12 THE OPPERMANNS bright surface Sybil Rauch emerged, clear-cut, seif-willed. She stood there slirn and resolute, one leg slightly advanced. The slender head was poised on a long neck, the wilful eyes of a child peered forth under a lang, narrow, headstrong brow; the outlineof the cheeks was emphasized. The lang lower 5eC- tion of the face receded and ended in a childlike chin, It was an uncompromising likeness, a definitely striking picture, "Striking to the verge of caricature," Sybil Rauch would pout when she was in a sulky mood. However, the portrait did not minimize the things that made Sybil Rauch attractive, In spite of her undeniable thirty years, the woman had a child- like, though shrewd and self-willed expression. "Self-centred," thought Gustav Oppermann, still under the speIl of the other portrait, It was now ten years since Gustav had met Sybil. She had thea been a dancer with many ideals and little sense of rhythm, but she enjoyed some success, She was well off and lived in comfort, pampered by a worldly-wise, patient mether. The ingenuous, South German esprit of this dainty girl, so strangely mingled with a sharpness and shrewdness far beyond her years, had attracted Gustav. She had been Hatrered hy the obvious devotion of this substantial, distinguished man, and a sincere and unusual devotion quickly developed between the girl and the man twenty years her senior. He was at once her lover and her uncle, He sensed her every mood, she could be perfectly frank with hin., his advice was at all times under- standing and weIl considered, He had discreetly made her realize that her dancing, with its lack of musical values, oould never lead to real, self-satisfying success, Convinced of this, she changed hobbies with quick determination and began to train herself, under his direetion, for authorship, She had the knack of expressing herself vividly and newspapers willingly printed her sketches and short stories. When her private fortune was swept away through the economic changes in Germany, her

BOOK ONB: YESTERDAY 13 earnings went far towards her support. Gustav, hirnself with- out creative talent but a good critic, gave her assiduous and sensible adviee and through his extensive connexions helped her to a good market. They had often thought of marriage, she more persistently than he, Bur she realized that he pre- ferred not to harden the relationship between them by a legal union. T aking it all in all, the ten years together had been good years. Good years? Say rather, agreeable years, reflected Gustav Oppermann, contemplating the cleve- lovable, wilful child in the pieture. And suddenly he became eonscious again of the letter, of the unopened letter on the big desk, Anna's letter, There would not have been ten comfortable years with Anna, There would have been years of quarrelling and upheaval. Bur on the other hand, if he had been Anna's lover, he would hardly have needed to ask hirnself that morning what he should do with hirnself during the winter, in case the Lessing biography were rejected. He would have known weil enough, then, what to do and where to go. He would probably have had so much to do that he would have groaned aleud if anvone had men- tioned Lessing. " No, he ha ted the hectic restlessness as he observed it in many of his friends, He liked his own respectable, well-ordered idle- ness. It was good to sit in his fine house with his books and his assured income, arnong the pine-wooded hills of Grune- wald. It was good that he had finished with Anna in those days, after two years with her. Had he finished with her or had she finished with hirn? Ir is not easy to find one's way through the history of one's own life. This much, however, was certain. He would miss Anna if she disappeared frorn his life altogerher. Tobe sure, there were always rancorons afrer-thoughts whenever they met, Anna was so quarrelsorne, She had such an outspoken, cutting