"Oh, Pauli dear, you spoil me," she only said tremulously, glancing from him to Corinne, whose look like some slow-turning beacon was now shining upon her. But still she was anxious with a grim, new anxiety. Corinne's danger was so clearly imminent. Then that fear too, passed; her existence seemed but a long street, with figures appearing and disappearing, signs and symbols were quickly flashed before her and too quickly gone for understanding. It was the processional of life that she was aware of for the first time. Then again things shifted and passed, and she found she was happy, not because of the money, though that was pleasant enough, but quite simply because she was warm and nourished and loved. She couldn't, in that moment, accept further calamities, nor even look at the shadows they cast before them.... Then with that money on the table, they turned quite inevitably to the everlasting subject of Exchange, which was plunging to unfathomable depths, and the whole population headlong after it. But Frau Stacher for the moment continued to feel pleasantly distant from the abyss, and as the sounds of those once almost unreckonable sums flowed over her ears, she caught again the agreeable "rentier" feeling of happier days. Corinne could talk in figures, too, from the vantage ground of the Depositen Bank. She was doing well; next year she expected to be doing better. "Then," she looked lovingly at her aunt, "I will hunt for that tiny, tiny apartment." "Next year!" interrupted Pauli, not included in the heaven Corinne's words evoked, and so deep was the longing in his voice, in his words that Frau Stacher bent her eyes quickly upon her plate. He put his hand out over Corinne's. She was flushing and paling under his touch; his dark, unexpectedly small hand had, on the little finger, a thick gold ring in which was sunk a turquoise turned very green. That ring was somehow like Pauli. Color, Pauli loved it--and yet in moonbeam Corinne with no more color than the palest opal, than a pearl, lay all his desire. Frau Stacher had long since forgotten what being in love was like, the love of man for woman, perhaps she had never known, but suddenly it seemed clear, the pulsing mystery of such love, and she was very frightened. Just Pauli's hand over Corinne's made it clear, much clearer than his words, than his tone even, as he cried: "Oh, Corinne if everything were different, save you and I--and Tante Ilde! If I could only take you and care for you, never let you go to an office again--and always dress you in silver, Corinne, Corinne!" "Next year," Corinne was repeating slowly. Her look was very oblique and distant, and her face was suddenly pale, though quite bright--as if consumed to pale, hot ashes in the look Pauli bent upon her, consumed to last resistance. Between these two looks Frau Stacher was suddenly crushed; she could scarcely breathe, another intolerable distress came to join that pain in her chest.