Two short weeks after, Frau Kerzl again showed signs of nervousness and talked loudly and significantly, or what Frau Stacher, who had got timid even about leaving her room, thought was loudly and significantly, concerning the price of food; and how money, even an hour over-due, represented in those days of falling currency, a fabulous loss. That afternoon she took out her watch and chain and her amethyst and pearl ring. It was less frightening the second time, but she felt much sadder, and she was unspeakably depressed by the old man just ahead of her who fainted as he stood waiting. By January Frau Stacher's situation became finally and visibly desperate. She could obviously no longer pay to remain in Frau Kerzl's house and quite as obviously Frau Kerzl could not keep her just for the pleasure of it. The link in their lives got thinner day by day until it broke squarely in two that morning of the sixth of January when Frau Kerzl plainly hinted at the possibility, nay probability of being able to wrest from the black heavens that star of first magnitude,--a foreign lodger. No trouble, out all the time, solid, certain pay. She didn't cease to paint the foreigner in ever brighter colors. He stood out attractively, even flashily against the grey tenuity of her present boarder. Though she had feared that something of the kind was impending, it fell on Frau Stacher like a blow on a bruised spot; indeed she found she was one vast bruise. Anything that touched her nowadays was sure to hurt unspeakably, but being "turned out," as she called it, had about it an ultimate ignominy, not at all befitting the day. She had always loved the sixth of January, that noisy feast of the Three Kings, and though she had been wont to complain that she hadn't been able to sleep a wink because of the tooting of the horns, the blowing of the whistles, the beating of drums and countless other noises announcing their arrival, that racket had really appealed to her sentimental soul, heralding as it did three royal beings bringing gold and myrrh and frankincense. As she lay awake through the cold, dark night, though there had been no noise at all in the streets she suddenly remembered that it was Epiphany; a few thin, salty tears moistened her cheeks as she realized that in a world once seemingly full of gold and myrrh and frankincense she now possessed naught save the breath in her body and the remnants of raiment covering it.