Felix Lanzberg's Expiation

trees. Dinner is long over, they have ceased laughing at Litzi's childish pranks and remarks; she has become sleepy, and Elsa

suddenly, in the embarrassed tone of a humiliated, bored man, and with the slightly

a faultless regularity, the eyes still bluer, and yet the whole face lacks Elsa's lovely, evident peace; the eyes are always weary and half closed; his full lips wear a suffering, tormen

ese Harfinks?"

other-in-law. "In consequence I have met him several times. Recently, in Marienbad

says Felix, s

is wife is repulsive, b

th the toe of his boot draws figur

lances still more attentively

ucated," murmurs the

tic' three times, and twice complained that society in the Kursaal was so mixed. Besides that, she found the country monotonous, the weather dull, the music 'agacante

this pitiless account. "Poor girl, how embarra

his shoulders. "She had a gr

-possession only a form of emb

faults. He suspects the approach of something which must shatt

think her pretty," says F

she has parents who, with all their perversity, are yet

for scarcely ten minutes, in such a repulsive manner." And as his brother-in-law, astonished at such an unusual outbreak from Felix, yet loo

again with the gesture of a man who

lways contained a tinge of sympathetic politeness, and there was never that warm abruptness which is a healthy symptom of manly friendship. Sad yielding on one side; on the other good-natured advances. This, a

inks interest you?" asks Erwin,

voices of the night, and the fluttering of a moth which has wand

s a look such as Erwin had only once before seen, and then in a dying man's who

man like me has

ed harshly

the garden lamp shed amid the gray moonlight, a tall white

N

so pale, with such deathly tenderness, must have looked the

of it, but if you knew what it is to be weary and alone, with no one on whom to lean for support! To have no one to whom one can be anything, for whom one can sacrifice oneself, to be perpetually condemned to think of oneself when thought is torment and loathing--to be sometimes permitted by pitying people to look on at happiness which awakes all the furies in one--yes, at first it was a comfort to me to

one had heard him say so much; the gen

tened. Erwin is more moved than she. "Felix," says he, "you go too far. You must not marry the young Harfink;

aughs b

a girl who loves you for yourself, who

his brother-in-law, t

ot to be found, and even if an angel came down from heaven to console me, I must repulse her. I ha

rns, and as he sees Elsa still standing motionless, her face drawn with deepest misery, near the chair which he has left, he hurries back to her and takes her in his arms. "I was wrong to

and sister mingle. Then

back to-morro

o say f

at are you

e elsewhere--and you, you are very g

o for long yield themselves to the weak enjoyment of tears. Her eyes are dry again, but so indescribably sad and staring that Erwin wo

obbed him of his senses?" s

it s

not be otherwise. I fear, I fear it is all in

st successful--to dissuade a weak man is quite easy, but alw

win, Erwin, often it seems to me that father had