His mother made another cup of milk for him and soaked one of his "Keks" in it; he had taken a tiny mouthful, then again leaned his head heavily against her breast and seemed to go to sleep. She got up gently and bearing him into the other room laid him on a cot near the rosebud Anny's crib. So dear he was to her as she laid him down, that her heart seemed to come out of her breast in a great beat of love. The only color in his face was those violet eyes, which now were veiled so thinly by his transparent lids, that standing back from his bed, she thought for an instant they had opened, and that he was looking at her. But he lay so still that in anguish she bent over him to see if the breath were really fluttering from his waxy lips....
When she got back into the living room that look, mask-like, antique, of mother-fear still lay upon her face.
Tante Ilde softly rose from the table and stood by her without a word. "It will be all right in a moment," Kaethe said looking up at her gratefully. "It is silly, of course, to be so frightened," and she kissed the thin hand that hung over her shoulder.
A moment later there was heard the well-loved sound of the latch key, but somewhat slow, uncertain even. Lilli ran quickly to open the door.
Her father was not, as she expected, alone. A miserable little girl of five or six was clinging to his hand, a pale, anxious child that the wintry monster Life had been grimacing at and frightening terribly.
Professor Eberhardt gave his wife one look, but he knew his Kaethe, and it was a look of confidence rather than anxiety that he bent upon her as he stood in the doorway,—a tall, once very handsome man, who had been mangled by the War, then stamped on by the Peace till he had lost all semblance to his former imposing self. His grey eyes were sunken into deep pits on either side of his thin, pinched nose. The blond beard and moustache had had the yellow taken out of them by the early grey of his griefs and anxieties. But as he stood there, his shabby overcoat buttoned up to his chin, some brightness lay about his face; it seemed for the moment quite filled out.
"I met Koellner coming back," he said to his wife, and then he bent gently over the child, "This is his dear, good little girl come to make the children a visit."
Something rose up in Kaethe admonishing her to defend her own. Another child! no, no, no.... But turn that frightened, shivering mite away? It was equally impossible to the elastic kindness of her heart.
It was a situation that in the end beings like the Eberhardts meet in but one way. When that which they have not has been taken from them, they find that they have still something left that they must give.
There was no doubt about its all being a shock to Kaethe, rather than a surprise. She couldn't be surprised by another sight of misery, even though brought up round before it.... Her eyes filled with those weak, ever-ready tears, then she smiled quiveringly. At that smile for which he had waited, entirely trustful, Eberhardt turned to Lilli: