brave unless one is suffering. The worst of it is that we're so poor,
or you could have come with me and we'd have taken a house and set up
housekeeping together for my year of study. Well, we won't be poor for
ever, little mother. I'm going to be your son, and husband, and
everything else that loves and is devoted, and I'm going to earn both
our livings for us, and take care of you forever. You've taken care of
me till now, and now it's my turn. You don't suppose I'm a great
hulking person of twenty two, and five foot ten high, and with this
lucky facility in fiddling, for nothing? It's a good thing it is
summer now, or soon will be, and you can work away in your garden, for
I know that is where you are happiest; and by the time it's winter
you'll be used to my not being there, and besides there'll be the
spring to look forward to, and in the spring I come home, finished.
Then I'll start playing and making money, and we'll have the little
house we've dreamed of in London, as well as our cottage, and we'll be
happy ever after. And after all, it is really a beautiful arrangement
that we only have each other in the world, because so we each get the
other's concentrated love. Else it would be spread out thin over a
dozen husbands and brothers and people. But for all that I do wish
dear Dad were still alive and with you.

This pension is the top fiat of a four-storied house, and there isn't a
lift, so I arrived breathless, besides being greatly battered and all
crooked after my night sitting up in the train; and Frau Berg came and
opened the door herself when I rang, and when she saw me she threw up
two immense hands and exclaimed, "_Herr Gott_!"

"_Nicht wahr_?" I said, agreeing with her, for I knew I must be looking
too awful.