“Come again this afternoon to the dunes behind the mill.  At old Mrs. Adermann’s we can see each other without fear, as the house is far enough off the road.  You must not worry so much about everything.  We have our rights, too.  If you will say that to yourself emphatically, I think all fear will depart from you.  Life would not be worth the living if everything that applies in certain specific cases should be made to apply in all.  All the best things lie beyond that.  Learn to enjoy them.”

“‘Away from here,’ you write, ‘flight.’  Impossible.  I cannot leave my wife in the lurch, in poverty, along with everything else.  It is out of the question, and we must take life lightly, otherwise we are poor and lost.  Light-heartedness is our best possession.  All is fate; it was not so to be.  And would you have it otherwise—­that we had never seen each other?”

Then came the third letter: 

“Be at the old place again today.  How are my days to be spent without you here in this dreary hole?  I am beside myself, and yet thus much of what you say is right; it is salvation, and we must in the end bless the hand that inflicts this separation on us.”

Innstetten had hardly shoved the letters aside when the doorbell rang.  In a moment Johanna announced Privy Councillor Wuellersdorf.  Wuellersdorf entered and saw at a glance that something must have happened.

“Pardon me, Wuellersdorf,” said Innstetten, receiving him, “for having asked you to come at once to see me.  I dislike to disturb anybody in his evening’s repose, most of all a hard-worked department chief.  But it could not be helped.  I beg you, make yourself comfortable, and here is a cigar.”

Wuellersdorf sat down.  Innstetten again walked to and fro and would gladly have gone on walking, because of his consuming restlessness, but he saw it would not do.  So he took a cigar himself, sat down face to face with Wuellersdorf, and tried to be calm.

“It is for two reasons,” he began, “that I have sent for you.  Firstly, to deliver a challenge, and, secondly, to be my second in the encounter itself.  The first is not agreeable and the second still less.  And now your answer?”

“You know, Innstetten, I am at your disposal.  But before I know about the case, pardon me the naive question, must it be?  We are beyond the age, you know—­you to take a pistol in your hand, and I to have a share in it.  However, do not misunderstand me; this is not meant to be a refusal.  How could I refuse you anything?  But tell me now what it is.”

“It is a question of a gallant of my wife, who at the same time was my friend, or almost a friend.”

Wuellersdorf looked at Innstetten.  “Instetten, that is not possible.”

“It is more than possible, it is certain.  Read.”

Wuellersdorf ran over the letters hastily.  “These are addressed to your wife?”

“Yes.  I found them today in her sewing table.”