had accompanied her brother's coffin to its resting place, and during the
mass for the dead had crowded the spacious nave of St. Sebald's? There
had been now only a scanty group. The nuns from the convent were
present, down to the most humble lay Sister; but they were under great
obligations to her mother, and their abbess was her father's sister.
There were few other women except the old crones from the hospitals and
nurseries, who were never absent when there was an opportunity to weep or
to backbite. In going through the nave of the church into the chapel the
sisters had passed a group of younger lads and maidens, who had nudged
one another in so disrespectful a way, whispering all sorts of things,
that Els had tried to draw Eva past them as swiftly as possible.

Her wish to keep her more sensitive sister from noticing the disagreeable
gestures and insulting words of the cruel youths and girls was gratified.
True, Eva also felt with keen indignation that far too little honour was
paid to her beloved dead; that the blinded people believed the slanderers
who repeated even worse things of her Els than of herself, and made their
poor mother, who had lived and suffered like a saint, atone for what they
imagined were the sins of her daughters; but the jeers and scorn which
had obtruded themselves upon her father and sister from more than one
quarter, in many a form, had entirely escaped her notice. She had
accustomed herself from childhood to indulge in reflections and emotions
apart from the demands of the world. Whatever occupied her mind or soul
absorbed her completely; here she had been wholly engrossed in this
silent intercourse with the departed, and a single glance at the group
assembled in the church had showed her everything which she desired to
know of her surroundings.

Heinz had gone to the field the day before yesterday. Her silent
colloquy concerned him also. How difficult he made it for her to