"Then we shall get our meal all the quicker!" She ran off laughing, and finally Bernardine found herself alone with Catharina.
"Liza is very happy," she said to Bernardine.

"She loves, and is loved." "That is the greatest happiness," Bernardine said half to herself.
"Fraeulein knows ?" Catharina asked eagerly.
Bernardine looked wistfully at her companion.

"No, Catharina," she said.
"I have only heard and read and seen." "Then _you_ cannot understand," Catharina said almost proudly.

"But _I_ understand!" She spoke no more after that, but took up her knitting, and watched Bernardine playing with the kittens.

She was playing with the kittens, and she was thinking; and all the time she felt conscious that this peasant woman, stricken in mind and body, was pitying her because that great happiness of loving and being loved had not come into her life.
It had seemed something apart from her; she had never even wanted it.
She had wished to stand alone, like a little rock out at sea.
And now?
In a few minutes the Disagreeable Man and she sat down to their meal.
In spite of her excitement, Liza managed to prepare everything nicely; though when she was making the omelette _aux fines herbes_, she had to be kept guarded lest she might run off to have another look at the silver watch and the photographs of herself in her finest frock! Then Bernardine and Robert Allitsen drank to the health of Hans and Liza: and then came the time of reckoning.