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Rh and her little snub nose had turned quite pale. He recovered his presence of mind. "That shows you that, even without money, I like you," he said insinuatingly. She bit her lips. "Who knows," she said, looking at him from under her eyelashes, pouting and uncertain. "Even fifty thousand is a lot of money for people like you."

Diederich tried to persuade himself that he was getting on with Guste, but his progress was admittedly slow. The events connected with the trial had made their impression, but that was not enough. Also, he heard nothing more from Wulckow. After the momentous action of the Governor at the Veterans' Association Diederich confidently expected further developments, an approach, a mark of friendship, he did not know exactly what. Perhaps it would happen at the Harmony Club ball. Otherwise, why had his sisters been given parts in the play of the Governor's wife? But it was all hanging fire too long for one of Diederich's active temper. It was a time of stress and unrest. He overflowed with hopes, plans and prospects. As each day came round he wanted to seize everything at one stroke. And at the end of each day he found himself empty-handed. Diederich was seized by a desire for movement. Several times he did not turn up at his Stammtisch, but went out walking aimlessly in the country, a thing he never did. He turned his back on the centre of the town, tramped with energetic steps to the end of the empty Meisestrasse in the evenings, covered the whole length of Gäbbelchenstrasse, with its suburban inns, where drivers were yoking or unyoking their carts, and passed in front of the jail. Up there under the guard of a soldier and a barred window, sat Herr Lauer, who had never dreamt this would happen to him. "Pride goes before a fall," Diederich reflected. "As a man sows, so shall he reap." And although he was no stranger to the events which had brought the manufacturer to jail, Lauer now appeared to him as an uncanny creature, bearing the mark of