"I came home last night, and I am expecting you. Love to all your people,
"Ulrich."
Because he did not wish to betray his emotion, he stood silently behind his chair, and crumpled the paper in his hand. Each one in turn came up to him quietly and congratulated him.
"Children," he said, "his house is empty and desolate now. He has no one but us. Help me to make him welcome here, so that he may look on it as his home. Will you help me, all three of you?"
"Of course we will, my son," said, his mother, and stroked his arm.
"And do you agree, Hertha?"
She looked at him with wide, calm eyes, and nodded. He took her hand and mutely thanked her; then he ate and drank, and counted the minutes.
Soon he was making his way streamwards over rain-drenched paths. All round him, in hedge and field, buds and shoots were bursting forth into their spring glory, and within him as he went along a voice kept up the jubilant cry, "Now he belongs to me entirely, and no one else."
But when he stood aloft on the dyke, and saw below him the bijou turrets of Uhlenfelde rising in their coquettish smartness against the sky, a fear began to creep into his heart.
They had been built for her, and where was she? Perhaps knocking about the world abandoned and degraded, while he, unpunished, might dare to set his foot in the house which he had helped to desecrate.