Fritz Nettenmair still sat on all alone in the wine-tavern.  His head hung wearily down on his breast.  He justified to himself his hatred and his course of action.  His brother and she were false; his brother and she were guilty, not he who sat here squandering what belonged to his children.  He who had stolen her heart away from him might look after them.  Just at the moment when he had succeeded in convincing himself, the door of the bedroom at home opened.  His wife had got up out of bed again and put back the box containing the flower with the letters.  Apollonius had not kept it, neither might she.  Her husband had not yet thought of going home when she once more pulled the covers over her chaste limbs.  In the thought that thence-forward Apollonius should be her lode-star, and that if she acted as he did she would remain pure and safe from evil, she fell asleep and smiled in her slumber like a carefree child.

Apollonius knew little of his brother’s mode of life.  Fritz Nettenmair hid it from him through the involuntary restraint that Apollonius’ efficient personality laid upon him, though he would not have acknowledged it to any one, least of all to himself.  And the workmen knew that they might not go to Apollonius with anything that looked like tale-bearing, least of all where his brother was concerned, whom he would have liked to see respected by them all more than himself.  But he had noticed that Fritz looked on him as an intruder on his rights who robbed him of all pleasure in his business and occupation.  From the day of his return Apollonius had not felt happy at home.  He was a burden to those whom he loved most; he often thought of Cologne, where he knew himself to be welcome.  Until now the moral obligation had held him which he had taken upon himself in respect to the repairs.  These were nearing completion with rapid strides.  Thus his thought was at liberty to demand realization; and he imparted it to his brother.

It was difficult for Apollonius at first to convince his brother that he was in earnest in his intention to return to Cologne.  Fritz took it for a sly pretext meant to reassure him.  Man gives up a fear with as much difficulty as he does a hope.  And he would have had to confess to himself that he had done wrong to the two whom he had become so accustomed to accusing of having done wrong to him that he felt a kind of satisfaction in so doing.  He would have had to forgive his brother for a second wrong which the latter had suffered from him.  He did not become reconciled until he had succeeded in seeing again in his brother the dreamer of old and in his intention a piece of foolishness, until he saw in it an involuntary confession that his brother had recognized in him a superior opponent and was leaving in despair of ever being able to carry out his evil plan.  Then at once all his old jovial condescension waked as from a winter sleep.  His boots creaked again:  “There he is!” and his dangling