window had blown an open letter to the floor. However natural all of this was, it added to the uncomfortable feeling that had been aroused by the old servant's troubled manner; and a deafening noise from the street corner, where all the different kinds of vehicles passed, quite confused me.
I was still standing with my hat in my hand when, after a few minutes, Mrs. Hertz entered. She had weary, perhaps tear-stained, eyes, and the smile on her lips only seemed to linger there from habit.
"My husband is sleeping, dear friend," she said, giving me her hand. "He is not getting on at all well."
"Is he worse?"
"Yes, the fever has increased; he also has pain in his side when coughing; the one lung is attacked."
"My God! You don't anticipate danger?"
I turned quite cold with fear, not so much because of the dear old man's life being in peril, but because of the fixed idea which had constructed a connection between his health and my love.
"Good gracious," I thought, "supposing he dies after all, and I lose Minna!"
Mrs. Hertz, who could not, of course, have any idea of such a thought, regarded my evident emotion as a pure sign of sympathy and friendship for her husband; she thanked me with a grateful look, as she answered—
"Danger there might well be in such an illness for an old and feeble man. I must be prepared for the worst." She sat down on the sofa, and asked me to sit beside her.
"I can see you wonder that I speak so calmly and openly about it.… Perhaps my nature has something to do with it, but I also think that the parting by death
