Tante Ilde was telling them about the woman who had grabbed the milk out of her very hand, and Hansi was saying with his chest out and his eyes ablaze, "I'd have beaten her well, Tante Ilde," when they heard a scream from the next room,--a terrible scream, despair and supplication were in it. Eberhardt and Tante Ilde rushed in followed by the children, Marichi stayed behind, cowering again. That scream had something frighteningly familiar about it. Kaethe was holding Carli up to the window, where the light shone full on his baby face ... quite gently, quite easily, Carli had slipped from them leaving only his little waxen image. * * * * * Throughout that long night Tante Ilde kept miserably repeating to herself: "A child came in, a child went out," finding herself in a confusion of faith and doubt dark as the night that lay about her. Irma was confirmed in her opinion that charity was dangerous. VI CORINNE _A la Sourdine_ Das Herz ist ein weites Land. But towards morning Frau Stacher's heart threw off its sorrow; she had suddenly felt its weight leaving her breast, why or how she did not know, for there in that distant house whence Carli had forever gone one she loved was still weeping. Perhaps she was done with grief,--long grief. She was strangely all love that morning after the night of tears. Love emanated from her with a gentle radiance and played about her warmly. She loved even Irma. Even Irma who on account of her nerves couldn't bear to see that fine, soft light in her sister-in-law's eyes. An unreasonable, unseasonable light given the fact that one child had been reft away and another might as easily be taken. She should properly have been creeping about with her spirit quenched, instead of looking almost happy. It struck Irma, who was inaccessible to metaphysical changes, even as unseemly, and she proceeded to extinguish it, somewhat as a wet finger on the flame of a candle. "Corinne today, but who's taking you tomorrow?" she asked flatly, meanly. Irma had a way, well tabulated in the family, of getting over pleasant spots at the quickest pace possible. "Tomorrow," Tante Ilde answered, the light in her eye indeed put out, but her face quite pink as she stepped into the kitchen to put the broom, worn down to its wooden handle, back in its dingy corner, "Tomorrow," she continued resolutely as she reappeared, "I'm going to Fanny's." "To Fanny's!" echoed Irma blankly and started to cry "I find it disgraceful!" But she stopped quite short as a thought came to her.... The easy way to do a hard thing. A little more of _that_ money! What did she care? She wanted Ferry to live. "Won't you tell Fanny about Ferry?" she began again, but gently, almost imploringly.