Her sick headache had passed off, but she was in a depressed state of mind. She gave him a smile of welcome, but warned him at the same time that he would be dull with her to-day, as she was not in a mood to entertain him. He sat down beside her, and noticed that her eyelids were red and swollen.
'What is wrong, Frau Lenore? You've never been crying, surely?'
'Oh!' she whispered, nodding her head towards the room where her daughter was. 'Don't speak of it . . . aloud.'
'But what have you been crying for?'
'Ah, M'sieu Sanin, I don't know myself what for!'
'No one has hurt your feelings?'
'Oh no! . . . I felt very low all of a sudden. I thought of Giovanni Battista . . . of my youth . . . Then how quickly it had all passed away. I have grown old, my friend, and I can't reconcile myself to that anyhow. I feel I 'm just the same as I was . . . but old age—it's here! it is here!' Tears came into Frau Lenore's eyes. 'You look at me, I see, and wonder.. . . But you will get old too, my friend, and will find out how bitter it is!'
Sanin tried to comfort her, spoke of her children, in whom her own youth lived again, even attempted to scoff at her a little, declaring
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