"What a pity the gentleman had to leave so soon," said Louis, the head waiter at the Kurhaus, who was standing near Oswald, a napkin under his arm and a pen behind his ear. "A most pleasant gentleman--would you like to have supper now, sir? You will find very agreeable company in the dining-room, sir." Oswald went back into the house. If Franz could have repeated his request at that moment, Oswald would not have again refused to accompany him. For since Franz had left him he felt as if his guardian angel had abandoned him, and as if the air of Fichtenau was really laden with mischief. CHAPTER VI. On the next morning Oswald awoke late from his broken slumbers, which had been much disturbed by strange haunted dreams. Melitta, whom he had so ardently loved but a short time ago, had appeared to him, her fair, pale face disfigured by sorrow, her brown, gentle eyes overflowing with tears, and looking at him with an expression of ineffable sadness. Thus she had sat by him--her sad, sweet smile on her full lips, which he had so often kissed, intoxicated with love! And Oswald's heart had been overflowing with love and pity! He had forgotten all that had come between her and himself the bad weeds sown by whispering tongues which had grown up to maturity so suddenly, thanks to the fickleness of his own heart; he had forgotten everything except the remembrance of those sunny days of inexpressible happiness. And he had thrown himself at her feet and shed tears, bitter-sweet tears, upon her knees, and stammered words of repentance, and implored her forgiveness. Then an icy-cold hand had been laid on his brow, and as he looked up it was no longer Melitta, but Professor Berger; but not the man of the melancholy humor and the biting satire, who had so often sat opposite to him with his sardonic smile on the mysterious lips when they met at æsthetic teas, but a gruesome mask of wax, motionless and silent. And of a sudden there had begun a quivering and a stirring in the cold, rigid face of the mask, as when one tries to speak and the tongue refuses to serve him; then the mask had actually spoken, not in human language, but in a mystic idiom, of things half intelligible, half mysterious, of unspeakable, fearful things--awful secrets of another world. Oswald had not been able to endure the horror any longer, and his soul had made a desperate effort to rise from the intolerable twilight into the bright light of day. But the light of day had not brought him the right kind of cheerfulness, for the visions of the night still cast their spectral shadows upon the day. Woe to him whose heart is not clear of sin! Woe to him whose heart conceals recollections, which he drives away with a slight frown, when they obtrude upon him in moments of wakefulness and preparation! He may well see to it. What dreams are coming to him in his sleep?