But Nettelbeck was by no means lightly in love with Gisela Döring.
During the third summer, partly owing to the increased independence of
her growing charges, partly to his own expert management, they met in
long solitudes seldom disturbed. Gisela dismissed fears, ignored the
inevitable end, plunged headlong and was wildly happy. Nettelbeck was an
ardent and absorbed lover, for he knew that his time was short, and he
was determined to have one perfect memory in his secret life that the
woman who bore his name should never violate. Miss Howland had meted him
the portion his dilatoriness invited and married a fine upstanding young
American whose career was in Washington; and his family had peremptorily
commanded him to return in the spring (with the Kaiser's permission, a
mandate in itself) and marry the patient Baronin Irma Hammorwörth.

And so for a summer and a winter they were happy.

Gisela averted her mind tonight from the parting with something of the
almost forgotten panic. She had never dared to dwell upon it, nor on the
month that followed. Her powerful will had rebelled finally and she had
fought down and out of her consciously functioning mind the details of
her tragic passion, and even reveled arrogantly in the sensation of
deliverance from the slavery of love. Simultaneously she was swept off
to see the great natural wonders of the American continent and they had
intoned the requiem.

The following autumn she returned to Germany and paid her mother another
brief visit.

There all was well. Frau von Niebuhr, who had not developed a white hair
and whose Viennese maid was a magician in the matter of gowns and