The old man was calm now. The idea that the girl was a grown-up young woman, although obvious enough, changed his train of thought. For the moment it took his attention from the immediate cause of his unhappiness, and brought his imagination into play.
"A grown-up young lady!" he mused. "Yes, of course! But I can't see her as grown up; I can't see her, Jenny. I can only remember her as a wee tot walking around with her one-eyed doll; the eye she kicked out! I remember that so well."
In spite of his misery, the old man laughed aloud as he recalled the circumstance that led up to the loss of the eye. The consternation in the face of the child as she handed him the piece of broken eye had made him laugh; and he laughed now hysterically as he recalled the incident. Jenny seeing him laugh, laughed too.
"Thank God he can still laugh," she thought.
"Ah, well!" he went on, drawing a deep breath. "They are gone, and I—look no more. My search is over, Jenny, over and done. But I go back; I see once more my Leipsic. There they know me! Here I am an outcast, a beggar."
Jenny could only shake her head and look at him helplessly. She realised that any effort she might make to influence him to change his plans would be useless; and more and more did she hate the woman who had been the cause of all his misery, the woman whose portrait he looked at so lovingly.
"A beggar," Von Barwig repeated to himself. "Yes, that's it! I can fall no lower, I give up!"
The fortune of the broken-spirited, broken-hearted old man was now at its lowest ebb; and he gave up the fight. There was a long silence. Jenny was thinking hard. What could she say or do; how could she help him?
A knock at the door broke the stillness, which had become almost oppressive.