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208 "It was lying on your writing-desk. Shouldn't I have taken it? Please forgive me! But otherwise I might have fallen asleep, and then it's a job to get me awake."

Her eyes smiled, quite without mockery—almost with abandon. Graesler sat down beside her on the bed, drew her to him, kissed her on the throat—and the heavy book fell shut.

The next morning while Doctor Graesler was visiting his little patient, who had in the meanwhile begun to show unmistakable signs of having developed scarlet fever, Katharina vanished from his lodgings; but she appeared again early in the evening, to Graesler's amazement carrying a little grip. To be sure, she had said the previous night that she was entitled each year to a week's vacation which, as though through some manner of premonition, she had not yet used up this summer; and in the enthusiasm of their first embraces, he had invited her on a little honeymoon. But when, thus prepared, she approached him with the cheerful words, "Well, here I am; if you like, we can drive down to the station at once," something within him rose up against this peremptory manner of appropriating his life, and he was almost glad that he could point to professional duties which would be holding him in the city for the next few days. Katharina did not seem particularly troubled at this; she immediately began chattering of other things, called his attention to her pretty, new, tan oxfords, spoke about the manager of her firm who had just come back from Paris and London with new merchandise; and all the time she kept walking up and down the room, arranged a few books in their proper places, and put the writing-table in order, while Graesler stood by the window and watched her activity in silence and vague emotion. His gaze fell on the little grip standing sadly and as though shamed upon the floor, and there crept over him a vague pity that the good little creature should have to go off with it again. At first he avoided saying anything about it, but later, when he was sitting at his writing-table with her on his lap like a child, her arms twined around his neck, he said:

"Would it have to be a trip? Wouldn't you like simply to spend your vacation right here in my house?"

"Why, that would not be possible, would it?" she replied weakly.