But at that very minute Corinne was sitting in a little restaurant with Pauli, close together on a narrow, leather bench in a corner, and Pauli's dark, small hand lay closely, hotly over hers. After they had eaten he was going to take her to Kaethe's,--not to Fanny's where a more merciful Fate would have lead them. And that is why stupidly, horribly, Corinne was always to think, she wasn't at home when Maria came to get her.... As Tante Ilde lay calling for Corinne, with her blue eyes widely open, neither Fanny nor Hermann could know that flashingly, she was seeing, as the day before, Pauli's dark, turquoise-ringed hand clasped tightly over the slim whiteness of Corinne's, and that she was very frightened for Corinne. She closed her eyes flutteringly several times, but still she saw their hands. Then suddenly the cavities under her brow grew very deep and she gave a long, whistling gasp. "Not yet," whispered Hermann, seizing Fanny's hand, for at the sight she had burst into wild weeping, "but soon,--dear, dear Auntie," and from his voice there was momentarily released all the pent-up tenderness of his great heart. It flooded the room. It surged warmly about his sister, about his dying aunt.... Then Frau Ildefonse Stacher, born von Berg, began to pluck at the sheet and talk in snatches of Baden and of Heinie, her brother, their father. Once she smiled, but they didn't know that it was because the bed was so soft and she was so comfortable, quite knowing that she would never have to move again.... And certainly if this was dying it wasn't at all what people thought. * * * * * Maria's key was in the door ... Maria's voice was respectfully ushering someone into that silk-hung chamber,--a dark-bearded, deep-eyed Capuchin monk. He threw back widely his brown-hooded cloak, and as he did so glanced enfoldingly at the dying woman without a single other look about the room. His work lay there.... Frau Stacher had fallen into a last unconsciousness, but her breathing was still terribly loud, like wind through a vacant room. Fanny on her knees by the bed, was weeping and praying and kissing her aunt's thin hand rather extravagantly, after her way. The monk's eyes, accustomed to the sight of death, knew without a word from Hermann that the end was very near. On the little, white, lace-covered table by the bed, on which Maria had placed a lighted candle, a basin of water and a towel, he laid the Blessed Oils, those final oils with which he was to anoint Frau Stacher's noisy tenement, commending it to mercy.... Her broad-lidded blue eyes, that through tears would look no more on misery, no more on starving children, no, never anymore.... Her ears, that would hear no further cries of woe, nor any unprofitable discourse.... Her nostrils, that would no more weakly dilate at smell of needed food.... Her tongue, that would frame no more its words of gentle, helpless pity....