"Please ask what other ladies are paying, and then Scold, if you think it
right."

With these words she left the kitchen.

"My child, I'm not scolding at all," Barbara called after her, but Maria
would not hear, hastily ascended the stairs and locked herself into her
room. Her joyousness had again vanished.

On Sunday she went to church. After dinner she filled a canvas-bag with
provisions for Adrian, who was going on a boating excursion with several
friends, and then sat at the window in her chamber.

Stately men, among them many members of the council, passed by with their
gaily-dressed wives and children; young girls with flowers in their
bosoms moved arm in arm, by twos and threes, along the footpath beside
the canal, to dance in the village outside the Zyl-Gate. They walked
quietly forward with eyes discreetly downcast, but many a cheek flushed
and many an ill-suppressed smile hovered around rosy lips, when the
youths, who followed the girls moving so decorously along, as gaily and
swiftly as sea-gulls flutter around a ship, uttered teasing jests, or
whispered into their ears words that no third party need hear.

All who were going towards the Zyl-Gate seemed gay and careless, every
face showed what joyous hours in the open air and sunny meadows were
anticipated. The object that attracted them appeared beautiful and
desirable to Maria also, but what should she do among the happy, how
could she be alone amid strangers with her troubled heart? The shadows
of the houses seemed especially dark to-day, the air of the city heavier
than usual, as if the spring had come to every human being, great and