came to him for help.  He soon had a larger attendance than was comfortable, and had to extend the work, without which he could not have lived.  He found endless opportunities of relieving misery and distress in this poor quarter of the town, and as he was a rich man, and independent of his own creature comforts, he could put his philosophy of compassion into practice to his heart’s content.  Wilhelm took up his work again at the Laboratory, and also resumed his visits to the Ellrichs, but it was with an increasing discomfort.  The councilor, who had been distinguished for his services in the financial transactions with the French Government, had heard the story of the refusal of the Iron Cross.  He thought it very ridiculous, and his early friendship for Wilhelm became markedly cooler.  Even Frau Ellrich’s motherly feeling for him received a check, and modesty and shyness no longer seemed a sufficient explanation of the unaccountable delay in his love-making.  Only Loulou was apparently the same, whenever he came, always lively and friendly, but when he left she was affectionate without any display of emotion, grateful for tender glances, not withholding quiet kisses, but not offering them—­her calm manner almost mysterious, as if love were simply something superficial and of small import.  Wilhelm could no longer deny that his first love, which had stirred his being to the depths, was a mistake, but he could not bring himself to definitely end the existing conditions.  Hundreds of times he was on the point of saying to Loulou that he did not think the tie between them would secure their happiness, and offering her her freedom, but as soon as he began his courage would fail him.  If people were present he was confused; if they were alone, her personal appearance had the same charm for him, or rather it awoke in him the remembrance of the delight and enthusiasm he had felt in the past, and prevented him taking a step toward what would do grievous injury to her girlish vanity, if nothing more.

Would this suspense and these fears, which made him so restless and unhappy, always last?  He might write a letter to Loulou, as he was unable to say what he wished to in the light of her beautiful brown eyes.  Then he threw this idea aside as unworthy of consideration; he could not simply dismiss a girl whom he loved by means of the post.  The simple thing to do seemed to wait, until, on the other side, they should grow disgusted with him, and would tell him to go.  This agreed with his passive character, which was timidly inclined to draw back before the rushing current of events, and preferred to be carried along by them, just as a willow leaf is borne along on the surface of a stream.  Wilhelm could not help noticing that Herr von Pechlar was now a favorite guest at the Ellrichs’, that he made himself very fussy about both mother and daughter, and that he had a very impertinent and slightly triumphant air when he met him.  He would only have to leave the coast clear for Pechlar and all would be at an end.