The time is Christmas Eve. Before the close of the afternoon Reinhard and some other students were sitting together at an old oak table in the Ratskeller.

The basement of the Rathaus or Town Hall. This, in almost every German town of importance, has become a restaurant and place of refreshment.

The lamps on the wall were lighted, for down here in the basement it was already growing dark; but there was only a thin sprinkling of customers present, and the waiters were leaning idly up against the pillars let into the walls.

In a corner of the vaulted room sat a fiddler and a fine-featured gipsy-girl with a zither; their instruments lay in their laps, and they seemed to be looking about them with an air of indifference.

A champagne cork popped off at the table occupied by the students. “Drink, my gipsy darling!” cried a young man of aristocratic appearance, holding out to the girl a glass full of wine.

“I don’t care about it,” she said, without altering her position.

“Well, then, give us a song,” cried the young nobleman, and threw a silver coin into her lap. The girl slowly ran her fingers through her black hair while the fiddler whispered in her ear. But she threw back her head, and rested her chin on her zither.

“For him,” she said, “I’m not going to play.”

Reinhard leapt up with his glass in his hand and stood in front of her.

“What do you want?” she asked defiantly.

“To have a look at your eyes.”

“What have my eyes to do with you?”

Reinhard’s glance flashed down on her. “I know they are false.”

She laid her cheek in the palm of her hand and gave him a searching look. Reinhard raised his glass to his mouth.

“Here’s to your beautiful, wicked eyes!” he said, and drank.

She laughed and tossed her head.

“Give it here,” she said, and fastening her black eyes on his, she slowly drank what was left in the glass. Then she struck a chord and sang in a deep, passionate voice:

To-day, to-day thou think’st me
Fairest maid of all;
To-morrow, ah! then beauty
Fadeth past recall.
While the hour remaineth,
Thou art yet mine own;
Then when death shall claim me,
I must die alone.

While the fiddler struck up an allegro finale, a new arrival joined the group.

“I went to call for you, Reinhard,” he said, “You had already gone out, but Santa Claus had paid you a visit.”

“Santa Claus?” said Reinhard. “Santa Claus never comes to me now.”

“Oh, yes, he does! The whole of your room smelt of Christmas tree and ginger cakes.”

Reinhard dropped the glass out of his hand and seized his cap.

“Well, what are you going to do now?” asked the girl.

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

She frowned. “Stay,” she said gently, casting an amorous glance at him.

Reinhard hesitated. “I can’t,” he said.

She laughingly gave him a tap with the toe of her shoe and said: “Go away, then, you good-for-nothing; you are one as bad as the other, all good-for-nothings.” And as she turned away from him, Reinhard went slowly up the steps of the Ratskeller.

Outside in the street deep twilight had set in; he felt the cool winter air blowing on his heated brow. From some window every here and there fell the bright gleam of a Christmas tree all lighted up, now and then was heard from within some room the sound of little pipes and tin trumpets mingled with the merry din of children’s voices.

Crowds of beggar children were going from house to house or climbing up on to the railings of the front steps, trying to catch a glimpse through the window of a splendour that was denied to them. Sometimes too a door would suddenly be flung open, and scolding voices would drive a whole swarm of these little visitors away out into the dark street. In the vestibule of yet another house they were singing an old Christmas carol, and little girls’ clear voices were heard among the rest.

But Reinhard heard not; he passed quickly by them all, out of one street into another. When he reached his lodging it had grown almost quite dark; he stumbled up the stairs and so gained his apartment.

A sweet fragrance greeted him; it reminded him of home; it was the smell of the parlour in his mother’s house at Christmas time. With trembling hand he lit his lamp; and there lay a mighty parcel on the table. When he opened it, out fell the familiar ginger cakes. On some of them were the initial letters of his name written in sprinkles of sugar; no one but Elisabeth could have done that.

Next came to view a little parcel containing neatly embroidered linen, handkerchiefs and cuffs; and finally letters from his mother and Elisabeth. Reinhard opened Elisabeth’s letter first, and this is what she wrote:

“The pretty sugared letters will no doubt tell you who helped with the cakes. The same person also embroidered the cuffs for you. We shall have a very quiet time at home this Christmas Eve. Mother always puts her spinning-wheel away in the corner as early as half-past nine. It is so very lonesome this winter now that you are not here.

“And now, too, the linnet you made me a present of died last Sunday. It made me cry a good deal, though I am sure I looked after it well.

“It always used to sing of an afternoon when the sun shone on its cage. You remember how often mother would hang a piece of cloth over the cage in order to keep it quiet when it sang so lustily.

“Thus our room is now quieter than ever, except that your old friend Eric now drops in to see us occasionally. You told us once that he was just like his brown top-coat. I can’t help thinking of it every time he comes in at the door, and it is really too funny; but don’t tell mother, it might easily make her angry.

“Guess what I am giving your mother for a Christmas present! You can’t guess? Well, it is myself! Eric is making a drawing of me in black chalk; I have had to give him three sittings, each time for a whole hour.

“I simply loathed the idea of a stranger getting to know my face so well. Nor did I wish it, but mother pressed me, and said it would very much please dear Frau Werner.

“But you are not keeping your word, Reinhard. You haven’t sent me any stories. I have often complained to your mother about it, but she always says you now have more to do than to attend to such childish things. But I don’t believe it; there’s something else perhaps.”

After this Reinhard read his mother’s letter, and when he had read them both and slowly folded them up again and put them away, he was overcome with an irresistible feeling of home-sickness. For a long while he walked up and down his room, talking softly to himself, and then, under his breath, he murmured:

I have err’d from the straight path,
Bewildered I roam;
By the roadside the child stands
And beckons me home.

Then he went to his desk, took out some money, and stepped down into the street again. During all this while it had become quieter out there; the lights on the Christmas trees had burnt out, the processions of children had come to an end. The wind was sweeping through the deserted streets; old and young alike were sitting together at home in family parties; the second period of Christmas Eve celebrations had begun.

As Reinhard drew near the Ratskeller he heard from below the scraping of the fiddle and the singing of the zither girl. The restaurant door bell tinkled and a dark form staggered up the broad dimly-lighted stair.

Reinhard drew aside into the shadow of the houses and then passed swiftly by. After a while he reached the well-lighted shop of a jeweller, and after buying a little cross studded with red corals, he returned by the same way he had come.

Not far from his lodgings he caught sight of a little girl, dressed in miserable rags, standing before a tall door, in a vain attempt to open it.

“Shall I help you?” he said.

The child gave no answer, but let go the massive door-handle. Reinhard had soon opened the door.

“No,” he said; “they might drive you out again. Come along with me, and I’ll give you some Christmas cake.”

He then closed the door again and gave his hand to the little girl, who walked along with him in silence to his lodgings.

On going out he had left the light burning.

“Here are some cakes for you,” he said, pouring half of his whole stock into her apron, though he gave none that bore the sugar letters.

“Now, off you go home, and give your mother some of them too.”

The child cast a shy look up at him; she seemed unaccustomed to such kindness and unable to say anything in reply. Reinhard opened the door, and lighted her way, and then the little thing like a bird flew downstairs with her cakes and out of the house.

Reinhard poked the fire in the stove, set the dusty ink-stand on the table, and then sat down and wrote and wrote letters the whole night long to his mother and Elisabeth.

The remainder of the Christmas cakes lay untouched by his side, but he had buttoned on Elisabeth’s cuffs, and odd they looked on his shaggy coat of undyed wool. And there he was still sitting when the winter sun cast its light on the frosted window-panes, and showed him a pale, grave face reflected in the looking-glass.