herr von Crammon, cannot fail to remember, passed from this world to a better one after a long illness eighteen months ago. I was permitted to be with her to the end, and in her last hours she made a confession to me.”