That courage momentarily imparted to Frau Stacher by her niece's loving nearness fell heavily with the dragging hours in which more and more miserably she went about the dim, chilly room, emptying the bureau and wardrobe of their scanty contents and laying them in her shabby valises. The very old brown leather one dated from her wedding trip, for Frau Stacher had never been a traveller; it had always been pleasanter to stay at home or go only to very near places for the day. Now strangely she was become a pilgrim, and when she was hungry she was to eat of other people's bread and she must go up other people's stairs for shelter. The realization of the power of those nieces over her life terrified her. It was complete if they chose to exercise it. Withdrawal of their protection, she starved, she froze--just the not having those few thousand crowns a year put her at the world's mercy.... Even Frau Kerzl's quite unctuous attentions at that last supper of cabbage-turnip soup failed to dispel the deepening gloom of her heart. Frau Kerzl was obviously though politely rejoicing. She had indeed through an incredible bit of luck secured that foreigner, an Englishman too, who would pay in shillings, in the magic "Devisen," for that room in which the very next night he was to sleep,--as soon as that,--Frau Kerzl already basked and expanded in the approaching light and heat of those shillings. The long Englishman strangely, hated short, square feather beds and was bringing his own blankets. It appeared, too, that he was in the commissary department of a certain relief society. Anything could grow out of such a situation,--condensed milk, butter, oatmeal.... The arrangement was undeniably of a marvelous fertility. Though Frau Stacher was truly glad of Frau Kerzl's good luck, it but emphasized her own impending homelessness. She had been quite miserable there, but at least her living-space had been provided with a door, and blessed with a key,--ultimate desirabilities as she now saw, and tomorrow she would move into the uncertain privacy of the alcove. Then, too, in some way that she couldn't define Irma, her young sister-in-law, terrified her. Yes, homeless, in a new sense, she realized herself to be when she went back into the luxury of her solitude for the last time, and as she closed the door she knew, indeed, that she had "lived too long."... In that bed, abundantly salted by the tears of her uncertainties, so soon to know the deep slumbers of a care-free Englishman, Frau Stacher lay long awake thinking of those homes, over whose thresholds, day by day, week by week, she was to step.... She would love them so much, she would be so grateful, she would hold so sacred the joys and sorrows which might be disclosed....