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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman's Will, by Anne Warner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Woman's Will
+
+Author: Anne Warner
+
+Illustrator: J. H. Caliga
+
+Release Date: November 10, 2008 [EBook #27225]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WOMAN'S WILL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    A Woman's Will
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+    A Woman's Will
+    By
+    Anne Warner
+
+    _Illustrated by J. H. Caliga_
+
+    [Illustration: con passionato.]
+
+
+    Boston
+    Little, Brown, and Company
+    1904
+
+
+    _Copyright, 1904_,
+    BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
+
+
+    _All rights reserved_
+    Published April, 1904
+
+    THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                     PAGE
+
+    PART I
+    THE RISE OF THE STORM               1
+
+    PART II
+    THE BEATING OF THE WAVES          171
+
+    PART III
+    THE BREAKING OF THE BARRIERS      297
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+    _From Pastel Drawings by I. H. Caliga_
+
+    "And the unvoiceable wonder of his magic"             _Frontispiece_
+
+    "She rose to receive them with radiant countenance"       _Page_ 19
+
+    "They stood together on the Maximilianbrucke"                "  173
+
+    "'I want you to pay a lot of attention to what I am
+        going to say, Rosina'"                                   "  319
+
+
+
+
+A Woman's Will
+
+PART I
+
+THE RISE OF THE STORM
+
+Chapter One
+
+
+"Good-bye--good-bye, Rosina!" cried Jack, giving one last violent wave
+to his handkerchief. And then he put it back in his pocket, because the
+crowd upon the deck of the departing Liner had now become a mere blur in
+the distance, and distant blurs seemed to his practical nature unworthy
+any further outlay of personal energy. "But oh!" he added, as he and
+Carter turned to quit the dock, "how the family are just agoing to revel
+in peace for these next few months! The Milennium!--well, I don't know!"
+
+"I do not see how you and your Uncle John ever came to let her go off
+all alone like that," Carter said, with a gloom that did not try to mask
+a terrible reproach; "she'll be so awfully liable to meet some
+foreigner over there and--and just marry him." He threw up his cane as
+he spoke, intending to rap on the boarding by which they were that
+instant passing.
+
+Jack thrust his own cane out quickly and barred the other with an
+excellent fencing _fente_.
+
+"No rapping on wood!" he cried sharply; "not after that speech!--you
+know!"
+
+Carter turned two astonished eyes friend-ward.
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked; "do you mean to say that you'd stand her
+marrying any one over there for one minute?"
+
+"Stand it!" said Jack, "would we _stand_ it, did you say? My dear
+fellow, how plainly you betray the fact that you are in love with
+Rosina. We,--myself and the family,--on the contrary, live with her. The
+difference in the two propositions is too tremendous to be quickly
+grasped by you even, but it is just about the same distance as that
+between theory and practice."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Carter, with an air of deep annoyance.
+
+"I'll tell you how I personally regard Rosina," Jack went on, paying no
+attention to the other's exclamation; "I look upon her as very likely to
+marry abroad, because I don't know of but one man at home clever enough
+to be able to marry her."
+
+He laid his hand upon Carter's shoulder as he spoke, and Carter, who
+didn't at all understand what he meant, thought that he understood, and
+was correspondingly happy.
+
+They boarded the ferry then, and went from Hoboken straight back to
+civilization.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The "Kronprinz" meanwhile was slowly wending her way down the river,
+past the skyscrapers, and out towards the open sea.
+
+Rosina, already established in her chair, with a mother-of-pearl
+lorgnette upon her lap and a pair of field-glasses swinging from the
+card-holder, felt more placidly happy than she had in years. If those
+left behind who supposed that she was going abroad to get a second
+husband could but have gazed into her heart, they would have
+comprehended the utter and complete falsity of their views.
+
+Her year and a half of widowhood had been one long-continued period of
+quiet ecstasy.
+
+Standing alone in her own room the morning after the funeral, she had
+made a vow to never marry again.
+
+"Enough is as good as a feast," she had said, surveying her crape-draped
+self with a deep sense of satisfaction; "it never approached anything
+like a feast, but it certainly has taught me to know when I have had
+enough."
+
+And then new orders had been issued to every department of her
+establishment, and a peace approaching Paradise reigned in her heart.
+
+When Carter, in a moment of daring courage, found words in which to
+unfold the facts of his case, she listened in a spirit of intense wonder
+that he could really be stupid enough to suppose that she would consider
+such an idea for a minute.
+
+Carter, his heart jumping wildly about behind his shirt-bosom, thought
+that her look of amazement was a look of appreciation, and wound himself
+up to a tension that was quite a strain on the situation.
+
+"I'm going abroad in May," was her sole response when he had quite
+finished.
+
+"Oh, my God! don't go and marry some one over there!" he cried out, in
+the sudden awful stress of the moment.
+
+"I shall marry no one," she declared with freezing emphasis. "The very
+idea! you all seem to think that I am anxious to render myself miserable
+again; but I assure you that such is very far from being the case."
+
+Poor Carter was stricken dumb under her lash, but he loved her none the
+less, for it must be said that there was a certain passionate sweetness
+in both the bow and quiver of Rosina's mouth which always took the worst
+of the sting out of all of her many cruel speeches. And yet that very
+same bow and quiver were bound to breed a fearful doubt as to the degree
+of faith which one might be justified in holding in regard to the
+impregnability of her position. Very likely she herself did firmly
+intend remaining a widow forever; and yet--
+
+And yet?--
+
+Oh, the thought was unendurable!
+
+Carter refused to endure it anyhow, but for all that the days had moved
+right along until that worst of days came into being, leaving him on the
+dock and sending the "Kronprinz" out to sea.
+
+And, if the truth must be told, it is to be feared that if Rosina's
+unhappy suitor could have caught a glimpse of her as night fell over
+that same day's ending, his sickest doubts would have found food for
+reflection and consequent misery in her situation, for when Ottillie,
+the Swiss maid, came up on deck with a great, furred wrap, the most
+personable man aboard was already installed at her mistress's side,
+thanks to a convenient college acquaintance with her dearest of cousins;
+and the way that the personable man grabbed the cloak from Ottillie and
+heaped it gently around its owner would have stirred the feelings of
+any casual lover whose bad luck it might be to happen along just then.
+
+Rosina nestled back into the soft fur folds and smiled a smile of
+luxurious content.
+
+"I am so thoroughly imbued with utter bliss," she said; "only to think
+that I am going _where_-ever I please, to do _what_-ever I please, just
+_when_-ever I please,--indefinitely."
+
+"It sounds like Paradise, surely," said the man, dropping into his own
+seat and tucking himself up with two deft blows administered to the
+right and left of his legs; "what do you suppose you'll do first?"
+
+"I think that I shall do almost everything first," she answered
+laughing, and then, taking a long look out upon the twinkles of Fire
+Island, she sighed deeply and joyfully, and added, "Ah, but I'm going to
+have a beautiful time!"
+
+The man plunged a hand into his breast-pocket.
+
+"Did you ever smoke a cigarette?" he asked.
+
+"Never!" she exclaimed delightedly; "never till this minute. But will
+you teach me now?"
+
+He looked at her and laughed, his silver case in his hand.
+
+"You must not go too fast at first, you know. Are you sure that it will
+not make you ill?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes! I'm sure!"
+
+"Perhaps it isn't really the first time," he suggested.
+
+"No, it isn't really the first time, but it will be the first time in
+just about one minute."
+
+He laughed again and held out the case; she took one from it and looked
+at it in a way that proved her ignorance.
+
+"Does it make any difference which end?"
+
+"Not with that kind."
+
+"Have I anything to bite, or to pinch, or to poke?"
+
+"No, only something to light."
+
+"Very well, light the match."
+
+"I'm so original," said the man; "you see I say nothing about your
+eyes."
+
+"I noticed your thoughtful consideration," she replied with a smile.
+"Many thanks. And now the match, please."
+
+He scratched it somewhere and offered it. The cigarette lit easily,
+being of a good kind, and the same light did him equal service.
+
+"How do you find it?" he asked presently.
+
+"I find it horrible," she gasped; "but my husband never would have
+allowed it, and so I shall go through with it to the bitter--the
+_awfully_ bitter--other end."
+
+"Don't stick to it if it makes you feel badly," he said a little
+anxiously; "remember you have the whole wide ocean before you."
+
+"Yes," said Rosina, "I--I was just thinking of that."
+
+"Are you apt to be seasick?"
+
+"Sometimes I have to lie still a day or two."
+
+"In your chair?"
+
+"In my berth."
+
+"Please throw it away at once; I don't want you to be lying still in
+your berth a day or two on _this_ voyage, you know."
+
+There was a very earnest note in his voice; she took the cigarette from
+between her lips and looked at it meditatively.
+
+"Do throw it overboard immediately," he begged.
+
+"Oh, I couldn't."
+
+"But I entreat!"
+
+Then she began to laugh.
+
+"It isn't the cigarette that I can't manage,--it's the throw!"
+
+He sprang to his feet with one vast and comprehensive untuck.
+
+"A thousand pardons! Give it to me."
+
+She held it out and he took it to the rail. The offshore breeze was
+growing into a wind that blew the stars out as fast as they appeared
+and caused the bosom of the ocean to appear unduly agitated.
+
+"Let us walk about a bit," he suggested, coming back, and noting a
+certain vagueness in her expression; "come, it's the best thing for us
+both,--exercise, you know."
+
+She smiled faintly.
+
+"I think so too; if you'll just unswathe me, please."
+
+He extricated her, and they made the tour of the deck three times.
+
+"Do you get off at Plymouth?" he asked, when they finally came to a
+standstill beside their own chairs again.
+
+"No, at Cherbourg."
+
+"And then Paris?"
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Anywhere I want to."
+
+"I'm going to Hamburg and then to Berlin; with me it's a case of
+business first and pleasure afterwards."
+
+"Berlin's a nice place," she said thoughtfully; "I've been there twice."
+
+"Wouldn't you enjoy going there again?"
+
+"No." She shook her head. "No, I don't believe that I should. You see I
+went to Berlin both times with my husband, and my present state of mind
+is such that if I think Berlin will recall my husband to me, I'd rather
+remain permanently in Cherbourg."
+
+She stooped and gathered up her rugs preparatory to building a new nest.
+
+"Did you travel much with your husband," he asked, taking the nest
+materials from her and sorting them over his arm.
+
+"Yes, I did." She sat down in the chair. "I travelled a great deal with
+him; but I intend to travel a great deal more now that I'm without him."
+
+The man was busy with her cloak and pillows and rugs. They were quite a
+combination, and the combining was rather a dangerous occupation, the
+lateness of the hour considered. He lost his head just a little bit.
+
+"You might some day have another," he suggested in a tone low enough to
+be thrilling to the thrillable.
+
+Rosina squared herself smilelessly, and the electric deck-light which
+faced her seat showed up her sobriety in unmistakable colors.
+
+"Watch me!" she said briefly, and her enunciation was clear and very
+distinct.
+
+He heard.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Two
+
+
+There was at that particular date a man in Dusseldorf who was quite as
+set in his ideas as Rosina was in hers. He was lingering from day to day
+at the Hotel Heck, engaged for the most part in no more arduous pursuit
+than the awaiting of a telegram from his family. His family were at
+Evian, on the Lac de Geneve, and if they decided to go from there to
+Paris, he wanted very much to visit Switzerland himself. But if, on the
+contrary, they merely ended in transferring their abode from Evian to
+Ouchy, as was very likely to prove to be the case, he had fully made up
+his mind to pass the early summer months in Leipsic. In Leipsic he had
+an interest--the one great interest of his existence. The family had but
+scant sympathy with the force of the Leipsic attraction; their ambitions
+were set in quite another direction, and all their hopes and plans and
+wishes were bent to the accomplishment of that one end. They desired
+most ardently that he should take unto himself a wife, because he was
+the last of his race, and there was a coronet hung up in the skies
+above his head. The natural effect of such anxiety upon the uncommon
+temperament of this particularly uncommon man was to decide him
+definitely to remain single forever, and because he had always proved
+himself of a strength of resolve and firmness of purpose quite
+unequalled in their experience, they felt justified in the gravest fears
+that in this case, as in all others, he would remain steadfast, keeping
+the word which he declared that he had solemnly pledged himself, and so
+become the last of a line whose castle had crowned the crag which it
+defended since the Goth was abroad in the land.
+
+To be sure, he was not yet so old but that, when he casually glanced at
+a girl, the girl, her mother, and his mother all immediately held their
+breath. But he was old enough to have proved the futility of the hope by
+the casualty of the glance over and over again. And so his people were
+completely out of patience with him, and he and they found it
+accordingly more agreeable to take even their Switzerland in individual
+communion-cups. Therefore he remained in Dusseldorf, wandering in the
+Hofgarten, listening to the music in the Tonhalle, and occasionally
+quieting his impatience for the Lake of Lucerne, where his childhood had
+been passed, by writing a few pages to Leipsic, the scene of his
+studies and the spot where his one incentive to labor dwelt.
+
+After three weeks of manifold hesitation the family at last concluded to
+let it be Paris, and thus Southeastern Europe was thrown open to the
+recalcitrant. It being now quite middle June, he took his way southward
+with a leisure born of the warm summer sun, and spent a month _en
+route_. The Storks of Strasbourg and the Bears of Berne both ate of his
+bread before the final definite checking of his trunks for Lucerne took
+place. But the cry at his heart for the Vierwaldstattersee and the
+Schweizerhof became of a strength beyond resisting, and so he turned his
+back upon the Jungfrau and his face towards the Rigi, and slept beneath
+the mist-wreaths of Mount Pilatus that very night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was the next morning that Rosina, walking on the Quai with an
+American man (not the one on the "Kronprinz," however), first observed
+an especially tall and striking-looking individual, and wondered who he
+was. With her the wonder was always straightway followed by the ask, so
+she voiced her curiosity forthwith.
+
+"That man?" said her companion, turning to make sure who she was
+referring to, "that dark man with the gray gloves? oh, that's Von Ibn.
+He's to be very great indeed some day, I'm given to understand."
+
+"Hasn't he stopped growing yet?"
+
+"There is 'great' and 'great,' you know. He is in for both kinds, it
+appears."
+
+"Because of his 'von'?" demanded Rosina, whose thirst for knowledge was
+occasionally insatiable.
+
+"No, because of his violin."
+
+"Does he play?"
+
+"You show ignorance by asking such a question."
+
+"He plays well, then?--is known?"--
+
+"He is a composer."
+
+She turned abruptly to the side and sank down on one of the numerous
+seats before which the endless procession of morning promenaders were
+ceaselessly defiling.
+
+"Let me look at him!" she cried below her breath; "how more than
+interesting! He appears just as one might imagine that Paganini did
+before he made his famous bargain."
+
+The American stood beside her and waited for the object of their
+watching to turn and pass again. He was quite willing to humor his
+charming country-woman in any way possible. He did not care who she
+might take a fancy to, for he was himself engaged to a girl at Smith
+College, and men who fall in love with college girls are nearly always
+widow-proof.
+
+Presently Von Ibn came strolling back. He was very tall, as befitted one
+half of his name, and very dark, as befitted the other, and around his
+rather melancholy eyes were those broad spaces which give genius room to
+develop as it will. He had black hair, a black moustache, and a chin
+which bore witness to the family opposition. Rosina, who chanced to be a
+connoisseur in chins, looked upon his with deep approval.
+
+"Do you know him?" she asked, looking up at the man beside her; "oh, if
+you do, I do so wish that you would present him to me. He looks so
+utterly fascinating; I am sure that I shall like to talk to him."
+
+The American appeared frankly amused.
+
+"I should really enjoy seeing you turned loose upon Von Ibn," he said,
+"it would be such wild sport."
+
+"Then be nice and bring him to me, and you can have all the fun of
+standing by and watching us worry one another."
+
+Her friend hesitated.
+
+"What is it?" she asked impatiently; "why don't you go? Is there any
+reason why I may not meet him? Is he a gambler who doesn't settle fair?
+Has he deserted his own wife, or run away with any other man's? Does he
+lie, or drink beyond the polite limit, or what?"
+
+"Why, the truth is," said the American slowly, "many people consider him
+an awful bore. The fact is, he's most peculiar. I've had him stare at me
+time and again in a way that made me wonder if he was full-witted. I
+don't know anything worse against him than that, though."
+
+"If that's all," Rosina answered, laughing, "you need not fear for me.
+I've lived in good society too many years not to know how to deal with a
+bore. A little idiosyncrasy like that will not mar my enjoyment one bit.
+Do go and get him now."
+
+"But some consider him a very big bore indeed."
+
+"One can see that at the first glance, and just on that account I shall
+have infinite patience with him."
+
+"I warn you beforehand that he's very much of a character."
+
+"I always did like characters better than people who were well-behaved."
+
+The American took one step away and then halted.
+
+"Your mind is set upon meeting him?"
+
+"Yes, quite; and do hurry. He may disappear."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Possess yourself in patience for five short minutes," he began, but she
+cut his speech off.
+
+"There, there, never mind; while you're talking he'll take a train or a
+boat, and I'll be left to go geniusless to my grave."
+
+He lifted his hat at once then and walked away without another word,
+although inwardly he marvelled much that any woman should care about
+meeting that man--that particular man; for he was one of those whom the
+man bored out and out.
+
+The Schweizerhof Quai is long, but not so long but that you may meet any
+one for whom you chance to be searching within ten minutes of the time
+of your setting out. The young American was favored by good luck, and in
+less than half that time returned to Rosina's bench, his capture safely
+in tow. She rose to receive them with the radiant countenance of a
+doll-less child who is engaged in negotiating the purchase of one which
+can both walk and talk. Indeed her joy was so delightfully spontaneous
+and unaffected that a bright reflection of it appeared in the shadows of
+those other eyes which were now meeting hers for the first time.
+
+"Shall we walk on?" she suggested; "that is the pleasantest, to walk and
+talk, don't you think?"
+
+Von Ibn stood stock-still before her.
+
+"What will monsieur do?" he asked, with a glance at the other man.
+
+"He will enjoy walking," Rosina answered.
+
+"But I shall not. I find nothing so tiresome as trying to walk with two
+people. One must always be leaning forward to hear, or else hearing what
+is not amusing."
+
+After which astonishing beginning he waited, pulling his moustache as he
+contemplated them both. The American glanced at Rosina as much as to
+say, "There, I told you that he was the worst ever!" But Rosina only
+smiled cheerfully, saying to her countryman:
+
+"Since Herr von Ibn feels as he does, I think _you'd_ better go and
+study the Lion or meditate the glaciers, and leave me here with this
+lion to do either or both."
+
+The American laughed. He might not have been so amused except that he
+knew that she knew all about the girl in Smith College. Such things
+count sadly against one's popularity, and being a man of sense he
+recognized the fact.
+
+"At your service, madame," he said; "I'm going to turn the care of you
+over to our friend for the remainder of the promenade hour. He will no
+doubt appreciate to the fullest extent the honor of the transferred
+charge."
+
+Von Ibn bowed.
+
+"I do appreciate," he said gravely; "thank you. Good-morning."
+
+Then as the other walked away he turned to Rosina.
+
+"Was I impolite to him?" he asked, in quite the tone of an old and
+intimate friend.
+
+"Yes, very," she answered, nodding.
+
+"You are then displeased?"
+
+"Not at all; I wanted him to go myself."
+
+"Ah, yes," he exclaimed eagerly, "you feel as I. Is it not always
+_ungemuthlich_, three people together?"
+
+"Always."
+
+He glanced about them at the crowd of passers-by.
+
+"It is not pleasant here; let us take a walk by the river, and then we
+can talk and come to know each one the other,"--he paused--"well," he
+added.
+
+"Do you really want to know me--well?" she asked, imitating his pause
+between the last two words.
+
+"Yes, very much. I saw you in the hotel this morning when you came down
+the stair, and I wanted to know you then. And just now when we passed on
+the Quai I felt the want become much greater."
+
+"And I wanted to know you," she said, looking and speaking with
+delicious frankness. "I wanted to know you because of your music."
+
+"Because of my music!" he repeated quickly; "you are then of interest in
+the music? you are yourself perhaps a musician?" and he turned a glance,
+as deep as it was burning, upon her face.
+
+"A very every-day musician," she replied, lifting her smile to his deep
+attention. "I can accompany the musician and I can appreciate him, that
+is all."
+
+"But that is quite of the best--in a woman," he exclaimed earnestly.
+"The women were not meant to be the genius, only to help him, and rest
+him after his labor."
+
+"Really!"
+
+"Of a surety."
+
+"But what made you want to know me?" she continued. "I had a good reason
+for desiring your acquaintance, but you can have had no equally good one
+for desiring mine."
+
+"No," he said quickly and decidedly; "that is, of an undenying, most
+true." He knit his brows and reflected for the space of time consumed in
+passing nine of the regularly disposed trees which shade the boulevard
+just there, for they were now moving slowly in the direction of the
+bridges, and then he spoke. "I do not know just why, yet I am glad that
+it is to be."
+
+"Would you have asked some one to introduce you if I had not sent for
+you?"
+
+He thought again, this time for the space of six trees only, then:
+
+"No, I do not think so."
+
+"Why not? since you wanted to meet me."
+
+"I never get myself made known to any one, because if I did that, then
+later, when they weary me, as they nearly always do, I must blame myself
+only."
+
+"Do most people weary you--later."
+
+"Oh, so very much," he declared, with a sincerity that drew no veil over
+the truth of his statement.
+
+Rosina, remembering the American's views in regard to him, stifled a
+smile.
+
+"Our friend," she asked, "the man who presented you to me, you know,
+does he weary you?"
+
+Von Ibn frowned.
+
+"But he is a very terrible bore," he said; "you surely know that, since
+you know him."
+
+Then she could but laugh outright.
+
+"And I, monsieur," she demanded merrily, "tell me, do you think that I
+too shall some day--?"
+
+He looked at her in sudden, earnest anxiety.
+
+"I hope otherwise," he declared fervently.
+
+While talking they had passed the limits of the Quai, crossed the big,
+sunny square, and come to the embankment that leads to the foot-bridge.
+The emerald-green Reuss rushed beside them with a smooth rapidity which
+seemed to hush the tumult of its swift current far underneath the
+rippling surface. The old stone light-house--the town's traditionary
+godfather--stood sturdily for its rights out in mid-stream, and helped
+support the quaint zigzag of that most charming relic of the past, the
+longest wooden foot-bridge of Lucerne. A never-ending crowd of all ages
+and sexes and conditions of natives and strangers were mounting and
+descending its steps, hurrying along its crooked passage, or craning
+their necks to study the curious pictures painted in the wooden
+triangles of its pointed roof.
+
+"I like the bridge better than I do the Lion," Rosina remarked; "I think
+it is much more interesting."
+
+Von Ibn was looking down into the water where they had stopped by the
+bridge's steps. He did not pay any attention to what she said, and after
+a minute she spoke again.
+
+"What do you think?"
+
+He made no answer. She turned her eyes in the direction of his and
+wondered what he was looking at. He appeared to be lost in a study of
+the Reuss.
+
+"Do you always think before you speak," she said, somewhat amused, "or
+are you doing mental exercises?"
+
+But still no reply.
+
+Then she too kept still. Her eyes wandered to a certain building on her
+left, and she reflected that necessity would shortly be driving her
+there with her letter of credit; but further reflection called to her
+mind the fact that she had intrusted Ottillie with a hundred-franc note
+to change that morning, and that would be enough to carry her over
+Sunday. The Gare across the water then attracted her attention, and she
+reviewed a last week's journey on the St. Gotthard railway, and recalled
+the courtesy of a certain Englishman who had raised and lowered her
+window not once but perhaps twenty times. And then her gaze fell upon
+the skirt of her dress, which was a costume most appropriate for the
+Quai but much too delicate for a promiscuous stroll through the town
+streets.
+
+"That is superficial!" Von Ibn suddenly declared.
+
+She quite started.
+
+"What is superficial?"
+
+"Your comparison. You may not compare them at all."
+
+"May not compare what?"
+
+"The bridge and the Lion. The bridge is a part of life out of the Middle
+Ages, and the Lion is a masterpiece of Thorwaldsen."
+
+Rosina simply stared at him.
+
+"Is that what you have been thinking of all this long time?" she asked
+in astonishment.
+
+"Was it so long?"
+
+"I thought so."
+
+"What did you think of in that so long time?"
+
+She told him about the bank, and the Englishman on the Gotthardbahn, and
+her dress. He smiled.
+
+"How _drole_ a woman is!" he murmured, half to himself.
+
+"But I think that you are droll too," she told him.
+
+"Oh," he said energetically, "I assure you, madame, you do not as yet
+divine the tenth part of _my_ drollness."
+
+She smiled.
+
+"Do you think that I shall ever become sufficiently well acquainted with
+you to learn it all?"
+
+He regarded her seriously.
+
+"If you interest me," he remarked, "I shall naturally see much of you,
+because we shall be much together. How long do you stay in Lucerne?"
+
+"Until Monday. I leave on Monday."
+
+He looked at her in dismay.
+
+"But I do not want to leave on Monday. I have only come the last night.
+I want to stay two weeks."
+
+She felt herself forced to bite her lips, even as she replied:
+
+"But you _can_ stay two weeks, monsieur."
+
+He looked blank.
+
+"And you go?"
+
+"Naturally; but what does that matter? You would not be going where I
+went anyway."
+
+"Where do you go?"
+
+"To Zurich."
+
+"Alone? Do you go alone?"
+
+"I have my maid, of course; and I am to meet a friend there."
+
+"A friend!" His whole face contracted suddenly. "Ah," he cried, sharply,
+"I understand! It is that Englishman."
+
+"What Englishman?" she asked, utterly at a loss to follow his thought.
+
+"Your friend."
+
+"But he's an American."
+
+"You said he was an Englishman."
+
+"I never did! How could I? Why, can't you tell at once that he is an
+American by the way that he talks?"
+
+"I never have hear him talk."
+
+She stared afresh, then turned to walk on, saying, "You must be crazy!
+or aren't you speaking of the man who presented you to me?"
+
+"Why should I be of any interest as to that man? Naturally it is of the
+Englishman that I speak."
+
+"What Englishman?"
+
+"But that Englishman upon the Gotthardbahn, of course; the one you have
+said was so nice to you."
+
+She began to laugh.
+
+"Oh, pardon me, but you are so funny, you are really so very funny;"
+then pressing her handkerchief against her rioting lips, "you will
+forgive me for laughing, won't you?"
+
+He did not smile in the least nor reply to her appeal for forgiveness;
+he only waited until she was quiet, and then went on with increased
+asperity veiled in his tone.
+
+"You are to see him again, _n'est-ce pas_?"
+
+"I never expect to."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Really."
+
+He stopped short and offered her his hand.
+
+"Why?" she asked in surprise.
+
+"Your word that you do not hope to meet him again."
+
+She began to laugh afresh.
+
+Then, still holding out his hand, he repeated insistently.
+
+"Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again."
+
+They were in one of the steep, narrow streets that lie beyond the
+bridges and lead up to the city wall. It was still, still as the desert;
+she looked at him, and his earnestness quelled her sense of humor over
+the absurdity of the situation.
+
+"What shall I say to you?" she asked.
+
+"Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again."
+
+"Certainly I do not expect to meet him again; although, of course, I
+might meet him by chance at any time."
+
+He looked into her face with an instant's gravest scrutiny, and then
+some of his shadow lifted; with the hand that he had held out he
+suddenly seized hers.
+
+"You are truthfully not caring for him, _n'est-ce pas_?" he demanded.
+
+Rosina pulled her hand from his grasp.
+
+"Of course not," she said emphatically. "Why, I never saw the man but
+just that once."
+
+"But one may be much interested in once only."
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"Yes, that is true. I know it. Do not laugh, but give me your hand and
+swear that he does not at all interest you now."
+
+She did not give him her hand, but she raised her eyes to the narrow
+strip of blazing sky that glowed above the street and said solemnly:
+
+"I swear upon my word and honor that I do not take the slightest
+interest in that English gentleman who so kindly raised and lowered my
+windows when I was on the St. Gotthard last week."
+
+Von Ibn drew a breath of relief.
+
+"I am so glad," he said; and then he added, "because really, you know,
+it had not been very nice in you to interest yourself only for the
+getting up of your window."
+
+"He put it down too," she reminded him.
+
+"That is quite nothing--to put a window down. It is to raise them up
+that is to every one such labor on the Gotthardbahn. To let them down is
+not hard; very often mine have fell alone. And much smoke came in."
+
+Rosina walked on and looked the other way, because she felt a need of
+so doing for a brief space. Her escort strolled placidly at her side,
+all his perturbation appearing to have vanished into thin air with the
+satisfactory disposal of the English problem. They came to the top of
+the street and saw the old town-wall and its towers before them. The sun
+was very hot indeed, and the tourists in cabs all had their parasols
+raised.
+
+"I think we had better return," she said, pausing in the last patch of
+shade.
+
+Von Ibn looked at his watch.
+
+"Yes," he said, "we must; _dejeuner_ is there now."
+
+So they turned down into the town, taking another of the steep, little
+streets, so as to vary the scenery of their route. After a little he
+spoke again.
+
+"And you are sure that you go Monday?"
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"To Zurich, and then to where?"
+
+"Then to Constance."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"I do not know where we shall go next."
+
+He started slightly, and a fresh cloud overspread his face.
+
+"Much pleasure to you," he said, almost savagely.
+
+She looked up quickly, surprised at his tone, but her answer was spoken
+pleasantly enough.
+
+"Thank you; and the same to you--all summer long."
+
+In response he shrugged his shoulders so fiercely as to force her to
+notice the movement.
+
+"Why do you shrug your shoulders like that?" she demanded.
+
+"I am amused."
+
+"You don't look amused."
+
+He raised his eyebrows.
+
+"I am amused to see that all women are the same; I have that thought
+just now."
+
+"Are you in the habit of shrugging your shoulders whenever that thought
+occurs to you?"
+
+He tossed his head to one side.
+
+"Women are all the same," he repeated impatiently.
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"They can never tell the truth!"
+
+"What makes you say that?"
+
+"You."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She felt very nearly vexed.
+
+"Please explain," she commanded.
+
+He simply gave another shrug.
+
+She decided to keep her temper.
+
+"I might be clever enough to read minds," she said mildly, "and still be
+dense about divining shoulders; I confess I miss the point that you're
+trying to make with yours."
+
+He was silent.
+
+She glanced sideways at him and was thoroughly startled at the black
+humor displayed in his countenance.
+
+"What is really the matter?" she asked, anxiously.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+She gave him another quick look, and saw that he saw her look and
+avoided it. Then she was angry at such poor taste displayed in the first
+hour of a new acquaintance, and almost thought of turning from him and
+insisting on being left to return to the Schweizerhof alone. But
+something kept her impulse in check.
+
+"He is a genius," she thought, "and they are entirely different from
+other men," so she waited a moment and then spoke with the utmost
+earnestness.
+
+"Please tell me what it all means, monsieur; why are you like this?"
+
+"Because,"--he cried with a sudden passionate outburst of
+feeling,--"because you have lied to me!"
+
+"Monsieur!" she exclaimed, in a shocked voice.
+
+"You have done that," he cried; "you have lift your eyes to heaven and
+swear that you were not interested in him, and then--" he stopped, and
+put his hands to either side of his collar as if it strangled him.
+
+She grew pale at the sight of his emotion.
+
+"Is it that man still?" she asked.
+
+"But naturally it is that man still! _Je ne me fache jamais sans
+raison._"
+
+"But what is there new to worry about him?"
+
+She dared not contemplate smiling, instead she felt that the Englishman
+was rapidly becoming the centre of a prospective tragedy.
+
+Von Ibn scowled until his black brows formed a terrible V just over his
+eyes.
+
+"You do expect to see him in Zurich," he declared.
+
+"But I told you that I didn't."
+
+He laughed harshly.
+
+"I know; but you betrayed yourself so nicely."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Just now, when I say where do you go from Constance, you quite forget
+your part, and you say, 'I do not know where _we_ shall go next.' Yes,
+that is what you say, 'We--_we_!'"
+
+"And if I did."
+
+"But of a surety you did; and I must laugh in my interior when I hear
+your words."
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed quickly, "you must not say that you laughed in your
+interior, it isn't good English."
+
+"Where must I laugh within myself?"
+
+"We say, 'I laughed _to_ myself.'"
+
+He gave another shrug, as if her correction was too petty a matter to
+rightfully command attention at that crisis.
+
+"This all does seem so foolish," she said, "the idea of again having an
+explanation."
+
+"I do not care for you to explain," he interrupted.
+
+"Don't you want to know what I meant?"
+
+"I know quite well what you meant."
+
+"I meant my maid, she always travels with me."
+
+He looked his thorough disbelief.
+
+"Very pretty!" he commented.
+
+She glanced at him and wondered why she was not disgusted, but instead
+her heart swelled with a pity for the unhappiness that overlaid the
+doubt in his face.
+
+"Just think," she said softly, "our friendship is so very young, and you
+are already so very angry."
+
+"I am not angry; what I feel is justified."
+
+"Because I call my maid and myself 'we'!"
+
+He stopped short, and held out his hand.
+
+"Will you say that it is only the maid?"
+
+Then she felt sure that she should be obliged to scream outright, even
+while she was summoning all her self-control to the rescue.
+
+They were come to an angle where two streets met steeply and started
+thence on a joint pitch into the centre of the town. She ran her eyes
+quickly up and down each vista of cobblestones, and, seeing no one that
+she knew either near or far, put her hand into his.
+
+"Upon my word and honor," she declared, with all the gravity which the
+occasion seemed to demand, "I swear that when I leave Constance my maid
+will be my only--"
+
+"_Assez, assez!_" he interrupted, hastily dropping her hand, "it is not
+need that you swear that. I can see your truth, and I have just think
+that it may very well come about that I shall chance to be in Constance
+and wish to take the train as you. It would then be most misfortunate if
+you have swear alone with your maid. It is better that you swear
+nothing."
+
+This kaleidoscopic turn to the conversation quite took Rosina's breath
+away, and she remained mute.
+
+"What hotel in Constance do you stop at?" he asked presently.
+
+"The Insel House, of course."
+
+He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a note-book.
+
+"Perhaps I will want to remember," he said, as he wrote. Then he put up
+the book and smiled into her eyes; he had a beautiful smile, warm and
+winning. "I find that we are very _sympathique_," he went on, "that is
+why I may perhaps come to see you again. People who can enjoy together
+are not many."
+
+"Have you enjoyed this morning? I thought you had not at all."
+
+"But, yes," he protested gravely, "I enjoy it very much. How could you
+think otherwise?"
+
+She felt silence to be safest, and made no reply. He too was silent for
+a little, and then spoke suddenly.
+
+"Oh, because of that Englishman! But that is all over now. We will never
+speak of him again. Only it is most fortunate that I am not of a jealous
+temperament, or I might very well have really offended me that you talk
+so much about him."
+
+"It is fortunate," she agreed.
+
+"Yes," he answered, "for me it was very good."
+
+They had come to the crossing of the great square, and the sunlight was
+dazzling and dancing upon the white stones of the bridge and the molten
+gold of the Vierwaldstattersee. The Promenade was deserted and even its
+shade was unpleasantly warm.
+
+"Shall I see you this afternoon?" Von Ibn asked as they went leisurely
+through the heat.
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"I wish it was after the _dejeuner_," he said, looking out upon the lake
+and the crest of the mountain beyond.
+
+She wondered if she had better say "Why," or not, and finally decided to
+say it. He brought his eyes back from the Rigi and looked at her.
+
+"Because I have the habit of always sleeping after _dejeuner_," he
+explained.
+
+They crossed to the hotel. It was late, and more people were coming down
+in the lifts than going up.
+
+"Are you tired?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, I think that I am--a little."
+
+"I advise you to sleep too," he said gravely.
+
+"I always do."
+
+"So," he cried triumphantly, "you see I say the truth when I say that we
+are very _sympathique_!"
+
+Rosina looked up at him and her eyes danced; he returned the look with a
+responsive glow in his own big pupils.
+
+"I am so glad we meet," he exclaimed impulsively.
+
+She stepped out of the lift and turned to dismiss him.
+
+"And you?" he asked, bowing above her hand.
+
+"I'm glad too," she said, and her tone was most sincere.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Three
+
+
+Late in the afternoon of the same day Ottillie, coming in to wake her
+mistress from a nap which the morning's long walk had resulted in
+stretching to a most unusual duration, brought with her a great bunch of
+those luxuriantly double violets which brim over with perfume and
+beauty. There was also a note, very short, and couched in a flawless
+French.
+
+If one must be roused out of a delicious sleep on a warm June day,
+surely violets, and such a note as accompanied these particular violets,
+were the least disagreeable means ever invented for accomplishing that
+end. Rosina's frown for Ottillie changed into a smile for some one else,
+and she rose from among her pillows and submitted to her toilet with a
+good grace. Ottillie, who was French enough and experienced enough never
+to need to be told things, divined what the note must have contained the
+second time that she saw her mistress glance at the clock, and so
+accelerated her ordinary rate of movement that even the gown of lace
+which appeared to fasten nowhere, was fastened everywhere ere the town
+bells rang five.
+
+A few minutes after, a _garcon_ in the hotel livery brought up a card,
+and, Continental etiquette made it quite _en regle_ for Monsieur von Ibn
+to be ushered into the dainty little salon which the Schweizerhof
+permitted Rosina to enjoy (for a consideration), and there muse in
+company with his own violets, while he waited and turned his cane over
+and over in his gloved hands.
+
+Then Ottillie opened the portieres beyond, and Rosina appeared between
+them, delightfully cool and fresh-looking, and flatteringly glad to see
+him.
+
+"We seem like quite long friends, do we not?" he said, as he bent above
+her hand and kissed it lightly.
+
+"Yes, certainly, I feel that I have the sensation of at any rate three
+weeks," she answered; and then she sank luxuriously down in a great
+_fauteuil_, and was conscious of an all-pervading well-content that it
+should be too warm to go out, and that he should be there opposite her
+while she must remain within. She was curious about this man who was so
+out of the ordinary, and the path along which her curiosity led her
+seemed a most attractive one.
+
+"Why do you say three weeks," he asked; "why not three months or three
+years?"
+
+"But in three years one learns to know another so well, and I do not
+feel--"
+
+"Oh," he interrupted, "it is better as it is; perhaps you may be like I
+am, and get weary always soon, and then have no longer any wish to see
+me."
+
+"Do you get tired of every one?"
+
+He passed his hand across his eyes and sighed and smiled together.
+
+"Yes, madame," he said, and there was a sad note in his voice, "I get
+often tired. And it is bad, because I must depend so deeply on who I
+speak with for my mind to be able to work after. _Comprenez-vous?_"
+
+She made a movement of assent that he seemed to have paused for, and he
+continued.
+
+"When I meet a stranger I must always wonder how soon I shall be
+finished with him. It comes very soon with nearly all."
+
+"And are you sure that you are always the weary one?"
+
+He looked blank for a moment, then,
+
+"I have already bore you; yes?"
+
+"Not at all, but I was warned this morning that you might possibly
+commit such a crime."
+
+"And have I?"
+
+She looked on his earnestness and smiled.
+
+"Have I?" he reiterated; "yes?"
+
+Then she spoke suddenly.
+
+"Why do foreigners always say 'yes' at the end of every question that
+they ask in English? I get so tired of it, it's so superfluous. Why do
+they do it?"
+
+He reflected.
+
+"It is polite," he said, after a moment. "I ask you, 'Do I bore you?'
+and then I ask you, 'Do I?'"
+
+"But why do you think that it is polite to ask me twice?"
+
+He reflected again, and then replied:
+
+"You are equally droll in English; you are even more droll in English, I
+think. You say, 'You will go to walk, will you not?' and the 'not' makes
+no sense at all."
+
+It was her turn to reflect, and be forced to acquiesce.
+
+"Yes, that is true."
+
+"And anyway," he went on, "it is polite for me to ask you twice
+anything, because that shows that I am twice anxious to please you."
+
+"So!"
+
+"Yes;" he took a violet from the bowl at his side and began to unclose
+its petals. "Why did he say that?" he asked, suddenly raising his eyes
+from the flower to her.
+
+"He! who?"
+
+"Our friend."
+
+"Why did he say what?"
+
+"Why did he say that I was stupid? I have never been but nice to him."
+
+She looked startled.
+
+"He never said that you were stupid."
+
+"You said that he told you that I was stupid."
+
+"No, I did not. I said that he warned me that--"
+
+"Oh, it matters not," he broke in, shrugging his shoulders slightly,
+"_ca ne me fait rien_. What he may think of me matters me not at all.
+_Pauvre garcon_, he is so most uninteresting himself that I cannot
+expect interest from him. _Ecoutez-donc!_ for him nothing exists but
+golf; for him where golf is there is something, elsewhere there is
+nothing anywhere. What did he say to me of Paris? he said that for him
+Paris was nothing, because no one plays golf; he said he could throw a
+dog all over the grounds any morning. I did not ask him what dog, or why
+a dog, for I thought it was not truly a dog, but just his bad American
+_argot_; and, if I must speak truth, pardon me that I find it very good
+that so stupid a fellow finds me dull. If he found me amusing, I should
+naturally know that I, too, must be a fool."
+
+He put the violet to his lips and smiled a little.
+
+"He speaks but English," he added; "he knows but golf, he has been
+around the world and has seen nothing. I am quite content to have such a
+man despise me."
+
+Then he was silent, biting the purple flower. Rosina rested her chin
+upon her hand.
+
+"Please go on," she said briefly, "I am listening."
+
+He looked at her and smiled.
+
+"I do like Americans," he went on, "and I see that all the women have
+small waists, and do not grow so large so soon, but I do not see why
+they do not learn many things and so become much more nice; why, for
+example, are they so ignorant of all the world and think their own
+country alone fine?"
+
+"Are we so?"
+
+"Yes, of a truth. Because I speak English I meet very many of America,
+and they always want to talk, so naturally I must listen, because no one
+can arrive at speaking louder surely. And so I must always hear how good
+the light is in America, and how warm the houses are in America, and how
+high the buildings are in America, and how much everything has
+cost--always how much everything has cost; that is always very
+faithfully told to me. And while I listen I must feel how very narrow to
+so speak is. And afterwards when I go on to hear how very poor the light
+is here, and how very cold the hotels are here, I certainly must feel
+how very ill-bred that is."
+
+He paused to get a fresh violet, and then continued:
+
+"I see no possible beauty for a place of four walls fifty _metres_ high;
+and there can be no health where all is so hot night and day; and so I
+only listen and am content to be counted so stupid. Why do you go to
+Zurich Monday?"
+
+The question terminated his monologue with such suddenness that she
+started involuntarily.
+
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+"Naturally because I want to know."
+
+"I go because I am anxious to be out of Switzerland before the first of
+July."
+
+"But Switzerland is very nice in July."
+
+"I know; and it is also very crowded."
+
+"Where shall you be in July?"
+
+"I am not sure; probably in the Tyrol."
+
+He got up from his seat, went to the chimney-piece, lifted up a vase and
+turned it about in his hand with a critical air. Then he faced her again
+and said, with emphasis:
+
+"I shall remain here all summer."
+
+"In Lucerne?"
+
+"Yes; not perhaps always at the hotel, but somewhere on the lake. I am
+born here."
+
+"You are Swiss, then?"
+
+"Yes; if I am Swiss because I am born here."
+
+"Were you born in Lucerne?"
+
+"No, but at a place which my father had then by Fluellen. It is for that
+that I love the Vierwaldstattersee."
+
+"I wish that I had been born here," Rosina murmured thoughtfully.
+
+"Where are you born?"
+
+"In the fourth house of a row of sixteen, all just alike."
+
+"How most American!"
+
+She laughed a little.
+
+"I amuse you?" he asked, with a look of pleased non-understanding.
+
+"Oh, so very much!"
+
+He came a little forward and smiled down at her.
+
+"We are really friends, are we not?"
+
+She looked into his big, earnest eyes.
+
+"I think so," she answered simply, with a little nod.
+
+He moved slowly across the room and, going to the window, turned his
+back upon her.
+
+"It is cooler out now, let us go out and walk. I like to walk, and you
+do too, do you not? yes?"
+
+"Oh, _please_ stop saying 'yes' like that, it makes me so horribly
+nervous."
+
+He continued to look out of the window.
+
+"Are you nervous?" he said. "I am sorry, because it is very bad to be
+nervous."
+
+"I shall not be so if you will only cease tacking that 'yes' on to the
+end of every question that you find occasion to ask me."
+
+"What is 'tacking'?" he asked, whirling around.
+
+"Attaching."
+
+"Why did you not pronounce it plainly the first time?"
+
+She rose slowly from her seat and retouched the violets where he had
+disturbed their carefully arranged disorder. He quitted the window and
+approached her side.
+
+"I asked you to go out with me," he reminded her; "will you go? Yes?--I
+mean 'No'?" he added in hasty correction.
+
+She bent above the flowers, just to see what he _would_ say next.
+
+"Can you go to walk so," he inquired, "or shall I go down and wait while
+you undress?"
+
+She straightened up.
+
+"I can go out this way," she told him; "I have only to get my hat."
+
+"And you will go now?"
+
+"Yes, with pleasure."
+
+"Is it long to get a hat? I will go down to wait for you, you know."
+
+"It is five minutes."
+
+"Is it really five minutes?" he asked anxiously; "or shall I be there
+very much longer?"
+
+"If I say five minutes it will be five minutes."
+
+He took his hat and cane in his left hand and extended the other to her
+with a smile.
+
+"I will go and wait," he said.
+
+She gave him her hand; he held it a minute, looking down into her eyes,
+which wavered and fell before his.
+
+"_Comme vous etes charmante!_" he exclaimed in a low voice, and,
+bending, pressed a kiss (a most fervent one this time) upon the fingers
+which he raised within his own.
+
+After which he left the room at once.
+
+Rosina caught a quick breath as she went in to where her maid sat
+mending some lace.
+
+"Get my things, Ottillie, I am going out."
+
+"What a beautiful color madame has," Ottillie remarked, as she rose
+hastily and went towards the wardrobe.
+
+Rosina looked at herself in the mirror. She was forced to smile at what
+she saw there, for the best cosmetic in the wide world is the knowledge
+that the right person is waiting downstairs.
+
+"Do hurry, Ottillie," she said impatiently, "and get me out a pretty, a
+_very_ pretty, hat; do you hear?"
+
+And then she felt with a glorious rush of joy how more than good life is
+when June is fair, and one is young, and--
+
+"Where shall we walk?" he asked, when she came down to him.
+
+"On the Quai, of course. No one ever walks anywhere else."
+
+"I do often, and we did this morning," he replied, as they passed out
+through the maze of tables and orange-trees that covered the terrace
+before the hotel.
+
+"I should have said 'no one who is anybody.'"
+
+He looked at her, a sadly puzzled trouble in his eyes.
+
+"Is it a joke you make there," he asked, "or but your _argot_?"
+
+"I don't know," she said, unfurling her parasol; "the question that I am
+putting to myself just now is, why did not you raise this for me instead
+of allowing me to do it for myself?"
+
+He looked at her fixedly.
+
+"Why should I do so? or is _that_ a joke?"
+
+"No, I asked that in dead earnest."
+
+"In dead--in dead--" he stammered hopelessly; "oh," he exclaimed,
+"perhaps it is that I am really stupid, after all."
+
+"No, no," she laughed; "it is I that am behaving badly. It amuses me to
+tease you by using words that you do not understand."
+
+"But that is not very nice of you," he said, smiling. "Why do you want
+to tease me?"
+
+"I don't know, but I do."
+
+He laughed lightly.
+
+"We amuse ourselves together, _n'est-ce pas_?" he asked. "It is like
+children to laugh and not know why. I find such pleasure very pleasant.
+One cannot be always wise--above all, with a woman."
+
+"I do not want to be wise," she said, as they joined the promenading
+crowd; "I much prefer to have my clothes fit well."
+
+Then he laughed outright.
+
+"_Vous etes si drole!_" he said apologetically.
+
+"Oh, I don't mind your laughing," she said, "but I do wish that you
+would walk on the other side."
+
+"The other side of the street?" he asked, with surprise.
+
+"No, no; the other side of me."
+
+"Why should I not be on this side as well as on that?"
+
+"Because that's the wrong one to be on."
+
+"It is not! I am on the very right place."
+
+"No; you should be between the lady and the street."
+
+"Why?" he demanded, as he raised his hat to some one.
+
+"To protect her--me."
+
+"To protect you how? Nothing will come up out of the lake to hurt you."
+Then he raised his hat to some people that she bowed to.
+
+"It isn't that, it is that the outside is where the man should walk.
+It's the custom. It's his proper place."
+
+"No, it is not. I am proper where I am; I would be improper if I was
+over there."
+
+"In America men always walk on the outside."
+
+"But we are not in America, we are in Lucerne, and that is Europe, and
+for Europe I am right. _Mon Dieu_, do you think that I do not know!"
+
+Rosina shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I am really distressed when we meet any Americans, because I am sure
+that they think that you have not been well brought up."
+
+Von Ibn shrugged _his_ shoulders.
+
+"There are not many Americans here to think anything," he said
+carelessly, "and all the Europeans whom we meet know that I am well
+brought up whichever side I may choose to walk upon." He bowed again to
+some carriage people.
+
+She trailed her pace a little and then paused; he was such a temptation
+that she could not resist.
+
+"I do wish," she said earnestly, "that to please me you would do as I
+ask you, just this once!"
+
+He stopped short and stared first at her and then at the lake.
+
+"I wonder," he said slowly,--"I wonder if we are to be together ever
+after these days?"
+
+"Why do you wonder that? Would you rather never see me again than do
+something to please me?"
+
+"No, no," he said hastily, a little shock in his tone, "but you must
+understand that if we are to be much together I cannot begin with the
+making of my obedience to suit you. And yet, if it is but for these two
+days, I can very well do whatever you may wish."
+
+He moved out of the line so as to think maturely upon such a weighty
+matter. She covered her real interest in his meditations with an
+excellent assumption of interest in the superb view before her. The Rigi
+was towering there, and its crest and the crests of all its lofty
+neighbors were brightly silvered by the descending sun. From Pilatus on
+the right, away to the green banks of Weggis and Vitznau on the left,
+the lake spread in blue and bronze, and by the opposite shore the
+water's calm was such that a ghostly Lucerne of the under-world lay
+upside down just beneath its level, and mocked reality above by the
+perfection of detail. Little bright-sailed boats danced here and there,
+a large steamer was gliding into the landing by the Gare, and the music
+from a band aboard came floating to their ears.
+
+That little gray mother-duck who raises so many families under the
+shelter of the Schweizerhof Quai presently noticed these two silent
+people, and, suspecting them of possessing superfluous bread, came
+hastily paddling to the feast. It made Rosina feel badly to see the
+patient little creature wait there below; but she was breadless, and
+could only muse over the curious similarity of a woman's lot with a
+hungry duck's, until the duck gave up in despair and paddled off,
+leaving a possible lesson in her wake.
+
+"Oh dear!" she exclaimed then, "I'm going to Zurich Monday, and you're
+going to stay here all summer; we shall never meet again, so what is the
+use of thinking so long over nothing!"
+
+Then he put his hand up, gave his moustache ends a twist, and turned to
+walk on. He was still on the same side, and there was a sort of
+emphasis about his being there which made her want to laugh, even while
+she recognized the fact that the under-current of the minute was a
+strong one--stronger perhaps than she was understanding just then.
+
+"You don't feel altogether positive as to your summer plans, I see?" she
+queried, with a little glance of fun.
+
+"I never am positive," he said, almost grimly. "I will never bind myself
+even by a thread. I must go free; no one must think to hold me."
+
+"I'm sure I don't want to hold you," she laughed; "I think you are
+dreadfully rude, but of course you can do what you please."
+
+"You find me rude?" he asked soberly.
+
+"Yes, indeed, I think you are very rude. Here we are still on the first
+day of our acquaintance, and you refuse absolutely to grant me such a
+trifling request."
+
+They had continued to follow the stone dalles of the embankment and were
+now near the end of the Quai; he stopped short again, and again stared
+at the mountains.
+
+"Ask me what you will," he said, after a moment's pause, "and you shall
+have it; but to that first most absurd asking I shall always refuse."
+
+Her eyes began to dance.
+
+"If I asked you to buy me an automobile!" she ventured.
+
+He glanced at her quickly.
+
+"Do you ask me for an automobile?" he demanded.
+
+Her eyes wandered towards a certain shop on the other side of the
+carriage way.
+
+"If I asked you for that necklace in the window there!"
+
+He raised his shoulders slightly.
+
+"Ladies prefer to buy their own necklaces," he said briefly.
+
+She gave him a furtive look out of the corner of her eye.
+
+"Monsieur, suppose I beg you to take me back to the hotel and henceforth
+never speak to me!"
+
+He did not appear in the slightest degree alarmed. Instead he put his
+hand beneath her arm and turned her for another round of promenade.
+
+"I think the automobile will be best," he said tranquilly. "I will find
+you a good chauffeur, and you can go to Zurich on its wheels."
+
+"I only said 'if,' you know," she murmured.
+
+"Yes, I know," he replied; "but an automobile is always useful." He
+thought a moment and then added, "About how much will you choose to pay
+for it?"
+
+In spite of herself she started and stared at him. He met her eyes with
+a smile of mockery; Its innuendo was unbearable.
+
+"You know very well," she burst forth impetuously, "that I would never
+have thought of really accepting an automobile from you!"
+
+Then he laughed again with fresh amusement.
+
+"_Comme madame se fache!_" he cried, "it is most droll! All that I may
+say you will believe."
+
+"I find you very exasperating," Rosina exclaimed, her cheeks becoming
+hotly pink; "you amuse yourself in a way that transcends politeness. I
+honestly think that you are very rude indeed, and I _am_ in earnest
+now."
+
+He made a careless movement with his head.
+
+"Would you have preferred that I should believe you really expect of me
+an automobile?" he asked.
+
+"You could not possibly have thought that anyhow, and so why should you
+have spoken as if you were afraid lest I might have meant it?"
+
+He rapped on a tree with his cane as he passed it.
+
+"'Might,' and 'would,' and 'should,'" he said placidly, "those are the
+hardest words for a stranger to learn correctly."
+
+She felt her temper slipping its anchor.
+
+"Probably when your tutor endeavored to teach you their difference you
+feared that yielding to his way might be sacrificing your independence,
+and so you refused to consider his instruction."
+
+He struck another tree with his cane.
+
+"When you talk so fast and use such great words I cannot understand at
+all," he said calmly.
+
+Then she fairly choked.
+
+"Are you quite really angry?" he asked with curiosity. She turned her
+face away and kept it averted.
+
+"Let us go into the cafe of the Nationale and dine," he proposed
+suddenly.
+
+"No," she said quickly,--"no, I must go home at once. I have a dinner
+engagement, and I must change my dress before I go."
+
+"Then I shall not see you this evening?"
+
+"No" (very bitterly); "what a pity that will be!"
+
+"But to-morrow?"
+
+"I am going with a party to the Gutsch."
+
+"But that will not be all day?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+He hesitated in his step, and then came to a full stop.
+
+"Let us go up this little street," he suggested. "I was there yesterday;
+it is interesting really."
+
+She continued to walk on alone and he was obliged to rejoin her; then he
+glanced downward somewhat anxiously.
+
+"We cannot speak here," he said in a low tone, "we know so many people
+that come against us each minute. Do walk with me up to the church
+there, we cannot go to the hotel like this."
+
+It is true that the Quai at Lucerne has a trick of slipping away beneath
+one's feet to the end that the hotel is forever springing up in one's
+face. At this moment it loomed disagreeably close at hand.
+
+"If you want to walk farther, monsieur, you will have to walk alone; I
+am going home."
+
+For answer he took her arm firmly in his and turned her across towards
+the church street. Well-bred people do not have scenes on the
+Schweizerhof Quai, so Rosina went where she was steered by the iron grip
+on her elbow.
+
+The instant that they were out of the crowd his manner and voice altered
+materially.
+
+"You must forgive me," he pleaded. "I thought that you understood; I
+thought that we were together amused; it was against my intention to
+offend you."
+
+She stopped and looked at a window full of carved bears and lions;
+various expressions contended in her face, but none of them were soft
+or sweet.
+
+"You pardon me, do you not?" he went on, laying his fingers upon her
+arm, while beneath his heavy eyelids there crept a look which his family
+would have regarded as too good to be true.
+
+She shook the hand off quickly with an apprehensive glance at their
+surroundings.
+
+"I ask you ten thousand pardons," he repeated; "what can I do to make
+you know my feeling is true?"
+
+She bit her lip, and then a sudden thought occurred to her. Her anger
+took wings at once.
+
+"Will you walk back to the hotel on the outside," she asked seriously,
+looking up into his face.
+
+He gave a quick movement of surprise, and then made his customary pause
+for decision.
+
+"How drolly odd women are," he murmured presently, "and you are so very
+oddly droll!"
+
+"But will you do it?" she repeated insistently.
+
+He took his cane and drew a line in the dust between two of the cement
+blocks of the sidewalk, and then he lifted his eyes to hers with a smile
+so sweet and bright, so liquidly warm and winning, that it metamorphosed
+him for the nonce into a rarely handsome man.
+
+Few women are proof against such smiles, or the men who can produce them
+at will, and the remnants of Rosina's wrath faded completely as she saw
+its dawning. It seemed futile to try to be cross with any one who had
+such magic in his face, and so she returned the glance in kind.
+
+"And you will walk home on the outside, will you not?" she asked, quite
+secure as to his answer now.
+
+He laughed lightly and turned to continue on their way.
+
+"Of a surety not," he said; "but we will be from now on very
+_sympathique_, and never so foolishly dispute once more."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the dinner-party that evening was the young American who was engaged
+to the girl at Smith College.
+
+"I saw you walking with Von Ibn this afternoon," he said to Rosina as
+they chanced together during the coffee-and-cigarette period.
+
+"Where?" she asked. "I don't remember seeing you anywhere."
+
+"No; he appeared to engross you pretty thoroughly. I feel that I ought
+to warn you."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"He isn't a bit popular."
+
+"Poor man!"
+
+"None of the men ever have anything to do with him; you never see him
+with any one, and it's odd, because he talks English awfully well."
+
+"What do you suppose they have against him?"
+
+"Oh, nothing in particular, I guess, only they don't like him. He isn't
+interesting to any one."
+
+"Oh, there I beg to differ with you," she said quickly; "I saw him speak
+to some one to-day who I am sure found him very interesting indeed."
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Myself."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Four
+
+
+"Have you ever thought what is love and what is passion?"
+
+It was the man who spoke as they leaned against the rail of that
+afternoon steamer which is scheduled to make port at the Quai by seven
+o'clock, at the Gare by seven-ten.
+
+Rosina simply shook her head.
+
+"I am going to tell you that," he said, turning his dark gaze down upon
+the shadows in the wake behind them; "we part perhaps this night, and I
+have a fancy to talk of just that. Perhaps it will come that we never
+meet again, but when you love you will think of what I have say."
+
+"I never shall love," she said thoughtfully.
+
+He did not appear to hear her at all.
+
+"It is as this," he said, his eyes glowing into the tossing foam below:
+"many may love, and there may be very many loves; very few can know a
+passion, and they can know but one. You may love, and have it for one
+that is quite of another rank or all of another world, but one has a
+passion only for what one may hope for one's own. Love, that is a
+feeling, a something of the heart,"--he touched his bosom as he spoke
+but never raised his eyes,--"what I may have known,--or you. But
+passion, that is only half a feeling, and the other half must be in some
+other, or if it be not there it must be of a force put there, because
+with passion there _must_ be two, and one _must_ find the other and
+possess the other; that other heart must be, and must be won, and be
+your own, and be your own all alone." He paused a moment and took out
+his cigarette case, and contemplated it and put it back. She leaned on
+the rail and listened, undisturbed by the strength of his speech. In the
+few short hours of their acquaintance the breadth of mutual
+comprehension between them seemed to be widening at a ratio similar to
+the circles spread by a stone striking still water.
+
+"I am going to speak to you in my tongue," he went on presently, "I am
+going to explain what I say with my music. Will you think to
+understand?"
+
+"I will try," she told him simply.
+
+"It is so easy there," he said; "I think if I had but my violin I could
+tell you all things. Because in music is all things. You must have feel
+that yourself. Only I fear you must smile at my language--it is not so
+easy to place your soul on a strange tongue."
+
+"I shall not smile," she reassured him, "I am deeply interested."
+
+"That is good of you," he replied, raising his head to cast a briefly
+grateful glance at her, "if you may only really understand! For, just as
+there are all colors for the painter to use, so are there all of the
+same within music. There is from darkness far below the under bass to
+the dazzle of sun in the high over the treble, and in between there are
+gray, and rose, and rain, and twilight, so that with my bow I may make
+you all a sad picture between the clefs or a gay one of flowers blooming
+from G to upper C. And there is heat and cold there too,--one gasps in
+the F flat down low and one shivers at the needle frost above high C.
+And there are all feelings too. I may sing you to sleep, I may thunder
+you awake, I may even steal your heart forever while you think to only
+listen in pleasure."
+
+"Not my heart," said Rosina decidedly.
+
+"Ah, now it reminds me what I have begin to tell you," he
+exclaimed,--"of love and of passion. I must get some music and teach you
+that. Do you know the 'Souvenir' of Vieuxtemps?" he asked her abruptly.
+
+"The 'Souvenir d'Amerique'?"
+
+"No, no," he said impatiently, "not one of those. 'Le Souvenir' it is.
+Not of anything. Just alone. If we were only to be of some together I
+would teach it to you; I have never teach any one, but I would trouble
+me to teach you that."
+
+Then he paused and, producing his _etui_ for the second time, lit a
+cigarette.
+
+"It is like this," he went on, staring again upon the now rapidly
+darkening waters, "you may learn all that I have begin to tell you there
+in that one piece of music. There is love singing up and up in the
+treble, and one listens and finds that nothing may be sweeter or of more
+beauty, and then, most sudden and terrible there sounds there, below, a
+cry, 'E,--F,--F sharp,--G;' and it is not a cry, rather a scream,
+strength, force,--a Must made of the music,--and one perceives of a
+lightning flash that all the love was but the background of the passion
+of that cry of those four notes; and one listens, one trembles, one
+feels that they were to come before they are there, and when they have
+come, one can but shake and know their force." He stopped and took his
+cigarette from between his lips. "_Mon Dieu_," he cried violently, "of
+what was the composer thinking when he beat out those bars? When you
+shall play them you shall take only your forefinger and draw all your
+strength within it, and when the notes shriek in pain you shall have one
+secret of passion there beneath your hand."
+
+He spoke with such force,--such a tremendous force of feeling, that her
+face betrayed her wonder.
+
+"I frighten you,--yes?" he asked with a smile of reassurance; "oh, that
+must not be. I only speak so because I will that you know too. It is
+good to know. Many go to the end and never know but love and are very
+well content, but I think you will know more. I did love myself once.
+She was never mine, and the time is gone, and I have thought to suffer
+much forever, and then I have stop to suffer, and now I am all forget.
+But," he flung his cigarette to the waves, and for the first time during
+his monologue turned squarely towards her, "but if I have a passion come
+to me _now_, _that_ woman shall be mine! If I die for it she shall be
+mine. Because what I feel shall be so strong that she shall of force
+feel it too. Every day, every night, every hour, the need of me will go
+to her strongly and make her weaker, and weaker, and weaker, until she
+have no choice but of the being all mine. And so you are quite decided
+to go to Zurich to-morrow?"
+
+He brought forth the question in such sudden change of subject that she
+started involuntarily. But then relief at the descent into the
+commonplace came on her and she replied:
+
+"Yes, I want to go there to-morrow."
+
+"But why do you not want to on Tuesday--or next week?"
+
+"My friend is there," she reminded him.
+
+His brow clouded, and she knew the reason why.
+
+"You are so typically European," she laughed; "I do believe that
+humanity over here has only two bases of action, and they are governed
+by '_Cherchez la femme_' and '_Cherchez l'homme_.'"
+
+"_Mais c'est vrai, ca!_" he said doggedly.
+
+"Not always," she replied; "or perhaps not always in the usual sense. It
+is true that I am going to Zurich to meet some one, but it is so very
+innocent when a woman goes '_cherchant la femme_,' and, as I told you
+before, it is a woman that I go to meet, or, rather, it is a girl."
+
+"Are you sure?" he asked suspiciously.
+
+"You don't believe my word yet, do you?"
+
+"I did not say that."
+
+"No, but really you do not."
+
+He gave a slight shrug.
+
+"My friend is an Irish girl," Rosina went on placidly. "I do love her
+so. We shall have such a good time being together next week."
+
+"You are sure that she is not English?" the man asked, with a little
+touch of sarcasm in his inflection.
+
+"If you could hear her speak you could tell that from her accent."
+
+Von Ibn took out his case and lit another cigarette.
+
+"What hotel do you go at in Zurich?" he asked presently.
+
+"I shall go wherever my friend is."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"I don't know; I write her _Poste Restante_. She has been travelling for
+a long time with a Russian friend,--a lady," she added, with a jerk.
+
+"I hope you will go to the Victoria," Von Ibn said slowly; "that is
+where I always have stay in Zurich."
+
+"So that we may have our dining-room souvenir in common, I suppose?"
+
+"It is a very nice place," he cried hotly; "it is not at all common! It
+is one of the best hotels in Zurich."
+
+She hastily interposed an explanation of the error in his comprehension
+of her meaning, and by the time that he understood, the lights of
+Lucerne were hazing the darkness, while the Rigi and Pilate had each
+hung out their rope ladder of stars.
+
+"What time do you travel in the morning?" he asked then, turning his
+eyes downward upon her face.
+
+"By the first express; it goes, I believe, about eight o'clock."
+
+"I shall not be awake," he said gloomily.
+
+"I shall not be, either; but Ottillie will get me aboard somehow."
+
+"If it was noon that you go, I should certainly come to the Gare," he
+said thoughtfully; then he reflected for a short space, and added
+eagerly, "why do you not go later, and make an excursion by Zug; it is
+just on your way, and a so interesting journey."
+
+"I know Zug, and the lake too; I've coached all through there."
+
+"Then it would not again interest you?"
+
+"No; I want to go straight to Molly as fast as I can."
+
+"To Molli! Where is that? You said to Zurich you went."
+
+She laughed and explained.
+
+"Molly is the name of my girl friend."
+
+"Ah, truly."
+
+Then he was silent, and she was silent, and the lights of Lucerne
+continued to draw nearer and nearer.
+
+"I wonder if I shall really never see you again," he said, after a long
+interval.
+
+"I wonder."
+
+"It is very unlikely that we shall ever meet again."
+
+"Very."
+
+In spite of herself her voice sounded dry.
+
+"Where is your bank address?"
+
+"Deutsches-Filiale, Munich, while I am in this part of the world. But
+why? Were you thinking of writing me weekly?"
+
+"Oh, no," he said hastily, "but I might send you a _carte-postale_
+sometimes, if you liked."
+
+She felt obliged to laugh.
+
+"Would you send a colored one, or just one of the regular _dix-centime_
+kind," she inquired with interest.
+
+Von Ibn contemplated her curiously.
+
+"You have such a pretty mouth!" he murmured.
+
+She laughed afresh.
+
+"But with the stamp it is fifteen _centimes_ anyway," he continued.
+
+"Stamp, what stamp? Oh, yes, the postal card," she nodded; and then, "I
+never really expect to see you again, but I'm glad, very glad that I met
+you, because you have interested and amused me so much."
+
+"American men are so very stupid, are they not?" he said
+sympathetically.
+
+"No, indeed," she cried indignantly; "American men are charming, and
+they always rise and give their seats to women in the trams, which the
+men here never think of doing."
+
+"You need not speak to me so hotly," said Von Ibn, "I always take a
+cab."
+
+The ending of his remark was sufficiently unexpected to cause a short
+break in the conversation; then Rosina went on:
+
+"I saw a man do a very gallant thing once, he hurried to carry a poor
+old woman's big bundle of washing for her because the tram stopped in
+the wrong place and she would have so far to take it. Wasn't that royal
+in him?"
+
+He did not appear impressed.
+
+"Does that man take the broom and sweep a little for the street-cleaner
+when he meets her?" he asked, after a brief period for reflection.
+
+"We do not have women street-cleaners in America."
+
+Then he yawned, with no attempt at disguise. She felt piqued at such an
+open display of ennui, and turned from him to the now brilliant shore
+past which they were gliding.
+
+After a minute or two he took out his note-book and pencil.
+
+"Deutsches-Filiale, Munich, you said, did you not?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Can you write my name?" he asked.
+
+"If strict necessity should drive me to it."
+
+"Write it here, please."
+
+He held the book upon the rail and she obeyed the request. Afterwards he
+held the page to the light until he was apparently thoroughly assured of
+some doubtful point, and then put it back in his pocket.
+
+"I shall send you a card _Poste Restante_ at Zurich," he announced, as
+the lights of Lucerne blazed up close beside them.
+
+"Be sure that you spell my name right."
+
+"Yes," he said, taking out his note-book again; "it is like this, _n'est
+ce pas_?" and he wrote, and then showed her the result.
+
+"Yes, that's it," she assented.
+
+He continued to regard his book with deep attention.
+
+"It exasperates me to have my name spelled wrong," she went on; "doesn't
+it you?"
+
+"Yes," he said; "it is for that that I look in my book."
+
+She came close and looked at what she had written,--"Von Ebn."
+
+"Isn't that right?" she asked in surprise.
+
+"It is your English E, but not my letter."
+
+"How do you spell your name?"
+
+"I-b-n."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+She laughed, and he laughed with her.
+
+"That was very stupid in me," she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," he replied, with one of his rare smiles; "but I would have said
+nothing, only that at the _Poste Restante_ I shall lose all my letters
+from you."
+
+"All! what leads you to suppose that there would ever be any?"
+
+He turned and looked steadily at her, his eyes widely earnest.
+
+"What, not even a post card?"
+
+Rosina forgave the yawn, or perhaps she had forgotten it.
+
+"Do you really want to hear from me again?"
+
+"Yes, really."
+
+"Shall you remember me after I am gone?"
+
+"_Naturlich._"
+
+"For how long?"
+
+At that he shrugged his shoulders. Down below they were making ready for
+the landing.
+
+"Who can say?" he answered at last.
+
+"At least, monsieur, you are frank."
+
+"I am always frank."
+
+"Is that always best?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+People were beginning to move towards the staircase. Below, the man
+stood ready to fling the rope.
+
+"Let us go to the other landing and walk back across the stone bridge,"
+he suggested.
+
+"There is not time; it is quite seven o'clock now."
+
+"But I shall not again be with you, and there is something that I must
+say."
+
+"You must say it here, then."
+
+The rope was thrown and caught, and every one aboard received the
+violent jolt that attends some boat-landings. Rosina was thrown against
+her companion and he was thrown against the stair-rail.
+
+"Can you hear if I speak now," he whispered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You will see that I really interest myself in you."
+
+Just then some one in front trod on a dog, which yelped violently for
+three minutes; for a brief space speech was impossible, and then they
+were on the gang-plank, and he bent above her once more.
+
+"I want to ask you something; will you do it if I ask you?"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Will you promise me to do it?"
+
+They were now squeezing past the ticket _kiosque_.
+
+"But what is it?"
+
+"It is this--"
+
+A man behind stepped on Rosina's skirt and nearly pulled her over
+backward; something ripped violently and she gave a low cry. The man
+said, "_Mille pardons_," and Von Ibn looked ready to murder him.
+
+"Are you undone?" he asked her solicitously.
+
+"No, I'm only badly torn."
+
+"Do you want a pin?"
+
+"Yes; have you one?"
+
+"_Malheureusement que non._"
+
+"I think that I can hold it up," she said bravely.
+
+"It is unpardonable--a such man!"
+
+He turned to scowl again at the offender. They were now in the
+Promenade.
+
+"He couldn't see in the dark, I suppose," she murmured.
+
+"But why was he come so near? If it was I who had torn from being too
+near, that would be quite different."
+
+"If you don't take care it will be exactly the same thing."
+
+He laughed, and gave way three inches.
+
+"You have not yet promise," he said then.
+
+"Promised what?"
+
+"To do what I ask."
+
+"Tell me what it is; if I can do it I will."
+
+He took her arm to cross towards the hotel.
+
+"You can do it if you will," he said; "it is this--"
+
+The Schweizerhof shone before them, great and white and sparkling; every
+window was lighted, every table on the terrace was full. Rosina
+quickened her steps.
+
+"Oh, I'm so late," she cried, "and I have _such_ a toilette to make!"
+
+Von Ibn had his hand upon her arm still.
+
+"It is this," he said emphatically, "promise me that you will go to the
+Victoria Hotel at Zurich; yes?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later in her own room, as Ottillie dressed her hair, she closed her eyes
+and tried to reduce her thoughts to a rational basis. But she gave up in
+despair.
+
+"From the 'Souvenir' to the Victoria," she murmured; "oh, he is most
+certainly a genius!" then she sighed a little. "I'm sorry that we shall
+probably never meet again," she added sadly.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Five
+
+
+Rosina fairly flung herself off of the train and into the arms of Molly,
+and then and there they kissed one another with the warmth born of a
+long interval apart.
+
+"Well, my dear," began the Irish girl, when they found themselves five
+minutes later being rolled away in one of the villainous Zurich cabs,
+"begin away back in the early days of our sad separation and tell me
+everything that has happened to you since."
+
+"Not much has happened," Rosina replied. "I crossed in May and got some
+clothes in Paris, and then came Lucerne, and this is June. Before I came
+over _nothing_ happened. How could things happen while I had to wear a
+crape veil?"
+
+"To be sure!" said Molly wisely; "and yet they do sometimes,--I know it
+for a fact. And anyway the veil is off now, and you look so well that I
+should think perhaps--lately?"
+
+"Oh, _dear_, no," said Rosina, turning quickly scarlet; "don't harbor
+such an idea for a second. Nothing of that sort will ever happen to me
+again. A burnt child dreads the fire, and I can assure you I'm cinders
+to the last atom. But never mind me, tell me about yourself. That is
+much more interesting."
+
+"'About myself is it you're inquiring'?" laughed the Irish girl; "'tis
+easy told. Last winter, like a fool, I engaged myself to a sweet young
+Russian colonel, and this spring he died--"
+
+"Oh, Molly!"
+
+"Never mind, my dear, because I can assure you that _I_ didn't. Russians
+are so furiously made up that he couldn't stand any of the other men
+that I was engaged to. My life was too broad a burden in consequence,
+and I was well satisfied at his funeral."
+
+"Is it his mother that you are travelling with?"
+
+"His mother! No, dear, I can't stand any of the family now."
+
+"Whose mother is she?"
+
+"She isn't anybody's mother. That's how she can be sixty-five and look
+forty-two by gaslight."
+
+"Does she look forty-two by gaslight? Oh, imagine looking forty-two by
+gaslight!"
+
+"By men's gaslight she looks forty-two. Any woman could just
+instinctively see through everything from her wig to her waist, and
+that's why she has grown to hate me so."
+
+"Does she hate you?"
+
+"Hate me! Well, wait until you see her look at me. It's a sort of cross
+between a mud-turtle and a basilisk, and she's forever telling my age
+and telling it wrong. And she lays for every man that comes near me."
+
+"Why, Molly, how awful!"
+
+"I'm going slowly mad. You've no idea! she's so jealous that life is not
+only a burden, it's a weight that's smashing me flatter every day. I'm
+getting a gray hair and a wrinkle, and all because of her. And she wrote
+Ivan--"
+
+"Who's Ivan?"
+
+"He's one of the men that I've accepted lately; he's her cousin. He's a
+prince and she's a princess; but oh, my soul and body, my head is uneasy
+enough with lying and I've ceased to care a bit about the crown."
+
+"Why, Molly, wouldn't you like to be a princess?"
+
+"Not after this trip. Do you know what straits she's driven me to?
+actually I came near taking a Turk at Trieste."
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"No, I didn't. I thought it over and I decided I wasn't built for the
+monopoly of a harem."
+
+Rosina burst out laughing.
+
+"Molly," she gasped, "imagine _you_ confined to only one man, and he
+your lord and master!"
+
+"I couldn't possibly imagine it, and I make it a point to never go in
+for anything that I can't imagine. But, my dear, I must tell you the
+great news. Being engaged is an old habit with me; but" (she put her
+hand to her throat and felt within her high stock) "you must know that I
+am now actually in love, for the first time in my life, too."
+
+"Oh, Molly, since when?"
+
+"Three weeks. Wait till I fish up my locket and you shall see him.
+Handsome is nowhere! And our meeting was _so_ romantic. I was lying on
+the bottom of a boat waiting to be paddled into the Blue Grotto, and at
+the last minute a stranger came, and they laid him down at my feet. When
+we got into the grotto, of course we stood up; and it was lucky we did,
+for we fell in love directly, and of course we couldn't have fallen
+unless we were standing."
+
+"Oh, Molly, who is he? do show me the picture."
+
+"That's what I'm trying to do, but I think the clasp has hooked on to
+Captain Douglas' locket,--you remember Captain Douglas!--I can't pull it
+anyway. Never mind, I'll show you to-night."
+
+"Is he English?"
+
+"English, no; he's Italian. Such eyes you never saw. They're warmer than
+white porcelain tile stoves in early autumn. And he belongs to the
+Queen-mother's regiment, and wears the most resplendent uniform and a
+gray cape that he just carelessly sweeps across his chest and up over
+the other shoulder--ah!"
+
+Molly stopped to draw a deep breath and sigh.
+
+"Where is he stationed?" her friend inquired.
+
+"Rome; and he hasn't a cent beyond his pay, so we can't think of any
+future which makes him _so_ blue."
+
+"Poor fellow! do you consider yourself engaged to him?"
+
+"Of course I'm engaged to him. He came a whole day's journey to propose.
+You don't suppose I'd say 'no' to a chap who was awfully hard up, and
+then took a long, expensive trip just on my account! Besides, I'm most
+desperately in love with him, and he is the kind of man who couldn't
+come to time any other way. He is a most awfully good sort--the sort
+that believe in everything. Why, he has such a high opinion of me that
+it's almost depressing at times. I can't live up to a high opinion; it's
+all I can do to keep above a low one."
+
+"But how will it come out, Molly?"
+
+"It won't come out at all unless you tell it. No one else knows. He
+_can't_ say anything without compromising himself, and I'm not likely to
+let it out unless I some day pull up the wrong locket by accident."
+
+"But don't it trouble you?"
+
+"Trouble me! Why should it trouble me? It's that old Russian woman who
+troubles me. I'd be idiotic to add to my miseries by thinking up any
+other torments while I'm around with her. Here we are at the
+Quai,--that's the hotel yonder. And I've talked one continuous stream
+ever since we left the Gare and you've never said a word. Begin right
+off and tell me something about yourself. Who have you met since you
+came over in May? Of course you've met _some one_. Who?"
+
+"An old French marquis," Rosina told her thoughtfully.
+
+"And no one else?"
+
+"Oh, yes, of course there were loads of others. But this was such a dear
+old gentleman, when he kissed my hand--well, really, I almost felt like
+a princess."
+
+"But not like a marchioness?"
+
+"Oh, dear no! I wouldn't think of undertaking the gout before I'm
+thirty."
+
+"The Lord preserve me from dear old men!" Molly ejaculated with fervor.
+"Why, I had a baron propose to me last winter; he was actually so shaky
+that his valet was always in attendance to stand him up and sit him
+down. While he was pouring out his remnant of a heart I kept expecting
+to see the valet come running in to throw him at my knees. He was over
+eighty and awfully rich, but that servant of his was too careful and
+conscientious for me to dare risk it,--a man like that with devoted
+attention and plenty of rare beef might live ten years, you know,--so I
+told him 'no,' and the valet came in and stood him up and led him away."
+
+The cab coming to a standstill before the hotel just at this moment, the
+two young women were forced to interrupt their conversation, and
+undertake the arduous labor of preparing for _dejeuner_. Ottillie was
+just laying out the contents of the travelling toilet-case when her
+mistress came in to be dressed, and it was quite two hours later before
+any opportunity presented itself for renewing their talk. Then Molly
+came into the salon of the blue-and-white suite which the friends
+shared, and they curled up together on the divan, prepared to spend one
+of those infinitely delightful hours which are only known to two
+thoroughly congenial women who have had the rare luck of chancing to
+know one another well.
+
+Molly began by winding her arm about her friend's shoulders and kissing
+her warmly.
+
+"'Tis like Paradise to be with you instead of that fussy old woman," she
+said warmly; "now go on with what you were telling me in the
+carriage,--the marquis, you know."
+
+"There isn't any more to tell you about him, he's all over, but I'll
+tell you about some one else, if you'll be good."
+
+"I'll be good. Who, and where, and which, and what is the other?"
+
+"I haven't any faith in you, I'm afraid you will tease me."
+
+"Did I ever tease you before?"
+
+"I was married then and I didn't mind. I feel differently now."
+
+"I promise not to tease you one bit. Where did you meet him?"
+
+"In Lucerne."
+
+"What's his name? I know a lot of people who are in Lucerne just now.
+Perhaps I know him."
+
+"I wish that you did know him."
+
+"Tell me his name."
+
+"It's the composer, Herr von Ibn."
+
+Molly screamed with joy.
+
+"Oh, my dear, what luck you do have! Did he play for you? Have you heard
+any of his things?"
+
+"No, unfortunately. You see I only met him on Saturday, and as I came
+away this morning we had to rush every second as hard as we could in
+order to become acquainted at all."
+
+"What fun to know him! He's going to be so tremendously famous, they
+say; did you know that?"
+
+"So they told me there."
+
+"And he plays in such a wonderful manner, too. What a pity he didn't
+play for you. Don't you love a violin, anyhow?"
+
+"I don't know," said Rosina thoughtfully; "I think that I like a flute
+best, but I always think whenever I see a man playing on a violin that
+the attitude ought to develop very affectionate tendencies in him."
+
+"What kind of a fellow was he to talk to? Was he agreeable?"
+
+"Most of the American men didn't like him, I believe," said Rosina; then
+she added, "but most of the American men never like any foreigners, you
+know, unless it's the Englishmen, perhaps."
+
+"But what did you think of him?"
+
+"I thought he was very queer; and he got the better of me all the time."
+
+"That ought to have made you hate him."
+
+"That is what seems so odd to me. I've been thinking about him all the
+time that I was on the train this morning. Do you know, Molly, that man
+was positively rude to me over and over again, and yet, try as I might,
+I couldn't stay angry with him." She paused and knit her brows for a few
+seconds over some recollection, and then she turned suddenly and laid
+her face against the other's shoulder. "Molly, dear," she said softly,
+"he had a way of smiling,--if you could only see it! Well!"
+
+"Well!"
+
+"I could forgive anything to that smile,--honestly."
+
+Molly looked thoughtful.
+
+"Saturday to Monday," she murmured apropos of nothing.
+
+Rosina lifted her head and gave her a glance.
+
+"I wish that _you_ might meet him," she said gravely.
+
+"I wish that he was here in Zurich," her friend replied.
+
+At that instant there sounded a tap on the door.
+
+"_Herein!_" Rosina cried.
+
+It was a waiter with a card upon a tray; Molly held out her hand for the
+bit of pasteboard, glanced at it, and gave a start and a cry.
+
+"Is anything the matter?" Rosina asked, reaching for the card. Her
+friend gave it to her, and as her eyes fell upon the name she turned
+first white and then red.
+
+"It _can't_ be that he is here in Zurich!" she exclaimed.
+
+"This is his card, anyway."
+
+"Mercy on us!"
+
+"Shall he come up here,--he had better, don't you think?"
+
+"I don't know," she gasped. "I'm too surprised to think! The idea of his
+coming here this afternoon! Why, I never thought of such a thing. He
+said good-bye _forever_ last night. I--"
+
+"Show monsieur to the room," Molly said to the man, cutting Rosina short
+in the full tide of her astonishment.
+
+"Of course you must see him," she said, as the door closed, "and, not
+being entirely devoid of curiosity, I can't help feeling awfully glad to
+think that now I shall see him too."
+
+She quitted the divan as she spoke and went to the mirror over the
+mantelpiece. There was something in the action that suddenly recalled
+Rosina to her senses, and she sprang to her feet and disappeared into
+the sleeping-room beyond, returning in two or three minutes bearing
+evidence of Ottillie's deft touch. She found Molly still before the
+mirror, and as her own reflection appeared over her friend's shoulder
+the other nodded and laughed.
+
+"You seem to have made a deep impression," she said gayly.
+
+"I can't understand it all," Rosina began; "he made _such_ a fuss over
+his good-bye last night and--and--well, really, I never dreamed of his
+doing such a thing as to come here."
+
+"I'm heartily glad that he's come, because now I shall meet him, and
+I've heard--"
+
+She was interrupted by a slight tap at the door, and before either could
+cry "_Entrez!_" it was flung open and Von Ibn strode into the room. The
+first glance at his face showed both that something was gone all wrong,
+and most horribly so.
+
+Rosina, flushed afresh, went towards him, holding out her hand and
+wondering if it was anything in connection with Molly that had produced
+such an utter blackness.
+
+"This is a very great surprise," she began, but he interrupted her at
+once.
+
+"_Comme je vous ai cherche!_" he cried, with violence. "Why are you not
+gone to the Victoria as you say--as I ask you to?" His face was like a
+thunder-storm.
+
+The corners of her mouth felt suddenly traitorous; she tried to speak,
+beginning, "I did not know--" but he broke in, and went hotly on with:
+
+"Naturally you did not know, but I had already known! One could not, of
+course, expect me to get up to ride on that most uncomfortable train
+which you chose, but of course also I came on the first train leaving
+after I did wake up."
+
+Molly turned abruptly to the window and leaned as far out as she could,
+her handkerchief pressed tightly over her mouth. Rosina wished that her
+friend might have been anywhere else; even during what is commonly
+called "a scene" two are infinitely better company than three.
+
+"How most absurd I have been made," Von Ibn continued wrathfully, "in a
+cab from hotel to hotel hunting for you! Do you think I have ever done
+so before? Do you think I have found it very amusing to-day? Naturally I
+go from the Gare to the Victoria, where I have told you to go. I take
+there a room, and tell the _garcon_ to bring my card to madame; and in
+ten minutes, as I am getting me out of the dust of that most abominable
+middle-day train, he returns to say that no such as madame is within the
+house. _Figurez-vous?_ Why are you acted so? Why are you always so oddly
+singular?"
+
+Rosina appeared struck dumb by the torrent of his words; she stood pink
+and silent before his towering blackness. Molly, at the window, judged
+it prudent to interfere, and, turning, began:
+
+"It's all my fault, monsieur. Rosina wanted to go to the Victoria; she
+wept when she found that she couldn't, but I was here already and we
+wanted to be together, and so she consented to come with me and live by
+the lake."
+
+Von Ibn turned his eyes upon the new speaker, and their first expression
+was one of deep displeasure. But Molly's eyes were of that brown which
+is almost bronze, and fringed by eyelashes that were irresistibly long
+and curly, and she furthermore possessed a smile that could have found
+its way anywhere alone, and yet was rendered twice wise in the business
+of hearts by two attendant dimples, to the end that the combination was
+powerful enough to slowly smooth out some of the deepest lines of anger
+in the face before her, and to vastly ameliorate its generally offended
+air.
+
+From the evidently pardoned Irish girl the caller turned his somewhat
+softened gaze towards the young American, and then, and then only, it
+appeared that a fresh storm-centre had gathered force unto itself in
+that one small salon, and that it was now Rosina who had decided to
+exhibit _her_ temper, beginning by saying, with a very haughty
+coolness:
+
+"It's nice of mademoiselle to try and make a joke out of all this, but
+she knows that I never thought for a minute of going anywhere except
+where she might chance to be. And as to you, monsieur, I cannot see how
+you could have expected or demanded that I should pay any attention
+whatever to your wishes. You told me last night that we might never meet
+again--"
+
+"And that could have truthed itself by chance," he interrupted eagerly.
+
+"--And I believed you, and you know it," she finished, not noticing his
+interpolation.
+
+He stood still, looking straight at her, and when she was altogether
+silent he stepped forward and raised her hand within his own.
+
+"Does one meet a real friendship on Saturday to let it go from him for
+always after Monday?" he asked her, speaking with a simple dignity that
+suddenly swept the atmosphere free from clouds and storms.
+
+Molly crossed the room hastily.
+
+"I hear madame calling," she explained.
+
+Rosina knew that madame was down a corridor well around the corner, and
+that she was not in the habit of calling for anything or anybody, but
+she felt no desire to cover her friend with shame by forcing her to
+admit that she was lying. Indeed, just at that particular moment
+Molly's absence appeared to be a very desirable quota in the general
+scheme of things. So the girl went away and stayed away--being wise in
+her views as to life and love affairs.
+
+When they were alone Von Ibn flung himself into an arm-chair and
+stretched forth his hand almost as if to command her approach to his
+side. She stood still, but she could feel her color rising and was
+desperately annoyed that it should be so.
+
+"You are not angry that I be here?" he asked.
+
+She drew a quick little breath and then turned to seat herself.
+
+"You must have known that I must come," he continued.
+
+She felt her lips tremble, and was furious at them for it.
+
+"I played the 'Souvenir' last night," he said, dropping his eyes and
+sinking his voice; "it is then plain to me that I must travel to-day."
+
+Something dragged her gaze upward until their eyes met.
+
+He smiled, and she blushed deeply....
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Six
+
+
+It was very late that night--indeed the hour was dangerously close upon
+the morning after--before the two friends found themselves alone
+together again. Rosina lay up among the pillows, the centre of a mass of
+blue cambric, with tiny bands of lace confining the fulness here and
+there; while Molly, in such a dressing-gown as grows only in the Rue de
+la Paix, sat on the foot of the narrow continental bed and thoughtfully
+bound the braids of her bonny brown hair.
+
+"Well, you know him now," Rosina said at last, the inflection of her
+voice rampant with interrogative meaning.
+
+"Yes," was the non-committal answer.
+
+"Don't be horrid, Molly; you know I want so much to know what you think
+of him? Isn't he delicious? Isn't he grand? Didn't he impress you as
+being just an ideal sort of a celebrity?"
+
+Molly opened her eyes to an exceeding width.
+
+"I don't know," she said slowly.
+
+"Don't know! then you don't like him? What don't you like about him?"
+
+"Well, I'd prefer a Russian myself."
+
+"Why! what do you mean?"
+
+"They're not so fierce, and if one likes fierceness they're plenty
+fierce enough."
+
+"What are you talking about?"
+
+"The way that he came bursting in on us to-day."
+
+"But that was splendid! it was lovely to see him so worked up."
+
+"You never can count on when he'll work up, though."
+
+"But I like men you can't count on."
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"You see, I could always count on my husband, and that sort of
+arithmetic isn't to my taste any more."
+
+"Well, dear, from the little I've seen of Herr von Ibn I should say that
+it would be impossible to ever work him by any other rule than that of
+his own sweet--or otherwise--will."
+
+"But I like that."
+
+"Yes, so I gathered from your actions."
+
+"And, after all, whatever he is--" Rosina paused and ran her fingers
+through her hair. "It doesn't any of it amount to anything, you know,"
+she added.
+
+"Oh, dear no. That's evident enough."
+
+Rosina started.
+
+"What do you mean?" she cried.
+
+"Oh, nothing as far as he's concerned;--only as far as you are."
+
+"But," Rosina insisted, "you did mean something. What was it? You
+mean--"
+
+"I don't mean anything," said Molly; "if he don't mean anything and you
+don't mean anything, how in Heaven's name could _I_ mean anything?"
+
+"I only met him Saturday, you know," Rosina reminded her. "And this is
+Monday," she reminded her further. "Nothing ever can happen in such a
+short time," she wound up airily.
+
+"No," said Molly thoughtfully, "to be sure you can die and they can bury
+you between Saturday and Monday, but nothing ever happened to living
+people in such a short time, of course."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't laugh."
+
+"I'm not laughing, I'm thinking."
+
+"What are you thinking?"
+
+"I was thinking that if I met a man in Lucerne on Saturday and he came
+stalking me to Zurich on Monday, I certainly should--" she hesitated.
+
+"Well, I shouldn't," Rosina declared flatly.
+
+There was a pause, during which Molly finished her braids and proceeded
+to establish herself on the foot of her friend's bed in a most
+confidence-provoking attitude.
+
+"Let's talk about the lieutenant," the American suggested at last.
+
+"He's too mild for to-night," her friend said; "it would be like toast
+and rain-water after a hunt meet to discuss him just now. Let's talk
+about Dmitri."
+
+"Whose Dmitri? another one of your _fiances_?"
+
+"Oh, dear no. He's a cross Russian poodle that was given me last
+Christmas. When you try to be nice to him he bites. I don't know what
+makes me think of him just now."
+
+Rosina laughed, and held her hand out lovingly towards the pretty girl
+at her feet.
+
+"Forgive me, Molly. I really didn't mean to be vexed. Let us talk of
+something pleasant and leave my latest to sleep in peace at the
+Victoria."
+
+"Are you sure that he's at the Victoria?"
+
+"Not at all; he may have moved to this hotel, or returned to Lucerne."
+
+"I should think so, indeed."
+
+"But never mind."
+
+Molly took her knees into the embrace of her clasped hands.
+
+"I wonder if you ever _will_ marry again," she murmured curiously.
+
+"Never."
+
+"Are you sorry that you ever married?"
+
+"No-o-o," said the other reflectively, "because I never could have known
+the joy of being a widow any other way, you know."
+
+"Would you advise me to marry," Molly inquired; "one can't be sure of
+the widowhood, and if one has courage and self-denial a life of single
+blessedness is attainable for any woman."
+
+"I don't believe it is for you, though."
+
+"Why not, pray?"
+
+"Your eyes are all wrong; old maids never have such eyes."
+
+"I got my eyes from my father."
+
+"Well, he wasn't an old maid, surely?"
+
+"No, he was a captain in the Irish Dragoons."
+
+"There, you see!"
+
+Molly stood up and shook her gown out, preparatory to untying its series
+of frontal bows.
+
+"But if you were to marry again--" she began.
+
+Rosina threw up an imploring hand.
+
+"You send cold December chills down my warm June back," she cried
+sharply.
+
+Molly flung the dressing-gown upon a chair and proceeded to turn off the
+lights.
+
+"I don't want you to think I'm cross," began an apologetic voice in the
+dark which descended about them.
+
+"I wasn't thinking of you at all."
+
+"What were you thinking of?"
+
+"Of Dmitri."
+
+Then low laughter rippled from one narrow bed to the other and back
+again.
+
+Five minutes later there was a murmur.
+
+"I do wish, Molly, that you'd tell me what you _really_ thought of him."
+
+"I thought he was grand. How could any one think anything else?"
+
+Then through the stillness and darkness there sounded the _frou-frou_ of
+ruffles and the sweetness and warmth of a fervent kiss.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Seven
+
+
+The next morning they both breakfasted in bed, the ingenuity of Ottillie
+having somewhat mitigated the tray difficulty by a clever adjustment of
+the wedge-shaped piece of mattress with which Europe elevates its head
+at night. Molly was just "winding up" a liberal supply of honey, and
+Rosina was salting her egg, when there came a tap at the door of the
+salon.
+
+"Ah, Monsieur von Ibn is up early," the Irish girl said in a calm
+whisper, thereby frightening her friend to such a degree that she
+dropped the salt-spoon into her cup of chocolate. Then they both held
+their breath while Ottillie hurried to the door.
+
+It proved to be nothing more unconventional than the maid of Madame la
+Princesse, a long-suffering female who bore the name of Claudine.
+
+"What is the matter?" Molly demanded anxiously.
+
+"Oh, mademoiselle, I am sent to say that it must that all go to-day!"
+
+"To-day!" Molly screamed; "I thought that we were to remain until Friday
+anyway?"
+
+"And I also thought it. Let mademoiselle but figure to herself how
+yesterday I did all unpack in the thought of until Friday; and now
+to-day I am bidden inpack once more!"
+
+"Now, did you _ever_?" Molly asked emphatically of Rosina, who shook her
+head and looked troubled in good earnest. "Do you really think that she
+means it?" she continued, turning to the maid once more; "she sometimes
+changes her mind, you know."
+
+"Not of this time, mademoiselle, I have already arrange her hairs, and I
+am bidden place her other hairs in the case."
+
+"Then it's settled," cried the Irish girl despairingly; "when her hair
+is done, the end of all is at hand. What train do we go by, Claudine?"
+
+"I am not of all sure, mademoiselle; madame has spoken of he who runs by
+Schaffhausen."
+
+The Irish girl sighed heavily.
+
+"Very well, Claudine, you and I know what it is to travel as we do. Go
+to madame and tell her I will come as soon as I am dressed," and then
+she picked up the honey-jar and sighed again.
+
+The maid went out.
+
+"What makes you go?" Rosina asked; "I wouldn't."
+
+"Oh, my dear, I've stayed at their place in the Caucasus weeks at a
+time, and I have to be decent, and she knows it."
+
+"Why did you ever accept an invitation to travel with such a horrid
+person?"
+
+Molly was out of bed and jerking her hair-ribbons savagely loose.
+
+"She isn't a horrid person," she said; "they are very nice princes and
+princesses, all of them. Only I hate to lead an existence like the slave
+of the ring or the genii of the lamp, or whoever the johnny was who had
+to jump whenever they rubbed their hands. It riles my blood just a bit
+too much."
+
+"I wouldn't," said Rosina decidedly; "I certainly wouldn't."
+
+"I wish I'd taken the Turk," the Irish girl exclaimed, as she wove her
+hair back and forth and in and out upon the crown of her head, "I'd have
+been free of Russia then; 'tis a hint for European politics, my present
+situation."
+
+Rosina suddenly gave a sharp cry.
+
+"Oh, Molly,--and me?"
+
+Molly looked over her shoulder.
+
+"What is it?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"Why, what am I to do? I came here to be with you, and now you're going
+away."
+
+"You'll have to go too if you can't stay behind without me."
+
+"But I only came yesterday."
+
+"Well, what of that?"
+
+"And, oh Molly, that man! I'll _have_ to go!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why, because--because--Oh, you know why. And then,--if I go--what _do_
+you suppose he will think?"
+
+Molly snatched her dressing-gown.
+
+"He'll come too, I fancy. At least, judging from what I've seen of him I
+should suppose that he'd come too."
+
+"Come too!" Rosina gasped.
+
+"Why not? He'll be just as interesting in Constance as he is here, or in
+Lucerne."
+
+"You don't really think that he would come too; Molly, not _really_?"
+
+"Certainly I think that he would."
+
+"Oh, Molly!"
+
+"'Tis their way here on the Continent; they've nothing else to do, you
+know. I know a man who went from Paris to St. Petersburg after a girl (I
+know it for a fact, for the girl was myself), and another who came from
+Naples to Nice just to call, and went back at midnight."
+
+Rosina appeared most uncomfortable.
+
+"I don't want him to go to Constance--I don't want to go myself!"
+
+"Oh, if it comes to that, you can both remain in Zurich indefinitely, of
+course."
+
+"No, we can't; that is, I can't. You know that. If he's going to stay
+I've got to go. Oh dear, oh dear, how aggravating it all is! I don't
+_want_ him to follow me about."
+
+"Why don't you tell him so, then?"
+
+"Molly!"
+
+"Yes, just tell him so, and if you really mean it, he'll understand,
+never fear."
+
+"But I don't want to do that."
+
+"No, I didn't expect that you would. One never likes to do that, which
+is one reason why I am myself betrothed to three different men at the
+present minute."
+
+"But, Molly--"
+
+"I thought that you liked him."
+
+"I do like him, but there's a wide difference between liking a man and
+wanting to have him tagging along behind all the time."
+
+"Oh, as to that, I don't believe that _der_ Herr von Ibn will stay
+enough behind to be considered as tagging very long."
+
+Rosina twisted uneasily in bed.
+
+"I don't see what to do," she murmured.
+
+Molly was getting into her clothes with a rapidity little short of
+marvellous.
+
+"I'll be curious to see what you _do_ do," she said, sticking pins
+recklessly into herself here and there, while she settled all nice
+points with a jerk. "It's ten o'clock," she added, with a glance towards
+the chimney-piece, "you'd better be arising, for I presume he is coming
+this morning?"
+
+Rosina smiled delightfully.
+
+"You heard him say so last night, didn't you?"
+
+"Perhaps; somehow the remark didn't make an impression on me, if I did."
+
+"I'll get up directly you go. And oh, Molly, do tell me just once more
+before you leave me that you think he's--"
+
+Molly slashed the end of her four-in-hand through the loop and drew up
+the knot with a single pull; then she approached the bed and leaned over
+the face upon the pillow.
+
+"I think he's desperately in love," she said, "and I've no blame for him
+if he is."
+
+"But do you really think that he is?"
+
+"Well, of course one can never be sure with foreigners."
+
+"_Molly!_"
+
+"'Tis a fact, my dear. But then you know one can never be sure with
+one's self either, so there you are."
+
+Rosina laughed ringingly. Then they kissed one another and Molly
+departed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then came work for Ottillie, and her mistress was hardly completed as to
+embroidered batiste and black moire ribbon, when the large and
+remarkable card with which the more distinguished portion of European
+masculinity announce their presence was brought to the room by one of
+the hotel _garcons_.
+
+He awaited her in the salon below, and when she appeared there to him,
+such an expression dawned within his eyes as altered completely not only
+their habitual melancholy, but the customary shadows of his whole face
+as well. There is no flattery so subtle in its charm or so deeply
+touching in its homage as such a change, and Rosina felt as much
+complimented as any other woman would have been, had it been in her to
+work so great a miracle in so great, and such, a man.
+
+"_Vous allez bien?_" he asked eagerly, as he came quickly forward to bow
+over her hand.
+
+"Yes, very well;" and then, because she always became nervous directly
+she lived beneath his steady look, she plunged wildly into the subject
+uppermost in her mind. "And I ought to feel very well, because in all
+probability I must travel again to-day."
+
+"You leave Zurich already so soon?" he asked, and his voice betrayed
+neither surprise nor even interest.
+
+"Yes," she answered, "we are all going to Constance this afternoon."
+
+"You have change your plans?" he inquired; "yes?"
+
+She looked up quickly at the much-objected-to word, and he received the
+little glance with a shrug of apology and a smile.
+
+"Madame la Princesse wishes to go on," said Rosina, "and mademoiselle
+thought that I would be so lonely without her that I--"
+
+"You would have wished to stay, _n'est-ce pas_?" he asked, interrupting
+her.
+
+"I don't like to travel two days in succession."
+
+"I would beg you to stay," he said, looking at his gloved hands, "but I
+also go to-day."
+
+She felt her heart jump suddenly; Molly's prediction assaulted her
+memory with great violence.
+
+"Yes," he went on, "it happens oddly that my plans are also suddenly
+changed. It is to say good-bye that I am come."
+
+Ah, then he was not going to Constance.
+
+"I am called to Leipsic by a telegram."
+
+"No one is ill, I hope?"
+
+"No, fortunately," he replied pleasantly; "but in Leipsic I am much
+interested."
+
+Rosina felt a sudden shock, not the less disagreeable because it was so
+undefined, but she pulled herself together at once and promptly
+swallowed it whole.
+
+"I do hope that you will have a pleasant journey," she said cordially.
+
+He was staring steadily at her.
+
+"Shall we meet again?" he said at last.
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"And your address?"
+
+"You have it."
+
+"Ah, yes, truly."
+
+Then he stood up.
+
+"I go at one, and I have ordered to eat at twelve. I must therefore
+leave you this shortly. You will make my adieux to your charming friend,
+_n'est-ce pas_?"
+
+"I am so glad that you came to Zurich and met her," she said, rising
+also and lifting her eyes to his.
+
+He was looking so indifferent that she felt for the instant both puzzled
+and hurt, and was angry at herself for ever having blushed on his
+account. Then she recollected the telegram from Leipsic and drew herself
+up well.
+
+"Is it only because that I have the pleasure to meet mademoiselle that
+you are glad I come?" he asked, holding out his hand.
+
+She nodded, smiling, but ignoring the hand.
+
+"In Lucerne you gave me your hand in good-bye," he said presently.
+
+She offered her fingers with a frankness unequalled.
+
+"Good-bye," she said.
+
+He kissed her rings.
+
+"It is '_au revoir_,'" he replied, in an almost inaudible tone.
+
+She wondered which was true, the indifferent look or the inaudible tone.
+
+He took up his hat.
+
+"_Pensez a moi quelquefois_," he said cheerfully, and departed.
+
+When Molly was made acquainted with this piece of news her comment was
+simplicity itself.
+
+"How queer!" she said, folding a lace fichu into a tulle hat, for she
+was packing fast and furiously.
+
+"Of course I shall not go now; I shall stay here until Thursday and buy
+silk stockings."
+
+"Very commendable in you."
+
+"I'm really too tired to go before Thursday. I've been around night and
+day in Lucerne until I'm all worn out."
+
+"Yes?" said Molly, ramming down shoes into the corners; "well you can
+rest now, sure."
+
+"You will engage rooms for me near yours for Thursday, won't you?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"I'll sleep and shop to-morrow, and come on that ten o'clock express
+Thursday."
+
+"'Tis settled," said Molly, slamming down the trunk-lid; "we'll be at
+the Insel, and expect you day after to-morrow."
+
+"What number do you wear?" Rosina asked, as she watched the trunk
+locked.
+
+"Where,--round my neck or my waist?"
+
+"On your feet?"
+
+"Two-and-a-half."
+
+"Oh, what a fairy!"
+
+Then they hurried down to lunch.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eight
+
+
+That afternoon Rosina took her maid and went for a walk. As a companion
+Ottillie was certainly less congenial than the lofty and eccentric
+gentleman who had just taken his departure for Leipsic; but going out
+alone with a maid is such an eminently proper occupation for a young
+widow travelling abroad, that the knowledge that she was entirely above
+suspicion should have compensated for any slight ennui which Rosina may
+have suffered.
+
+They first went a few blocks up and down the Bahnhofstrasse, and sent
+the various packages which were the natural result of such a course of
+action to the hotel; then came the Stadthaus Garten and the Alpen-Quai.
+
+The Quai was as gay as the Quai in Lucerne, or as any other Promenade in
+Switzerland at that hour and season. Rosina, tired with her shopping,
+seated herself upon a bench and watched with interest the vast variety
+and animation of the never-ending double rank which passed slowly along
+before her. Beyond, the Zurichersee lay brilliantly blue beneath the
+midsummer sun, and far away, upon the opposite shore, the Alps rose
+upward, dark gray below, and shining white above.
+
+There was a sudden exclamation, and out from among the crowd thronging
+before her came that American whose steamer-chair had elbowed Rosina's
+on the passage over. There was no manner of doubt as to his joy over
+meeting his fellow-traveller again, and they first shook hands and then
+sat down to re-tie their mutual recollections. The result was that
+Ottillie returned alone to the hotel.
+
+"And since Berlin?" Rosina asked, interestedly.
+
+"Since Berlin--" said the man (and she noticed that his voice appeared
+to be pitched quite two octaves higher than that other voice which had
+lately dawned upon her ear), "oh, I've been lots of places since
+then,--France and Germany and Italy, up to Innspruch and into Austria
+and over to Buda-Pesth, and then to Salzburg and down through the Tyrol
+here. I've never quit seeing new places since I finished my
+business,--not once."
+
+"Dear me, but you must have had a good time!"
+
+"Yes, I have. But I've often wished myself back on the
+'Kronprinz,'--haven't you?"
+
+"No, I don't think that I have. The person that I saw the most of on the
+'Kronprinz' has been with me ever since."
+
+The American looked surprised, having supposed himself to be that very
+person. Rosina laughed at his face.
+
+"I mean my maid," she explained.
+
+Then he laughed too.
+
+"Did you ever smoke any more?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no. Don't you remember how that one cigarette used me up?"
+
+"You ought to have kept on,--you'd have liked them after a while."
+
+"Perhaps; but some one told me that they would make my fingers yellow."
+
+"Oh, pshaw, not if you hold them the right way."
+
+"The smoke got in my eyes so too; oh, I didn't seem to care anything
+about it."
+
+Then they rose and joined the promenaders, who were beginning to grow a
+little fewer with the approach of the dinner hour.
+
+"And where have you been all this time?" the man asked.
+
+"In Paris buying clothes, and in Lucerne wearing them."
+
+"You're travelling with friends?"
+
+"Yes, most of the time. They went on to Constance to-day, and I am to
+join them there Thursday."
+
+"If you haven't anything else to do to-night, won't you go with me to
+the Tonhalle and hear the music? It appears to be quite the thing to
+do."
+
+"I think that that would be lovely, and I'd like to very much, only we
+must be back at the hotel by ten or half-past, for I am really very
+tired."
+
+"That's easily done; you know we can go whenever we want to. What time
+shall I call for you?"
+
+"I'll be ready after eight."
+
+"I'll come about quarter past, and we can stroll about first and see
+something of the night side of Zurich."
+
+"The night side of everything here is so beautiful," said Rosina; "the
+shops that are temptation incarnate by day become after dark nothing but
+bottomless pits into which all my money and my good resolutions tumble
+together."
+
+By this time they had crossed the bridge and followed the Uto nearly to
+the Badeanstalt; it seemed time to turn their faces hotel-ward, and so
+they did so, and parted for an hour or two, during which to dine and to
+dress were the main objects in life for each.
+
+Then about half-past eight Monsieur l'Americain came for his
+country-woman, and both went out into the charm and glow of the
+Continental night, with no other thought than that of enjoying a placid
+and uninterrupted evening amidst the music and electric lights of the
+Tonhalle. That such was not to be the case was one of the secrets of the
+immediate future, and the advantage of the future, when it is immediate,
+is that it is soon forced to stand and deliver as regards its secrets.
+Rosina, totally unconscious of what was impending over her head, entered
+fully into the spirit of gayety which prevailed, and absorbed the
+pleasure of the scene with open heart and hands. It is good to grow to
+womanhood (or manhood) without losing a child's capacity for spontaneous
+enjoyment,--to be capable of joy without knowing the reason why, to be
+flooded with enthusiasm for one knows not what. It was our lady's luck
+to possess this charm, and to be able to give herself up wholly to the
+end in view, and drink its glass to the dregs,--which in her life had
+generally proved to be sugar and to be almost as good as the
+liquid,--only requiring a spoon.
+
+The concert, as is the way with summer concerts, was so arranged as to
+be easily varied with something cool and refreshing; and when her escort
+suggested that they should do as all the others did, a table was found,
+and they sat down to ices and fairy cakes, amid the flowers and colored
+lights.
+
+It was about nine o'clock, and Rosina, in spite of the environments, was
+beginning to realize forcibly that more interesting men than the one
+before her undoubtedly did exist, when the ice that she was putting in
+her mouth suddenly seemed to glide the full length of her spine, giving
+her a terrible sensation of frozen fright. She had just heard somebody
+behind her speaking in German to the _garcon_, and German, French, or
+English, that voice was unmistakable. How, what, or why she knew not,
+but _he_ was surely there behind her, and the instant after he passed
+close at her side.
+
+Of course it was Von Ibn, and the look that he gave her as he bowed, and
+walked on at once, dyed her face as deeply as ever a face was dyed in
+all the world before. She looked after him with a sort of gasp in her
+eyes, forgetting the man opposite her, the crowd around her, everybody,
+everything, except that one tall figure which with the passing of each
+instant was disappearing more and more among the labyrinth of tables and
+people. She saw him pause at last and seem to hesitate, and her heart
+throbbed wildly in her throat as she felt, with that strange
+instinctive intuition which continues to follow one train of thought
+while our very life seems paralyzed by another, that if he took a seat
+with his back to her, the action would be witness to a displeasure far
+beyond what he must be feeling if he so placed himself as to be able to
+watch her.
+
+He stood still, with his usual halt for deliberation, and then, at the
+end of a long minute, seated himself so that his profile was presented
+to her view.
+
+"Now," she said to herself, "he will look away very carefully for a
+while, and then he will look at us;" and with the thought her breath
+mounted tumultuously.
+
+The music, which had been playing loudly, wound up to a crashing pitch
+just here, and then ceased suddenly. With its ceasing her escort, who
+rejoiced in the well-known "wide-awake American look," and saw all that
+was to be seen within his range of vision, spoke:
+
+"You knew that man who just passed, didn't you?"
+
+She started, having forgotten the very existence of him who addressed
+her.
+
+"Yes, oh, yes," she said confusedly; "I know him very well indeed," and
+then she was choked to silence by Von Ibn, who turned and gave her a
+carefully cold look of complete unrecognition. It was too elaborate to
+be genuine, but it made her feel sick all over; for where other women
+had brains or souls, Rosina had a heart, and again a heart, and yet once
+more a heart. And that heart was not only the mainspring of her physical
+life, but it was also the source of all her thoughts and actions. Von
+Ibn's haughty stare pierced it to the very centre; she knew exactly what
+he was thinking, and the injustice of appearances goaded her to
+distraction. She did not stop to consider whether his own re-appearance
+was or was not an unworthy trick; she only writhed painfully under the
+lash of his vast displeasure. The American continued to probe her face
+with his eyes, but for that she cared not a whit; her only care was for
+those other eyes, those two great dark-circled, heavy-lidded eyes which
+knew no mask and tore her to the quick. Her mind fled here and there
+among the possibilities of the present, and found but one end to every
+vista, and that end grew momentarily in importance until she felt that
+at all costs he who glowered from afar must learn the falsity of his own
+imaginings and so restore her peace of mind to her. She looked upon her
+American friend as a mere means towards that end, a tool to quickly
+accomplish that which her impatience could no longer delay. So she
+leaned suddenly forward and threw herself upon his mercy.
+
+"I must tell you," she cried hurriedly, "I know him very well--very,
+very well. I did not know that he was in Zurich, and he--he did not
+expect to see me here. I want to speak to him; I must speak to him--I
+must!" And then, without paying any attention to the other's look of
+astonishment, she added with haste, "I wish that you would go to him and
+beg him to come to me for five minutes. I only want five minutes. And
+some day, perhaps, I'll be able to do you a good turn too."
+
+The American did not look exactly rejoiced over this latest development
+in their acquaintance, but he rose from his chair and asked what name he
+should address the stranger by. Rosina told him, and he was sufficiently
+unversed in the world of music to have never heard it before and to
+experience a difficulty in getting it straight now.
+
+"Von Ibn, Von Ibn," Rosina repeated impatiently. "Oh, I am so much
+obliged to you; he--he--"
+
+She stopped; some queer grip was at her throat. Her companion was
+touched; he had never imagined her going all to pieces like that, and he
+felt sorry for the terrible earnestness betrayed in her voice and
+manner.
+
+"I'll go," he said, "and he shall be here in five minutes."
+
+Then he walked away, and she bent her eyes upon her music-card, asking
+herself if it was possible that not four full days had elapsed since the
+first one left her to seek Von Ibn at her request. This time she did not
+look after the messenger, she could not; she only felt able to breathe
+and try to grow calmer so that whatever might--
+
+Ah, the long minutes!
+
+Then a voice at her side said, almost harshly:
+
+"You wish to speak to me, madame!"
+
+She looked up and straight into his eyes; their blackness was so cool
+and hard that some women's courage would have been daunted; but the
+courage of Rosina was a mighty one that rose with all opposing
+difficulties.
+
+"Why are you not _en route_ to Leipsic?" she asked.
+
+"Why are you not in Constance?" he retorted.
+
+"Sit down," she said, "and I will tell you."
+
+"I do not wish to take the place of your friend," he answered, with a
+stab of sharpest contempt.
+
+"I think that he will not return for a little."
+
+Von Ibn remained standing, in the attitude of one detained against his
+inclination. She could not but resent the attitude, but she felt that
+her need of the moment required the swallowing of all resentment, and
+she did so. She was not able to raise her eyes to his a second time,
+but fixed them instead upon her card, and began in a low tone:
+
+"Monsieur, I intended going--"
+
+"I can't hear what you say," he interrupted.
+
+"You'll have to sit down then; I can't speak any louder; I'm afraid that
+I shall cry," in spite of herself her voice trembled at the last words.
+
+"Why should you cry?" he asked, and he sat down at the table beside her,
+and, leaning his chin upon his hand, turned his eyes upon her with a
+look that blended undisguised anger with a strange and passionate
+hunger.
+
+She was biting her lip,--the under one,--unconscious of the fact that by
+so doing she rendered the corners of her mouth quite distracting; but he
+perceived both cause and result, and both the anger and the hunger in
+his gaze deepened as he looked, apparently in a blacker humor than ever.
+
+"Why should you cry?" he said again, after a minute; "you are in a
+beautiful spot, listening to most excellent music, and you had with you
+(before I come) a friend very agreeable. Why should you cry?"
+
+She clasped her hands hard and fast together.
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed, "I--I hardly know how to speak in the noise and the
+crowd! I feel quite crazy! I don't know what I am saying--" she stopped
+short.
+
+He leaned a little towards her.
+
+"Let us walk outside a minute," he said. "Monsieur will surely know that
+we are not far. In the air it is better,--yes?"
+
+"But what will he think?"
+
+"_Mon Dieu_, let him think what he will! I also have had thinking this
+night. Let him think a little."
+
+He rose as he spoke, and she rose too. Already the anger in his eyes was
+fading fast before the sight of her so genuine emotion. They went out
+into the garden, and there she took up her explanation again.
+
+"You thought I stayed here because of that man, didn't you?"
+
+"_Donnerwetter!_" he cried violently; "here he returns already again!"
+
+It was indeed the American, approaching as fast as the crowd would let
+him. His face bore a curious expression. One might have gathered from it
+that he was much more clever, or much more stupid, than the vast
+majority gave him credit for being. The instant that he was near enough
+to speak, he began in out-of-breath accents:
+
+"I've just met some people that I haven't seen in years, and they want
+me to drive with them up by the University and see the town by
+moonlight, and I wondered if I could find you here in three-quarters of
+an hour--"
+
+Rosina looked at him helplessly, divining that he supposed a degree of
+friendship between herself and Von Ibn which would cause his proposition
+to be most warmly welcome.
+
+But Von Ibn spoke at once, coldly, but politely.
+
+"Perhaps madame will permit me to escort her to her hotel this evening.
+If she will do so, I shall be most happy."
+
+The American looked eagerly at Rosina.
+
+"I am going very soon," she said; "perhaps that will be best."
+
+He appeared puzzled.
+
+"If you'd rather I stayed--" he suggested.
+
+"No," said Von Ibn sharply, "it is better that you go!" then he added,
+in a somewhat milder tone, "it is very fine, the moonlight from the
+University."
+
+When they were alone, he was silent and led her out of the crowded
+garden down upon the Quai. It was a superb night, and the moon and its
+golden beams were mirrored in the lake. Little waves came running
+tranquilly across the shivering silver sheet and tossing themselves
+gently up against the stone-sheathed bank; some merry boat-loads were
+drifting out among the shadows, listening to the music from the shore
+and sending a silver echo of laughter to join in its accords.
+
+They walked on until something of their own tumult was stayed by the
+stillness, and then Von Ibn said quietly:
+
+"Tell me of what you were saying."
+
+"I was saying that you thought that I had remained here because of that
+man, and yet it was really all an accident."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders slightly.
+
+"But you are quite free,--and he seems very nice, and is of your own
+country and all so agreeable."
+
+"I was really too tired to go to Constance, but--"
+
+"Oh, madame, _je vous en prie_," he interrupted, "no explanation is
+needful. It does not interest me, I assure you."
+
+"I did not want to go to Constance until Thursday," she went steadily
+on; "but I could not stay here because--because--"
+
+"Yes," he interrupted, "all that I have understand,--I understand all."
+
+"So," she continued, "I packed to go, and meant to go, and then when you
+told me that you were leaving too, I thought that I might just as well
+adhere to my--"
+
+"What is 'adhere'?" he broke in; "that word I have never known before."
+
+"It means--well--it means 'stick to.'"
+
+"Glue paste?"
+
+She felt as if a clown had suddenly turned a somersault into the midst
+of the death scene of Hamlet!
+
+"Not glue paste," she explained carefully; "of course, in one way, it
+means the same thing; but I meant that when I knew that you were going,
+I felt that I might just as well do as I had originally intended doing,
+and remain here to rest a little."
+
+"And you repose by coming to the Tonhalle with a gentleman?" he asked in
+a tone of smothered sarcasm.
+
+"I met him this afternoon as I was walking--"
+
+"Have you only know him first this afternoon?"
+
+"_Monsieur!_" she cried in horror, "I came on the steamer with him from
+New York, and he went to college with my cousin!"
+
+Von Ibn gave another shrug.
+
+"You tell everything very cleverly," he remarked; "but, my dear madame,
+we have too many difficulties,--it is always that between us, and--what
+is your proverb?--no smoke without over a fire?--_Eh bien_, I begin to
+grow weary."
+
+"Don't you believe what I have just told you?" she demanded.
+
+They were near the further end of the Quai where the crowd was thinnest
+and the play of moonbeam and shadow most alluring. He stopped and looked
+long upon the shining water, and then long upon her face.
+
+"Yes," he said at last, "I do believe." He held out his hand, "I do
+believe now, but I must tell you that truly if I had been of a
+'_temperament jaloux_,' I would have been very angry this night.
+Yes,--of a surety."
+
+She looked away, with an impulse to smile, and her heart was
+sufficiently eased of its burden to allow her to do so.
+
+"Shall we go to the hotel now?" she asked after a moment.
+
+"But you have not given me your hand?"
+
+She put her hand in his, and he pressed it warmly, and then drew it
+within his arm as they turned to retrace their steps.
+
+"I like better to walk alone," she said, freeing herself.
+
+"You are, perhaps, still angry?" he inquired anxiously.
+
+"No, but I can walk easier alone. And I want you to tell me now why you
+are not _en route_ North, instead of staying here in Zurich."
+
+"But I have been North," he said eagerly; "I have been this day to
+Aarburg."
+
+"To Aarburg!--Where is that?"
+
+"Wait, I will make all plain to you," he looked down upon her with the
+smile that always proclaimed a complete declaration of peace, "it all
+went like this: I see so plain that I make you to leave before you like,
+that I am glad to go away and so make you quite free. It came to my head
+like this,--I wanted to know something and by looking at your face and
+saying that I must go to Leipsic for some one there, I see all that I
+wish to know--"
+
+"What did you see?" Rosina interrupted.
+
+"I see plainly that you think it is some lady--"
+
+"I did not think any such a thing!" she cried hotly.
+
+He laughed and tossed his head.
+
+"And so as I really should go to Leipsic I take the train and go, and
+then on the train I think why am I gone, and when I think again, I feel
+to leave the train at Aarburg and telegraph, and when the answer come
+that you are still here, I feel very strongly to return at once, and so
+I do."
+
+Rosina looked up with a smile, and, meeting his eyes, was suddenly
+overcome with a fear, vague and undefined, it is true, but not the less
+real, as to whether she had been wise in bringing about this most
+complete reconciliation.
+
+"But you must still go to Leipsic?" she asked presently.
+
+"Yes, after a little."
+
+"I wish you had gone when you started."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I am sure that you, who always understand, know why."
+
+"After a while will do," he said easily, "when we are more tired of
+ourselves." He paused. "Perhaps Thursday," he suggested.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, in spite of herself.
+
+"Why 'oh'?"
+
+"You are so positive that we shall be _ennuyes_ by Thursday."
+
+"Yes," he replied tranquilly, "we see so much of us together that it
+cannot last long so. Indeed it was for that that I was quite willing to
+go to-day, but on the train I begin to think otherwise, and my otherwise
+thoughts are become so strong that I find myself obliged to get down at
+Aarburg."
+
+"And Leipsic?"
+
+"Ah, for that you were so charming to send for me to-night and tell me
+how all has been I will tell you all the truth of Leipsic. It is there
+that my professor lives, the man who has teach me all that I know. He is
+to me the most dear out of all the world, for he gave to me my music,
+which is my life and my soul. And so you may understand that I speak
+truth indeed when I say that I have much interest in Leipsic."
+
+Rosina nodded, a sympathetic smile upon her lips.
+
+"But we must go back to the hotel now," she said sadly; "it is nearly
+ten o'clock."
+
+"And I may come to-morrow morning and we shall make a promenade
+together, _n'est-ce pas_?" he said eagerly; "it is so good, you and I
+together, these days. How can I make you know how I feel if you have not
+the same feeling,--the feeling that all the clouds and all the grass are
+singing, that all about us is perfect accord of sound, when we are only
+free to laugh and to talk as we may please."
+
+"But I ought to go on to my friends to-morrow," she said, "you must know
+that."
+
+"But I will go there."
+
+"To Constance?"
+
+"Yes, surely."
+
+"Oh, monsieur, that will not do at all!"
+
+"Why will it not do at all?"
+
+"I don't want you following me to Constance as you did to Zurich."
+
+"But I will not follow you; I will this time go on the same train with
+you."
+
+"Oh," she said, in despair at the wide space between his views and those
+of the world in general, "you cannot do that, it would not look well at
+all."
+
+He stared at her in surprise.
+
+"Who will it look unwell to?"
+
+"Don't say 'unwell,' say 'not well.'"
+
+"Not well; who will see it not well?"
+
+"Ah," she said, shaking her head, "there is no telling who would see
+only too well, and that is just the trouble."
+
+Von Ibn knit his black brows.
+
+"I do not understand that just," he said, after a moment. And then he
+reflected further and added, "You are of an oddness so peculiar. Why
+must the world matter? I am my world--nothing matters to me. _Vous etes
+tortillante!_ you are afraid of stupid people and the tongues they have
+in them. That is your drollness. And anyway, I may go to Constance if I
+will. I may go anywhere if I will. You cannot prevent."
+
+She looked off across the lake.
+
+"You ought to want to do what pleases me," she suggested.
+
+"But I do not," he said vigorously; "I want to do what pleases me, and
+you must want it too,--it will be much better for America when all the
+women do that. I observe much, and I observe especially in particular
+that. An American woman is like a queen--she does her own wish always,
+and is always unhappy; in Europe she does her husband's wish, and it is
+much better for her and very good for him, and they are very happy, and
+I am coming to Constance."
+
+"But I have no husband," said Rosina insistently.
+
+"It will be very good if you learn to obey, and then you can have one
+again."
+
+"But I never mean to marry again."
+
+"I never mean to marry once, _surtout pas une Americaine_."
+
+She felt hurt at this speech and made no reply.
+
+"But I mean to come to Constance."
+
+"Monsieur, you say that we see too much of one another; then why do you
+want to drive our acquaintance to the last limits of boredom?"
+
+"But you do not bore me," he said; and then after a long pause he added,
+"yet."
+
+She was forced to feel that the "y" in "yet" had probably begun with a
+capital.
+
+"I want to go to the hotel now," she said, in a tired tone.
+
+"Let us go and get an ice or some coffee first; yes?"
+
+"Don't keep saying 'yes' that way," she cried impatiently; "you know how
+it frets me."
+
+He took her arm gently.
+
+"You are indeed fatigued," he said in a low tone, "I have troubled you
+much to-night. But I have trouble myself too. Did you see how unhappy I
+was, and was it so that you sent for me? _Dites-moi franchement_."
+
+"Yes," she answered, with simplicity.
+
+"And why did you care?"
+
+"I didn't want you to think what I knew that you were thinking."
+
+"Did you care that I was unhappy?"
+
+"I cared that you thought that I would lie."
+
+"I was quite furious," he meditated; "I came from the train so late and
+found that you were gone out. _Je ne me fache jamais sans raison_,--but
+I had good reason to-night."
+
+"You had no right to be angry over my going out, and I had just as much
+cause for displeasure over your returning as you had over my going."
+
+"No," he said quickly, "for it was a compliment to you that I return,
+and no compliment at all to me that you stay after I am gone so as to
+visit the concert with monsieur."
+
+She laughed a little.
+
+"I hope that you will never behave so again; you were so unbearably rude
+that I was sorry to have sent for you. If I had not," she asked, with
+real curiosity, "if I had not, would you have spoken to me after a
+while?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"_Je ne sais pas_," he replied with brevity; and then looking down at
+her with one of his irresistible smiles he added, "but I find it
+probable."
+
+She smiled in return, saying:
+
+"Do undertake to never be angry like that again."
+
+"Again!" he said quickly and pointedly; "then I _may_ come to
+Constance?"
+
+Her mind was forced to take a sudden leap in order to rejoin his rapid
+deduction of effect from cause.
+
+"No, no," she cried hastily, "you must not think any more of Constance,
+you must go to Leipsic, just as you intended doing."
+
+"But you said--" he began.
+
+"I meant, in the future, if we should ever chance to meet by accident."
+
+His brow darkened.
+
+"Where?" he asked briefly.
+
+"Who can tell," she answered cheerfully; "people are always meeting
+again. See how that man of the steamer met me again to-day."
+
+"But you have hear of him since you come?" he demanded, a fresh shade of
+suspicion in his tone.
+
+"Never! Never a word until he came out of the Promenade and spoke to me
+this afternoon."
+
+Von Ibn thought about it frowningly for a little and then decided it was
+not worth his pains.
+
+"I would not care to meet again as he," he declared carelessly; "how he
+was sent to fetch me, and then he must go alone while we speak together,
+and then make that tale of a drive when there was no drive by the
+University, only a knowledge that he was much not wanted."
+
+"Do you think he was not really invited to go to drive?" she asked,
+opening her eyes widely.
+
+"Of a certainty not. But he could see he was not wanted by us. When he
+came near, you really looked to weep."
+
+"Oh, _no_!" she cried, in great distress.
+
+"Yes; it was just so."
+
+There was a pause while she pondered this new phase of herself, and
+after a while he went on:
+
+"There is something that I do not understand. Why do you desire so much
+to speak to me to-night and then not desire me at Constance? _Ca--je ne
+le comprends pas!_"
+
+"You do understand," she said; "I know you do, and you know that I know
+that you do."
+
+He looked at her for a few seconds and then asked:
+
+"How long are you in Constance?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+"And then where do you go?"
+
+"Probably to Munich."
+
+"With always that Molly?"
+
+"I do not know whether they will go there or not. I believe they are
+going to Bayreuth and then to Berlin."
+
+He reflected for the space of half a block.
+
+"I should really go to Leipsic," he said at last.
+
+"Then why don't you go?" she retorted, more in answer to his tone than
+to his speech.
+
+"I might perhaps go to Leipsic while you are in Constance,--_perhaps_."
+
+Heavy emphasis on the last "perhaps."
+
+"Oh, do!" she pleaded.
+
+"Are you going to Bayreuth?"
+
+"No, I don't think so; they all come down to Munich right afterwards,
+you know."
+
+"But it is not the same in Munich. If you had been in Bayreuth you would
+know that. It is not the same at all. And 'Parsifal' is only there."
+
+He paused, but she made no answer.
+
+"I am going to Bayreuth," he said, "and then I shall come to Munich."
+
+He made the last statement with an echo of absolute determination, but
+she continued to keep silence.
+
+"In Munich I shall see you once more?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Where will you be?"
+
+She told him.
+
+"And I shall be in the 'Vierjahreszeiten'; why do you not come there?"
+he added.
+
+"Because I love the _pension_ with my whole heart," she declared
+fervently; "I was there for an entire winter before my marriage; it is
+like home to me."
+
+He stopped, pulled out his note-book and carefully wrote down the name
+and address; as he put it up again, he remarked:
+
+"That was droll, what you said to-night, that you would never marry
+again! Where do you get that idea?"
+
+"From being married once."
+
+"I have it from never being married any, and I have it very strong. Have
+you it very strong?"
+
+"Yes," said Rosina decidedly, "very strong indeed."
+
+"Then when we know all is only nothing, why may I not come to
+Constance?"
+
+"Because you can't," she said flatly, "I don't want you to come."
+
+"But I will be very good, and--"
+
+"Yes," she said interrupting; "I know, but to prevent further
+misunderstanding, I may just as well tell you that I want all my time in
+Constance for my other friend--"
+
+They were at the door of the hotel, and she had her foot upon the lower
+step; he was just behind her, his hand beneath her elbow. She felt him
+give a violent start and drop his hand, and, looking around quickly to
+see what had happened, she forgot to end her sentence in the emotion
+caused by the sight of his face. A very fury of anger had surcharged his
+eyes and swelled the veins upon his temples.
+
+"So!" he said, in a low tone that almost shook with intense and angry
+feeling, "that is why I may not come! He goes, does he? _Bete que je
+suis_, that I did not comprehend before!"
+
+Rosina stared at him, motionless, for the space of perhaps ten seconds,
+and then an utter contempt filled her, and every other consideration
+fled.
+
+She ran up two or three steps, crossed the hall, and passed the
+_Portier_ like a flash, flew up the one flight of stairs that led to her
+corridor, and broke in upon Ottillie with a lack of dignity such as she
+was rarely guilty of.
+
+"Ottillie," she exclaimed, panting under the weight of many mixed
+feelings, "I want to leave for Constance by the first train that goes in
+the morning. I don't care if it is at six o'clock, I'll get up. Ring and
+find out about everything, and then see to the bill and all. I _must_
+go!"
+
+Ottillie stood there, and her clever fingers were already unfastening
+her mistress' hat-pins.
+
+"Madame may rest assured," she said quietly, "all shall be as she
+desires."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile below stairs Von Ibn had entered the cafe, lit a cigarette and
+taken up one of the evening journals.
+
+He appeared to look over the pages of the latter with an interest that
+was intent and unfeigned.
+
+But was it so?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Nine
+
+
+"I shall certainly not tell Molly one word about these latest
+developments," Rosina said firmly to herself, and she remade the
+resolution not once but a hundred times during the train ride of that
+early Wednesday morning. She was too tired from excess of emotion, and
+no balance of much-needed sleep, to feel anything but unhappy over the
+termination of the preceding evening.
+
+Everything was over now, and the only glory to be reaped in any
+direction would be the dignified way in which Molly should be kept in
+ignorance of all that had occurred.
+
+Outside, the freshness of a Suabian morning lay over valley and
+mountain. The country was beautiful with the charm of midsummer's
+immediate promise, which spread over the fields of ripening grain and
+lost itself among the threading rivulets, or in the shadow of forest and
+mountain. The white-plastered farmhouses with the stable-door at one
+end, the house-door at the other, and the great sweep of straw-thatched
+roof sloping down over all, peeped out from among their surrounding
+fruit-trees. Old, old women knit peacefully under the shadow of the
+stone-bound well, and little, little children tumbled about their knees
+in the grass. Out in the garden at one side the boys and girls were busy
+gathering berries or vegetables for the market of next day. Yokes of
+oxen passed slowly to and fro upon the shaded roads, their high,
+two-wheeled carts loaded to the very top; beside a pond a maiden herded
+geese; upon a hill a boy lay sleeping, his sheep nibbling the herbage
+near by. It was all quaint and picturesque, and to the American eyes
+surpassing strange to see, but those two particular American eyes before
+which all the panorama was displayed, happened just then to be blind to
+everything except one vivid spirit-photograph, and grew moist each time
+that they pictured that afresh.
+
+"No, I shall not tell Molly one word," she repeated mentally; "I can't
+tell her part,--I won't tell her all,--so I just shan't tell her
+anything," and then she stared sightlessly out of the wide-open window,
+and knew not that it was the dregs of her own evaporated anger which
+veiled the sunlit landscape in a dull-gray mist.
+
+The train came slowly in by the banks of the Bodensee, and halted at the
+Kaufhaus soon after eleven o'clock. The Kaufhaus is that delightful old
+building where Huss was tried before the great Council. Built for a
+warehouse, it is now again a warehouse, Huss and his heresy having been
+but a ripple on the tranquil centuries of its existence.
+
+Molly (who had been telegraphed to) was at the Gare to meet her friend,
+and managed to smother her surprise over the sudden turn of events with
+complete success.
+
+"Let the maid take the boxes to the hotel," she said, after having
+greeted the traveller, "and you and I will just have a nice drive before
+dinner, and a good long nap right afterwards."
+
+Rosina submitted to be led passively to a cab, and the strength of her
+resolution was such that before they reached the spot where Huss was
+burnt, Molly was in possession of the last detail as to the preceding
+evening. She said never a word in reply, being much engaged in looking
+out of the side of the cab to see if she could see the monument, an
+action which struck her unhappy friend as heartless in the extreme. When
+they drew up beside the iron fence, both got out and peered between the
+bars at the huge ivy-covered boulder within the enclosure.
+
+"Was he burned _on_ this stone?" Molly called to the cabman in German;
+"now why does he laugh, do you suppose?" she asked in English of Rosina.
+
+"Oh," the latter replied wearily, "you used the word for 'fried,'
+instead of the word 'burned,' but it doesn't matter," she added with a
+heavy sigh.
+
+"I wonder whether he was looking towards the woods or towards the town
+when they lighted him!" Molly pursued with real interest.
+
+Rosina felt that such talk was horribly frivolous, her own tale of woe
+considered, and made no reply; so they went back to the cab, and then
+Molly clasped her hands in her lap and became serious.
+
+"I would forget all about him, if I was you," she said; "you will never
+get any satisfaction out of a man who is always going in for jealous
+rages like that."
+
+Rosina felt with a shock that Molly was of a nature more intensely
+unsympathetic than any which she had hitherto encountered. She looked at
+the Rhine, wondered if it flowed past Leipsic, and wished that she had
+kept to her original determination and said nothing at all about any of
+it.
+
+"I'm glad that I did as I did," she said, with an effort to speak in a
+tone of indifference (the effort was a marked failure). "I'm sure that
+I want to forget him badly enough," she added, and swallowed a choke.
+
+Molly put her hand upon hers and nodded.
+
+"Certainly, my dear; it was the only thing to do with a man like that.
+You explained once, and once is enough, for one night, surely. Forget
+him now and be happy again."
+
+"Don't let us talk about it any more," said Rosina, feeling bitterly
+that Molly lightly demanded oblivion of her when all her inclinations
+were towards tears.
+
+They drove some distance in silence, and then Rosina said slowly:
+
+"Do you suppose that I shall ever see him again now?"
+
+"Yes, if you want to. One always sees the men again that one wants to
+see again."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I never knew it to fail."
+
+"How does that happen?"
+
+"I don't know why it is, but it always does happen. Effect of mental
+telepathy, perhaps. The man knows that he is to be given another chance,
+and comes to get it, I fancy."
+
+"But Monsieur von Ibn is so _very_ singular!"
+
+"Every man is singular!"
+
+"My husband wasn't. And he wasn't ever the least bit jealous," she
+stopped to sigh. "I like jealous men!" she added.
+
+"Yes," said Molly, dryly, "so I observed."
+
+"He never lost his temper either," Rosina continued. "We never had
+anything to make up. And making up is so delicious. Oh, me!" she sighed,
+and her eyes filled with tears again.
+
+"Never mind," said Molly, consolingly, "you'll soon be making it up this
+time."
+
+"Don't you think," said Rosina, slowly, "that he ought to have sent some
+sort of an apology last night; it could have been put under the door, no
+matter how late it was, you know?"
+
+"He isn't that sort of a man, I fancy."
+
+"But his behavior was so unpardonable!"
+
+"Yes, but he doesn't see that."
+
+"Then I don't care if I never do meet him again," Rosina exclaimed
+passionately, and the next instant she burst into tears. "He's so
+interesting," she sobbed; "and his way of speaking is such an
+everlasting joy to me; and he never means to marry; and I never mean to
+marry; and I know that he really cared a great deal about me; and now
+it's--all--all over!"
+
+Molly leaned over and kissed her, drew a comforting arm around her
+waist, and gave her an affectionate squeeze.
+
+"Don't take it so awfully to heart, my dear," she whispered soothingly;
+"we all have troubles of one kind, if not of another. Here's a long
+letter come by the morning post from my dear gray-caped lieutenant, and
+it's just full of the worst sort of desperation over our mutual affairs.
+He knows that we can't possibly marry without a certain amount of money,
+which we have neither of us got, and so there you are!"
+
+"How much is it?" Rosina asked dully. She felt that she ought to try and
+make an effort to interest herself in the lives of others, even if her
+own had so completely crashed in.
+
+"Oh, it's something awful in pounds, but in those Italian _lire_!--why,
+it's not to be thought of for a moment. He thinks that he had best chuck
+up the army and take me to America instead!"
+
+"Oh, Molly, don't let him do that! We haven't any Italians in America
+except organ-grinders and miners, and the Ambassador, of course!"
+
+"I knew it wouldn't do," said the Irish girl. Then she shrugged her
+shoulders and laughed.
+
+"But then I never did intend to marry him, anyhow!"
+
+They drove back to the hotel, and Rosina's eyes were fairly presentable
+when the _Portier_ came out to receive them.
+
+"There is a letter just come for madame," he said, as they entered the
+Kreuzgang; "it is in the office; I will bring it at once."
+
+"There!" Molly whispered, "do you see!"
+
+Rosina trembled slightly as she held out her hand and saw the hotel
+stamp of Zurich on the envelope. Then she tore it open and pulled out
+the single folded sheet contained therein.
+
+It was her bill, receipted, which Ottillie had let fall in the haste of
+their early departure!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Madame la Princesse Russe having a migraine that afternoon, the two
+friends had the pleasure of a tete-a-tete dinner at half-past six. They
+sat by one of the great windows of what used to be the chapel of the
+monastery, but is now the dining-room of the Inselhaus, and enjoyed the
+sweet lake breeze, while their tongues ran delightfully. Rosina,
+liberally refreshed by a long nap, and mightily reinforced as to her
+pride by the last terrific blow of the letter, was in the best possible
+spirits, and her gayety quite rivalled, if it did not surpass, that of
+her companion.
+
+As the waiter was removing the salad, a shadow fell suddenly athwart the
+floor at their side, and Molly, looking quickly upward, beheld--the man!
+
+He was in evening dress, calm, cool, and smiling, and neither the
+surprised face of the one, nor the violent start of the other shook his
+composure in the least.
+
+"_Vous allez bien, mesdames?_" he asked politely, and then, speaking to
+the waiter with authority:
+
+"Lay another place here," he said, indicating the end of the small
+table, "for I shall dine with you, _n'est-ce pas_?" he added, looking
+straight at Rosina.
+
+She appeared to have been stricken suddenly dumb, and was so evidently
+incapable of speech that Molly came boldly to the front with the
+un-original remark:
+
+"When _did_ you come?"
+
+"By Schaffhausen, that _train-rapide_ that does go so fast. I had been
+more wise to have come this morning by the train as madame, for this
+afternoon the tourists were very terrible--also the heat."
+
+"Was it dusty?" she went on.
+
+"I believe you well that it was. And you," he continued, turning to
+Rosina, who sat helplessly staring at her plate, and was very pale
+except for a crimson spot on either cheek, "had you a pleasant ride?"
+
+"No, she hadn't," said her faithful friend; "she arrived all used up."
+
+"You were made too tired, and do not feel well?" he asked, addressing
+the scarlet cheeks again; "truly, you look much so. What has arrived in
+Zurich to make you like that?"
+
+He put the question in a tone the intensity of which forced her to lift
+her eyes to his. Molly did not see the glance, for the infinitude of her
+own experiences led her to find the moment favorable for gazing out of
+the window in a sort of rapt admiration for the Insel rose-bushes in the
+foreground and the placid Bodensee beyond.
+
+It was the waiter who jarred them all three back to the knowledge of
+mundane things by bringing soup for the latest arrival and ices for his
+two companions.
+
+"Ah, now I may eat!" the gentleman exclaimed in a tone of deep
+satisfaction, and began at once.
+
+"You must not be surprised over me," he said to Molly, with a slight
+smile.
+
+"I was not surprised," she reassured him.
+
+"Because I have not eaten to-day before," he explained.
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Yes, of a truthfulness. I am most _drole_ as that. I may never eat when
+I am much troubled."
+
+"Dear me, have you been troubled to-day?"
+
+He looked at Rosina, whose face blazed yet deeper.
+
+"I have said that I may not eat," he repeated simply.
+
+Molly laid down her spoon and glanced out of the window again. Her
+feminine instinct divined what was to be.
+
+"And madame your friend, she is not ill, I hope?" he inquired politely,
+as the waiter removed his soup.
+
+"No," said the Irish girl, slowly, "or--that is,--yes, yes, she is."
+
+"And you must go at once to her," he cried, springing up to draw back
+her chair, "I am so sad for that."
+
+Molly rose to her feet.
+
+"I'm sorry, too," she said, nodding a smiling thanks; "but you see I've
+no choice." And then she went coffee-less away to laugh alone
+above-stairs.
+
+Von Ibn sat down again and ate his fish in silence. He did not appear
+greatly perturbed over the twin-silence which was opposite him, rather
+seeming to reflect upon the fresh reconciliation which was building
+itself on such a substantial foundation of blushes.
+
+Finally, when the fish was gone, he leaned somewhat forward and spoke
+very low.
+
+"_Oh, que j'etais malheureux hier le soir!_" he said in a tone that
+trembled with feeling; "you can figure to yourself nothing of what it
+was! And this morning--when I send and find that you are gone!--I must
+know then that you were very furious of me."
+
+She raised her eyes, but to the window, not to him.
+
+"I was," she said briefly, but not the less tensely.
+
+"When you are run last night--on the stairs like that, you know!--it
+should have been amusing to see you run so fast; but I was not any
+amused whatever. But why did you run?" he questioned, interrupting
+himself; "did you think to leave me always then, there, forever? For an
+instant I had the idea to go after you, but the _Portier_ was there, and
+I have thought, 'What may he think?'"
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed, distressedly, "I altogether forgot him! What do you
+suppose he did think?"
+
+Von Ibn shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"_Rien du tout_," he said easily; "he has think most probably that you
+have lost something from you--a pin or a button, you know. When a woman
+runs so, that is what every one knows."
+
+"Do they?"
+
+"_Naturlich!_ I always know."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+He finished his dinner in short order and then looked a smiling inquiry
+into her eyes.
+
+"We shall go now on to the terrace for the coffee; yes?" he asked as he
+rose, and she rose too and went with him to where their little table was
+spread among the dusk and the roses. The band in the Stadtgarten was
+playing delightfully, and its sweetness came across water and park to
+search out their very souls. The Bodensee spread all beyond in a gray
+peace that seemed to bid the very leaves upon the trees to slumber. The
+steamers were coming to their harbor rest in answer to the flaming
+summons flung them by the searchlight at the head of the pier. They
+glided in in slow procession, shivered at anchor, and submitted to the
+lulling of the lake's night breath.
+
+Von Ibn rested his elbow on the table and his chin upon his hand. He
+looked dreamily out across the water for a long time before saying:
+
+"You pardon my impoliteness then of last night? I am not come to trouble
+you here, only to ask that, and something else, and then I go again at
+once."
+
+"Yes, I will pardon you," said Rosina gently. She too was looking
+thoughtfully out into the twilight on the water. "Only don't do so
+again."
+
+"It is that that I would ask," he went on, looking always at the lake,
+never at her; "that is what I would beg of you. Let us promise
+sincerely--let us take a vow never to be angry again. I have suffer
+enough last night both with my own anger and from yours. I will believe
+what you may tell me. And let us never be angry so again."
+
+"It is you who are so unreasonable," she began.
+
+"No," he interrupted quickly, "not unreasonable. _Jamais je ne me fache
+sans raison!_"
+
+"Yes, you do too. Just think of last night, you were twice angry for
+nothing at all. It was terrible!"
+
+He stared afar and seemed to reflect doubly.
+
+"He was _bete_, that man," he said at last.
+
+"He wasn't either. He was very nice; I don't know how I should have
+gotten along coming over if I had not had him on the steamer to amuse
+me."
+
+"You could have done very well without him at Zurich," said Von Ibn
+doggedly; "myself, I did not like him the first minute that I see him."
+
+"When did you first see him?"
+
+"He was there at the table beside you."
+
+Rosina laughed a little. He turned towards her and smiled.
+
+"Then you will forgive me?"
+
+"Yes, this one time more. But never, never again."
+
+He turned to the lake and consumed five minutes in assimilating her
+remark. Then his look came back to her.
+
+"I was awake so much last night that my eyes burn me; do they show it?"
+
+She looked into his eyes, and they burned indeed--burned with a latent
+glow that forced her own to lower their lids.
+
+"Do they look strangely to you?" he asked.
+
+"No," she said in a low tone.
+
+"That is odd, because in all my life they have never look at any one as
+they look at you to-night."
+
+She drew herself together suddenly.
+
+"Don't talk foolishly," she said distinctly.
+
+"That was no foolishness; it is true."
+
+"It is just the sort of thing that all men say, and I like you because
+you do not say things like all other men."
+
+"Do all other men say to you that?"
+
+"Not just that, but its equivalents. Men in general are not very
+original."
+
+He took out his cigarette case and contemplated its bas-relief of two
+silver nymphs for several seconds.
+
+"You may," said his companion, smiling.
+
+"May what?"
+
+"May smoke."
+
+"But I am going to, anyway."
+
+"Oh."
+
+He looked at her with an air of remonstrance.
+
+"This is not your parlor," he reminded her.
+
+"No," she said meekly; "I stand corrected."
+
+He lit the cigarette and threw the match into a rose-bush.
+
+"I think that I will go and find Molly," she suggested presently.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I think that she would be able to leave madame by this time."
+
+"But if she can leave her then she will come to us, and I do not want
+her; do you?"
+
+"I always want her."
+
+"That is absurd. Why do you want her? I never want another man when we
+speak together."
+
+"But I am very fond of Molly."
+
+"So am I most affectionate of my professor in Leipsic, but I never once
+have wished for him when I was with you."
+
+"That's different."
+
+"No, it is quite one. Do not go for mademoiselle; I have something to
+say to you, and there is only to-night to say it."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It is that I have really to go away. This time I must. I go to-morrow
+morning without fail."
+
+"I am so glad," she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," he said, with a quick glance; "is it really so that my going
+makes you pleasure? Truly I only come in return for your kindness of
+last night--when you send for me, you know. I think that I wish to
+repay. But now, if we are quite friends, I must go very early to-morrow
+in the morning."
+
+"I am glad that you are going," she said quietly, "and you know why. And
+I shall be glad when we meet again," she added in a lighter tone.
+
+Then a long silence fell between them, while to their ears came the
+famous symphony of a famous composer. When the music ceased he spoke
+again.
+
+"You will write to me?"
+
+"I am not a letter writer."
+
+"But you will send me a few lines sometimes?"
+
+"Are you going to write me?"
+
+"_Si vous voulez de mes nouvelles._"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"I will tell you," he said, tossing his cigarette into the lake; "I will
+send you a post-card, as I tell you before--you recall? yes."
+
+"No," said Rosina, with decision, "I don't want post-cards; you can
+write me in an envelope or not at all."
+
+He looked at her thoughtfully.
+
+"I have some very small paper," he said at last, "I can use that; I use
+it to write my family on."
+
+She almost laughed.
+
+"That will be all right," she said, "and I will answer on my
+correspondence-cards. They only hold half a dozen lines, and they have
+my monogram on them and are really very pretty."
+
+"You can write on the back too," he suggested.
+
+"I shan't have any more to say than will go easily on the front,
+though."
+
+"And I shall see you next in August in Munich?"
+
+"_Esperons!_" with a smile.
+
+He stood up suddenly.
+
+"Let us walk to the Garten," he suggested; "it is good to walk after
+dinner a little."
+
+She rose too, very willingly, and they went towards the bridge that
+connects the Insel with the mainland.
+
+"Did you love your husband?" he asked as they passed above the moat-like
+stream.
+
+"Tremendously."
+
+"For long?"
+
+"Until after we were married."
+
+He halted short at that.
+
+"It was too bad to stop just then."
+
+Rosina felt that there were safer places to pause than there on the
+railroad tracks, and went on to the other side.
+
+"It was too bad to stop at all," she said, when he came too.
+
+"_Assurement._"
+
+They walked along the bank and came into the Stadtgarten, full of people
+laughing and talking with the liveliness that is so pleasant to see and
+so difficult, apparently, to import, unless it be in the steerage.
+Perhaps it is the Custom House which takes all the gayety out of the
+First and Second Classes before they can get ashore in America.
+
+"We shall have to say our parting very soon," the man said presently;
+"we have both travelled to-day, and I must go in a very early hour
+to-morrow."
+
+"Yes," she replied, "I am much more weary to-night even than I was last
+night."
+
+"If we are tired we might again have trouble," suggested her companion
+wisely. Then he added quickly, "But, no, never again,--I have promise
+that."
+
+"Shall we not return to the hotel now?" she asked.
+
+"But why will you go back so quick?" he asked in an injured tone; "do
+you want to be so soon alone?"
+
+"I thought that you wanted to be."
+
+"I want to sit down and not walk ever," he said, pausing by an empty
+table in the open-air cafe. "What made you stop?" he went on, looking at
+her, she having paused where he did, naturally.
+
+"I stopped because you did."
+
+"Because I did! that has no sense."
+
+"Then I'll go on alone," and she moved away.
+
+He rejoined her in three steps, laughing.
+
+"Why do you walk off like that?" he demanded.
+
+"Because you said that there was no sense in my stopping."
+
+He looked at her in great amusement.
+
+"_Que vous etes tordante!_ I asked you why you stopped loving your
+husband?"
+
+She stared.
+
+"Why, it's ever so long since we were speaking of that. How funny you
+are!"
+
+He turned her back towards the empty table.
+
+"Let us sit down here and talk, it may be the last time for long."
+
+She hesitated, thinking of Molly.
+
+"It is so nice here," he declared, persuasively; "only for a few minutes
+we stay."
+
+She sat down forthwith; he followed suit. A maid came and took his
+order, and then he clasped his hands upon the table before him and was
+still, appearing to be overtaken by some sudden and absorbing train of
+thought.
+
+After a little the music recommenced, and his soul returned to his eyes
+with a quick upblazing light. He reached out his hand and touched hers.
+
+"Listen!" he exclaimed imperatively; "you go to learn something now. Pay
+much notice."
+
+The violins of the orchestra were pouring forth their hearts in a sweet
+treble song, whose liquid liaisons flowed high above the background of a
+dark monotony of single chords. The air was singularly full of feeling,
+and reached forth its individual pleading to each individual listener.
+
+"You have hear that?" he whispered with a smile.
+
+"Never," she whispered in return.
+
+"You shall wait a little," he murmured, resting his chin on his hand and
+turning his eyes on the lake again; "in a moment you shall hear."
+
+At that instant the song appeared to terminate, and bass and treble ran
+together in long, sweeping arpeggios; and then, out over the merry
+crowd, out over the infinite peace of the Bodensee, there rang and
+resounded four notes,--E, F, F sharp, G; four notes, the pain, the
+prayer, the passion of which shrieked to the inmost mysteries of every
+hearing heart.
+
+Rosina started; her companion turned quickly towards her.
+
+"It is what you told me of at Lucerne that night on the steamer?" she
+asked, with no question in her voice.
+
+He moved his head slowly in assent to her certainty. The cascading song
+was already running its silvery course again; he leaned far towards her.
+
+"Have you comprehend, do you think?" he asked.
+
+She nodded. And then she too leaned her chin on her hand, and looked to
+the lake to guard her eyes, while the music invaded and took complete
+possession of her senses.
+
+"Do you play that on your violin?" she asked, when all was over.
+
+"There is no music that I may not play," he replied, "unless I have
+never see it, or hear it, or divine it for myself."
+
+"Do you play the piano also?"
+
+"Only what I must. Sometimes I must, you know. Then I say to my hands,
+'You shall go here, you shall go there!' and they go, but very badly."
+
+She looked straight at him with a curious dawning in her eyes.
+
+"I wonder, shall we ever make any music together?" she murmured.
+
+"Much," he said tritely.
+
+She was conscious of neither wonder nor resistance, as if the music had
+cast a spell over her self-mastery.
+
+"I want to hear you play," she said, with an echo of entreaty.
+
+He shook his head, brushing a lock of hair off of his temple as he did
+so. There was a sort of impatience in each movement.
+
+"Not these days; no! I played once after I saw you first, but only once.
+Since that the case is locked; the key is here." He interrupted himself
+to draw out his keys, and separating one from the rest held it up to
+her. "Let us hope that in Munich, perhaps."
+
+The waitress had returned with their ices. He watched her arrange them,
+and she watched him. The heavy circle under his eyes was especially
+noticeable this night, the eyes themselves especially laughless.
+
+"You are glad that I go?" he asked suddenly as he picked up his spoon
+and plunged it into the saucer before him; "yes?"
+
+"I shall be more glad when I know that you are really gone."
+
+"But this time it is sure. This time it is really a true going." He
+stopped and broke a piece of cake into tiny morsels, pushing them
+together into a neat little pile. "Why were you unhappy in your
+husband?" he asked slowly.
+
+"He drank," she replied.
+
+"Perhaps he was unhappy?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"Beyond a doubt."
+
+He took another bit of cake and crumbed that up as he had the first.
+
+"Don't do that."
+
+"Why shall I not?" with an air of surprise.
+
+"It isn't right."
+
+"But I shall pay for it," he said remonstrantly.
+
+"It's bad manners, anyhow."
+
+"What does it matter if I like, and pay for it too?"
+
+"Well, then, if you must know, it makes me horribly nervous!"
+
+He looked at her quickly.
+
+"Are you nervous?"
+
+"Yes, when people waste cake like that."
+
+He sighed and stopped his play.
+
+"Did you ever love after?" he asked presently.
+
+"No, never! Good Heavens, once was enough!"
+
+"Was your husband so very bad?"
+
+"He wasn't bad at all; he was only disagreeable."
+
+"Perhaps he made you nervous?" he queried.
+
+"Perhaps," she answered dryly.
+
+There was a long, long pause. The band now played "_Doch Einer Schoner
+Zeit_," and some peasants in the native costume sang the words.
+
+Finally he pushed his plate away and crossed his arms upon the table;
+his eyes were very earnest.
+
+"Once I loved," he said; "I have speak of that to you before."
+
+She made no reply.
+
+"It was no passion of a whole life, but for a boy, as I was then, it was
+much. I was quite young, and, _Gott!_ how I _did_ love! She was such a
+woman as says, 'I will make this man absolutely mad;' and she did so.
+She made me crazy--_tout-a-fait fou_; and then, when I could only
+breathe by her eyes, she showed me that she was uncaring!"
+
+He stopped, stared sightlessly out at the black water beyond, and then
+turned towards her.
+
+"Is it so in _your_ mind towards me?" he asked, and in his voice and
+eyes was that heartrending pathos which once in a lifetime a man's soul
+may come to share with childhood's heavy sorrows.
+
+She drew a quick breath. The pointed roofs of the Inselhaus off there
+beyond the trees printed themselves darkly and forever upon her brain;
+the scattered lights in the windows, the inky spots where the ivy
+trailings were massed thickest,--all those details and a dozen others
+were in that instant photographed upon her spirit, destined to
+henceforth form the background to the scene whose centre was the face
+opposite to her, all of the expression of which seemed to have condensed
+itself into the burning gaze of those two great eyes, so vastly sad.
+
+"Oh, monsieur," she said, with a tone of deep appeal, "believe me, I
+have never done so cruel a thing as that in all my life!"
+
+"Are you to all men as to me?"
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"That American in Zurich! when you met him again was it as to meet me
+again?"
+
+"But he is no especial friend of mine."
+
+"And am I especial?--Am I?--Yes?"
+
+"Yes," she said slowly, "I feel as if I had known you all my life."
+
+"Yes," he answered quickly, "just so I feel also."
+
+He put up his hand and again brushed the loose lock of his wavy hair
+back from his forehead.
+
+"_Vraiment_," he exclaimed, "I begin to feel that it is impossible that
+I go to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, but you must," she cried, much alarmed.
+
+"We are so happy; why can we not let this pleasure last?"
+
+"You _must_ go!" she reiterated with decision.
+
+"We understand so well," he went on, without noticing her words; "you
+understand, I understand. I wish nothing of you, I require nothing of
+you, only the friendship--only these good hours that we know together,
+only the joy of our sympathy. Why can I not be where you are everywhere?
+_Warum nichts?_"
+
+"It isn't possible!" she said firmly.
+
+He turned about in his seat and called for the reckoning. After it was
+paid they went together back towards the hotel.
+
+"You have told me that you will never marry again," he said presently,
+"and I have told you that I also intend never. But--" he stopped short.
+The hotel court was there before them, and the scent of some night
+flowers came on the evening breeze from those beds of riotous color
+which fill the central space of the old Cloister.
+
+"Let us walk once around the Kreuzgang," he suggested, "and after that
+we will go in."
+
+She assented, and they followed the vivid outline of Constance's history
+as portrayed in the large frescoes upon the inner wall of the vaulted
+passage.
+
+"I do not breathe here," he said suddenly; "come into the garden with me
+once again. But for a moment? I beg--I pray!"
+
+They went out on to the terrace, passing through the Refectory, now
+thick with smoke and scintillating with beer-steins.
+
+"You say that you will never marry," he said again, as they encircled
+the base of Huss' Tower, "and I tell you that I also have the idea to
+never marry. But--"
+
+He paused again, just by that bit of the old monastery wall which
+extends out towards the bathing-houses.
+
+"But if--_if_," he emphasized the monosyllable with marked
+emphasis,--"_if_ I asked you to marry me, what would you say?"
+
+Rosina did not stop for an instant's consideration.
+
+"I should say 'no.'"
+
+He received the blow full in his face.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"I do not want another husband. I don't like husbands. They are all
+alike."
+
+"How?"
+
+"You can't tell a thing about them beforehand; they always change, and
+are different after marriage from what they were before."
+
+"I shall never change," he declared positively.
+
+"They all say that."
+
+"But I speak truth!"
+
+"They all say that too."
+
+"But with me it will arrive;" then he added, "with me it will arrive
+that I shall never change, because I shall _never_ marry."
+
+His remark was such a complete surprise to her that she could hardly
+master her shock for a moment.
+
+"If that was the point that you were leading up to," she said finally,
+"I'm certainly glad that I did not say 'yes.'"
+
+He surveyed her, smiling.
+
+"I particularly said 'if,'" he reminded her; "I said, '_if_ I asked you
+to marry me,' you know?"
+
+Rosina felt a strong inclination to bring the evening to a close. She
+wanted to be alone and think.
+
+"We must go in," she said.
+
+"I also feel it," he answered.
+
+So they went in. The hall and staircase were quite deserted. He walked
+with her to the top of the first flight.
+
+"Do we leave good-bye here?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she said smiling; "I think so."
+
+He stood looking at her, and out of the depths of his nature various
+phantoms strove into shape.
+
+"It is well that I go," he said seriously; "after all, we are not
+children, you and I, and however we laugh it is always that, that we
+really are not children." He put out his hand and took hers. "I shall be
+away, and the time will be long, and--" he paused abruptly.
+
+Her eyes almost closed beneath the unbearable heat of his gaze.
+
+"Shall you remember me?" she asked, faintly this time.
+
+"Yes, much."
+
+Then she opened her eyes and withdrew her hand.
+
+"For how long?" she said as before.
+
+He was still staring down at her.
+
+"Who can say!"
+
+"For three weeks? for four? for six?"
+
+"_Je ne sais pas_," he said briefly; "if I think too much I must come
+back, and that will not be wisely."
+
+"We must not stand here," she said suddenly; "adieu, au revoir!"
+
+"Yes," he replied sombrely, "we must part now."
+
+He looked at her, and his eyes locked hers hard and fast for a long
+minute. She felt ill, faint, her breath seemed failing her. Then--
+
+He seized her hand and pressed it so strongly against his lips that his
+lips parted and she felt his teeth against her flesh.
+
+"_Je vous aime!_" he whispered, almost inaudibly. "Adieu!"
+
+
+
+
+Part II
+
+THE BEATING OF THE WAVES
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Chapter Ten
+
+
+It was September in Munich. They stood together on the Maximilianbrucke,
+and, looking down into the gray and black turbulence of the Isar, felt
+themselves to be by contrast most tranquil and even-tempered. The little
+river rushed beneath them, forming a wealth of tiny whirlpools above its
+stone-paved way, its waters seeming to clash and struggle in a species
+of mimic, liquid warfare, and then, of a sudden, victor and vanquished
+fled wildly on together, giving place to other waves with their other
+personal scores to settle.
+
+The banks on either side were beginning to show some touches of autumnal
+scarlet among those masses of vine whose ends trailed in the water
+below, and among the shrubs of the Promenade the same blood stain
+betrayed the summer's death at the hands of the merciless frost king.
+The Peace Monument was there, piercing heaven with its golden wings;
+the Lucaskirche towered to the east; above them all sat the lofty
+Maximilianeum, that open-work crown of Munich, whose perfectly curved
+approach and double arcaded wings must joy the soul of every
+artist-nature that lingers near it.
+
+"How old are you?" the man said suddenly.
+
+Rosina jerked her consciousness up out of the bed of the Isar.
+
+"No gentleman at home would ask a lady that," she told him, thus showing
+great presence of mind.
+
+He smiled and twisted his moustache.
+
+"But I am not a gentleman at home," he said pleasantly, "I am a
+gentleman travelling."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"I have thirty-three years."
+
+"Well, I haven't," she said with decision; "you might think that I was
+forty, but that is only because I have had so much experience."
+
+He looked at her in a dubious, troubled way.
+
+"I did not think that you had forty: I did not get that just perhaps.
+You have not truthfully forty, have you?"
+
+Rosina laughed in unfeigned amusement.
+
+"No, monsieur, I am not thirty even. I told you that if I seemed to be
+forty, it was because I had had so much experience."
+
+"So much experience?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You feel that you have had experience?"
+
+"I know it."
+
+"Experience as, _par exemple_, me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He looked at her and smiled, shaking his head.
+
+"Oh, madame, you say that, not at all knowing how much experience I have
+had."
+
+She raised her eyebrows slightly and turned to walk on. He followed at
+her shoulder, and when they came to the little stone stair that leads
+down to the Promenade, he halted and glanced expressively off among the
+paths and shade.
+
+"There isn't time," she said, shaking _her_ head now.
+
+He went down two steps alone, and then held out his hand with that
+irresistible smile; she hesitated, looked helplessly around, and then,
+like all women who hesitate, was forthwith lost, swallowed up, in the
+maze of those wandering paths. Von Ibn secured his cane well beneath his
+arm and lit a cigarette.
+
+"Do I ever now ask you 'may I'?" he said.
+
+"You never did ask me 'might you?'" she replied.
+
+He drew two or three satisfied puffs.
+
+"It is good to be so friends," he commented placidly, and then he took
+his cane into his right hand again and swung it with the peculiarly
+vigorous swing which in his case always betrayed the possession of an
+uncommon degree of _bonne humeur_. "And now for your experience?" he
+asked after a little. "It is that which I will to hear."
+
+"Did you ever go to a masked ball?"
+
+"_Mais, naturellement._"
+
+"Well, so did I." She paused to note the effect.
+
+He threw a quick glance of undefined question at her.
+
+"Masked?" he demanded.
+
+"Oh, dear no! thickly veiled, and 'way upstairs in a gallery."
+
+"Were you greatly amused 'way upstairs in your gallery?"
+
+"Yes, really; there were ever so many men there that I knew."
+
+"Did they come upstairs in the gallery?"
+
+"No indeed, no one knew that I was there. But it interested me to see
+whom _I_ knew--"
+
+"Was I there?" he interrupted.
+
+"Oh, it wasn't here! it was ever so long ago, while my husband was
+alive."
+
+"Did you see your husband?"
+
+"Yes," she said flushing, "and he was just like all the other men. He
+wore no mask, and he did not care one bit who might recognize him."
+
+"You had been better not gone," said the man decidedly.
+
+"Yes, I think so; I lost all my love for my husband that night, and
+killed all my faith in mankind forever."
+
+"Why did you be possessed to go?"
+
+"I went because I did not want to be deceived in the way that many women
+are deceived."
+
+Von Ibn laughed.
+
+"You know now all of everything, you think?"
+
+"I know more than most other women do."
+
+"You would have known much more yet if you had worn a mask," he told her
+very dryly.
+
+She did not reply, and after a few minutes he continued:
+
+"And now, when you know everything, and can no more be deceived, are you
+so most happy?"
+
+"I do not know," she said slowly.
+
+"How have you lost your faith?" he inquired; "what in especial can no
+more deceive you?"
+
+"I don't believe in men," she declared; "I don't believe in anything
+that they say, nor in anything that they promise. And I don't believe
+one bit in love!"
+
+The man stopped by an empty bench.
+
+"We have walked so long," he remarked parenthetically; and she sat down,
+parenthetically also, so to speak.
+
+"That is sad," he said, digging in the gravel with his cane, "not to
+believe in love, or in the truth of a man! and you are a woman, too!
+Then there is no more truth and love for you."
+
+Rosina felt disheartened. A ready acquiescence in her views is always
+discouraging to a woman. What is the use of having views, if they are
+just tamely agreed to at once?
+
+"I think perhaps men really mean what they say when they say it," she
+began; "but, oh dear, they can't stick to it afterwards. Why, my husband
+told me that my lightest wish should be his law, and then what do you
+think he did?"
+
+"He did perhaps kiss you."
+
+"No, he went and bought a monkey!"
+
+"What is a monkey?"
+
+"Don't you know what a monkey is?"
+
+"If I know I will not trouble you to ask."
+
+"_C'est un singe,--affe_; now you know."
+
+"Oh, yes; I was thinking of a monk, and of how one told me that you had
+them not with you."
+
+Then he scraped gravel for a long time, while her mind wandered through
+a vista of monks and monkeys, and finally, entering the realm of the
+present day, paused over the dream of a hat which she had seen that
+morning in the Theatinerstrasse, a hat with a remarkably clever
+arrangement of one buckle between two wings; it was in the store that
+faced--
+
+"I am an atheist," said her companion, rising abruptly from his seat.
+
+"Apropos of what?" she asked, decidedly startled, but rising
+too,--"apropos of the monkey?"
+
+"_Comment?_" he said blankly.
+
+"Nothing, nothing!" quickly.
+
+They walked on slowly among the shadows which were beginning to gather
+beneath the trees; after a while he spoke again.
+
+"I tell you just now that I am an atheist, and that is very true. Now I
+will make you a proposal and you shall see how serious I mean. I will
+change myself and believe in God, if you will change yourself and
+believe once more in men."
+
+"Can you believe in God or not just as you please?" she asked
+wonderingly.
+
+"I am the master of myself," he replied straitly; "if I say that I will
+pray to-night, I will pray. And you must say that you will believe," he
+insisted; "you must again have a faith in men, and in their truth, and
+in honor." Then he paused lengthily. "And in love?" he continued; "say
+that you will again believe in love?--you will, will you not? yes?"
+
+"I don't know that I can do it, even if I want to," she said musingly;
+"looking on at life is so terribly disheartening, especially with us in
+America, you know."
+
+"Oh," he said quickly, "but I do not want you to believe in love in
+America; I talk of here in Munich."
+
+"I suppose you mean yourself?"
+
+"Yes," he said most emphatically,--"me."
+
+She could not help laughing a little.
+
+"You do really amuse me so much," she apologized.
+
+A workman in a dirty blouse and a forlorn, green Tyrolese hat, the
+cock's plume of which had been all too often rained upon, passed close
+beside them. Von Ibn, nothing daunted, seized her gloved hand and
+pressed it to his lips; she freed it quickly and swept all their
+environage with one swift and comprehensive glance.
+
+"If any one that knew us should see you!" she exclaimed.
+
+He calmly gazed after the now distant workman.
+
+"I did not know him," he said; "did you?"
+
+Then she was obliged to laugh again.
+
+"You are always so afraid of the world," he continued, remonstrating;
+"what does it make if one do see me kiss your hand? kissing your hand is
+so little kissing."
+
+He paused a moment and smiled whimsically.
+
+"I did really laugh alone in my room the other night. I sit there
+smoking and thinking what a bad fright you have always when I will to
+take your hand and kiss it--you fear ever that some one shall not be
+there to see. Then I think, if I would give you a true kiss, that would
+be to your mind so awful,--the fear of a seeing, you know,--that we must
+then go in a cellar and bolt nine doors first, probably."
+
+He laughed, but she did not.
+
+"When I go into a cellar with you," she said coldly, "and allow nine
+doors bolted, you may kiss me, and I pledge you my word not to scream."
+
+A dead silence followed her remark, and lasted until Von Ibn broke it,
+saying abstractedly:
+
+"One does go underground to visit the breweries;" after which he
+meditated some while longer before adding, "but they never would bolt
+the doors, I think."
+
+Rosina felt any comment on these words to be unnecessary and continued
+upon the even tenor of her way. They were close by the Luitpoldbrucke
+now, and she went towards the bridge, which lay upon their homeward
+route. Von Ibn followed her lead placidly until they were upon the
+opposite bank, when he suddenly halted.
+
+"Have you lost something?" she asked, stopping also.
+
+"No, but I asked you some question just now and you have never reply."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"About believing."
+
+"But I am going so soon," she objected.
+
+"How soon?"
+
+"In December."
+
+"It is then all settled?" he inquired, with interest.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But you can unsettle it?" he reminded her eagerly.
+
+"I don't want to unsettle it--I want to go."
+
+He stared at her blankly.
+
+"How have I offended you?" he asked after a while.
+
+"You have not offended me," she said, much surprised.
+
+"But you say that you want to go?"
+
+"That is because I feel that I must go."
+
+"Why must you go? why do you not stay here this winter?--or, hold! why
+do you not go to Dresden? Later I also must go to Dresden, and it would
+be so _gemuthlich_, in Dresden together."
+
+"It will be _gemuthlich_ for me to get home, too."
+
+"Do you wish much to go?"
+
+"Yes; I think that I do."
+
+Then she wondered if she was really speaking the truth, and, going to
+the edge of the bank, looked abstractedly down into the rapid current.
+
+"What do you think?" he asked, following her there.
+
+She turned her face towards him with a smile.
+
+"I cannot help feeling curious as to whether, when I shall really be
+again in America, I shall know a longing for--for the Isar, or not?"
+
+"I wonder, shall I ever be in America," he said thoughtfully; "and if I
+ever should come there, where do you think would be for me the most
+interesting?"
+
+"_Chez moi_," she laughed.
+
+He smiled in amusement at her quick answer.
+
+"But I shall never come to America," he went on presently; "I do not
+think it is a healthy country. I have an uncle who did die of the yellow
+fever in Chili."
+
+"There is more of America than Chili; that's in South America--quite
+another country from mine."
+
+"Yes, I know; your land is where the men had the war with the negroes
+before they make them all free. I study all that once and find it quite
+dull."
+
+"The war was between the Northern and Southern States of North
+America--" she began.
+
+"_Ca ne m'interesse du tout_," he broke in; "let us walk on."
+
+They walked on, and there was a lengthy pause in the conversation,
+because Rosina considered his interruption to be extremely rude and
+would not broach another subject. They went a long way in the darkness
+of a heavily clouded September twilight, and finally:
+
+"Where did he buy it?" he asked.
+
+"Where did he buy what? where did who buy what?"
+
+"The monkey."
+
+"Oh! I don't know, I'm sure."
+
+Then there was another long silence.
+
+"To-morrow," he announced, "I am going to the Tagernsee, and--"
+
+"I'm not," she put in flatly.
+
+He turned his head and stared reprovingly.
+
+"How you have say that! not in the way of good manners at all."
+
+"No," she said, with an air of retort, "I am with you so much that I am
+beginning to forget all my good manners."
+
+"Am I so bad mannered?"
+
+"Yes, you are."
+
+"How?"
+
+"You interrupt, and you are frank to a degree that is always impolite,
+and sometimes really awful."
+
+"And you," he exclaimed eagerly, "how bad you also are! you never even
+try to be agreeable, and when I speak with great seriosity you are often
+more amused than before, even."
+
+Rosina tried to look sorry, but found it safer, even in the twilight, to
+look the other way.
+
+"The truth is," he went on vigorously, "I am very much too good with
+you! I have never taken my time to an American before, and I am always
+fearful. I have been a fool. I shall not be a fool any more."
+
+"How do you intend to begin to grow wise?"
+
+"You will see."
+
+The threat sounded dire, but they were now at the corner by the
+Maximiliansstrasse, and supper was too near for her to feel downcast.
+
+"I hope that we are to have potato salad to-night," she said cheerfully.
+
+He continued to meditate moodily.
+
+"Oh, we are much too much together," he announced at last.
+
+"Well," she replied, "if you go to the Tagernsee to-morrow that will
+give us a little mutual rest."
+
+"I may miss the train," he added thoughtfully; "if I do--"
+
+"You can take the next one," she finished for him.
+
+He looked at her witheringly.
+
+"If I do miss the train, I will carry my violin to you and we will make
+some music in the evening."
+
+Rosina stopped, fairly paralyzed with joy.
+
+"Oh, monsieur," she cried, "will you really?"
+
+"Yes, that is what I will; _if_ I miss the train."
+
+They had entered beneath the long arcade, which was dark and altogether
+deserted except for one distant figure.
+
+"I almost want you to miss your train," she said eagerly. "You do not
+know how very, very anxious I am to hear you play."
+
+"I can miss it," he said thoughtfully; "it is very simple to miss a
+train. One can sleep, and then here in Munich one may say the cabman a
+wrong Gare. If I say 'Ostbahnhof' when I must go from the Starnberg, I
+shall surely miss the train, you know."
+
+He looked at her gravely and she burst out laughing at the picture he
+had drawn for her mind, because there is all of three or four miles
+between those two particular stations.
+
+"But I don't want you to miss the train," she said presently. "You can
+play for me after you come back, I--"
+
+At this moment the figure which had been coming towards them suddenly
+resolved itself into that of a stalwart young man, who, just as he was
+directly in front of them, stopped, seized Rosina in his arms and kissed
+her. She very naturally screamed in fright, and her escort delivered a
+blow at the stranger which sent him reeling backwards against one of the
+stone pillars.
+
+The man, who was well dressed and appeared to be a gentleman, recovered
+himself with surprising quickness, and laughed oddly, saying:
+
+"My Lord, what a welcome!"
+
+At the sound of his voice Rosina screamed afresh, this time in quite
+another tone, however, exclaiming:
+
+"It's my cousin Jack!"
+
+"It is your--some one you know?" stammered Von Ibn. "Then I must demand
+a thousand pardons."
+
+"Not at all," said Jack, taking his hand and shaking it heartily;
+"that's all right! don't say a word more. The trouble was that when I
+saw Rosina I forgot that she had gotten out of the habit of being
+kissed. Of course I scared her awfully. Are you over it yet, dear?"
+
+Rosina stood between the two men, and appeared completely stunned by her
+cousin's arrival.
+
+"Where did you drop from, anyhow?" she asked, finding her tongue at
+last.
+
+"Came over to go back with you; left Paris last night."
+
+"Where will you stay? There isn't an empty corner in the _pension_, one
+has to write ever so long ahead."
+
+"I'm going to stay at the Vierjahreszeiten, just beside you. I'm all
+right."
+
+"Yes," said Von Ibn suddenly, "you are very right; I stay there too."
+
+Rosina thought despairingly, "They'll see a lot of one another, and Jack
+will dislike him and he'll hate Jack."
+
+By this time they were come to her door and paused there.
+
+"I'm going in with you," the cousin said. "Madame was so glad to see me
+again that she wanted me to come back and sit next to her at supper. I
+was awfully glad to see her. She's even younger and prettier than when I
+last saw her--when you and I were kids there that winter, don't you
+remember?"
+
+Von Ibn was staring sombrely at Rosina and she was sure that Jack would
+notice it, and wished that he wouldn't. Then he gave a little start and
+held out his hand.
+
+"I shall not come to-night," he said, "and to-morrow I go to the
+Tagernsee; so it is 'good-bye' here."
+
+She felt choked.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, keenly aware of being watched, but striving to
+speak pleasantly notwithstanding. He shook her hand, raised his hat, and
+left them.
+
+Then her cousin swung the big _porte_ open and they entered the passage
+and went towards the stairs. At the first step he paused and said in a
+peculiarly pointed tone of voice:
+
+"Well, are you going to marry him?"
+
+She jumped at the suddenness of the question, and then, recovering
+herself quickly, answered coldly:
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"Why of course not?"
+
+Her neck took on a quite new poise--not new to the man behind her,
+however.
+
+"I asked you, 'Why of course not'?" he repeated.
+
+"You know how foolish such a question is."
+
+"It isn't foolish. Yourself considered, it's the most natural question
+in the world."
+
+"You never met me before when I was walking with a stranger, and then
+asked me such a thing."
+
+"This man's different. Some one wrote home that you were going to marry
+him. You can imagine Uncle John! I was sent for from the beach and
+shipped by the first thing that sailed after my arrival."
+
+Rosina stopped on the first landing to stare in tranceful astonishment.
+
+"Some one wrote!" she ejaculated faintly. "Who wrote?"
+
+"Never you mind who wrote. Whoever it was set uncle thinking, and I was
+posted off to look him up."
+
+"When did you come over?"
+
+"Landed in Hamburg the last of August."
+
+"Where have you been ever since?"
+
+"Been looking him up."
+
+Rosina began to mount the second staircase; she appeared completely
+bewildered.
+
+"It's very nice of uncle," she said about the fourth step, "and of
+course I'm awfully obliged to whoever wrote home; but I'm not going to
+marry him, really."
+
+Jack whistled.
+
+"Well," he said cheerily, as they attained the second landing, "I know
+all about him now, anyway; and if you ever do want to go ahead, you can
+be sure that he's all right."
+
+"I knew that he was all right," she said quietly; "every one in Europe
+knows that he's all right."
+
+"He's a first-class boxer, anyhow," the cousin declared. "Lord, what a
+blow that was! And I did not mean to frighten you at all, either; I
+thought that you saw me coming."
+
+"How was I to know that it was you? I supposed that you were in New
+York. I did not think that there was a man on this continent who had a
+right to kiss me. And even if there was I shouldn't be expecting him to
+do so in public. You never kissed me in the street yourself before. What
+possessed you to do so this time?"
+
+She faced about on the stairs as she spoke, and he stopped and drew a
+deep breath or two. It takes time to become acclimated to the stairs
+abroad.
+
+"Don't be vexed at me," he implored, "or I shall think that you are not
+glad that I came; and you are, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes, of course I am."
+
+"And after supper to-night we'll go out and take a good old-fashioned
+tramp and talk a lot, won't we?"
+
+They were now before the door of the _pension_ and he was pressing the
+electric bell. She sighed a resigned sigh of utter submission, nodded
+acquiescently, and waited beside him.
+
+Anna, a maid whose countenance left much to be divined at pleasure,
+finally let them in. When she saw that the lady had changed her escort,
+her face fell and she slightly shook her head as if regretful that one
+who was so generous should own openly to the vice of fickleness. They
+went into the long hall and Jack paused to hang his hat upon one of the
+hooks in that angle by the door; then he overtook his cousin and they
+went together to the salon, the pretty little salon with its great
+window, tall white-tiled stove, piano, corner-ways divan, tabouret,
+table of magazines, quaint Dutch picture of Queen Wilhelmina, and the
+vase in the corner--that green vase from whose stem hangs the
+flower-like body of a delicate porcelain nymph.
+
+"You can't smoke here, you know," she cautioned him. "If you want to
+smoke you must go into the corridor."
+
+"I don't want to smoke," he said. "I'll look out of the window. I like
+to watch the people."
+
+So she left him there and sought Ottillie.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After supper that night they did go to walk; and if Rosina's cousin came
+abroad with a mission he certainly went in for fulfilling it
+vigorously.
+
+"Who wrote you about him, anyhow?" she demanded at last, when her
+patience was nearly exhausted by the mercilessness of his
+cross-examination. She was inwardly furious at whoever had done so, but
+it seemed wisdom to conceal her fury--for the present at least.
+
+"You can't travel about all summer with the same man everlastingly at
+your heels, without other people's seeing him as well as yourself."
+
+"But some one person must have written. It can't be that several people
+would bother to."
+
+"You won't ever know who wrote, so don't you fret."
+
+They were crossing the Max-Joseph Platz diagonally, and a light flashing
+from a passing trolley seemed to suddenly illuminate her brain.
+
+"I bet I do know," she cried.
+
+"I bet you don't."
+
+"It was a man; now wasn't it?"
+
+"Yes, it was a man; but I won't say a word more."
+
+She smiled, triumphant in her woman's intuition.
+
+"It was that man at Zurich," she exclaimed; "wasn't it?"
+
+He turned into the Residenzstrasse and made no reply.
+
+"It was, wasn't it?" she insisted.
+
+"I shan't tell."
+
+"You needn't tell. I know that it was and you know that it was too, so
+I'm satisfied."
+
+They went along past the two sentinels who guard the gate of the royal
+palace, and emerged on the large open space that spreads before the
+Feldherrnhalle. From there the Ludwigsstrasse stretches straight out and
+away to the Siegesthor, stretches in one magnificent splendor of breadth
+and boulevard and electric lights. They took the right-hand side and set
+off at a pace neither swift nor slow--just such a pace as will allow
+sufficient breath for ample conversation.
+
+"You know you'll marry again, Rosina, no matter what you may say; you
+know that, don't you?"
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Well, I'm sure that I won't for a long time."
+
+"Of course you can't until the two years are out, but they're out this
+October; and you know the more dead-set you are against doing anything
+the surer you are to do it. We all know that just by the light of the
+past."
+
+She elevated her eyebrows and made no reply.
+
+"You've got so much money that naturally we couldn't hear that any one
+was following you continually, without wanting to know what he was
+after. I should think you could see how that would strike Uncle John."
+
+"Monsieur von Ibn doesn't mean to marry any more than I do," she
+declared positively.
+
+"Doesn't he? How do you know?"
+
+"He told me so himself."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Ever so many times."
+
+He laughed and stopped to examine one of the posters of the
+"Elfscharfrichters,"--the one of the cadaverous lady all in black, with
+her hands outspread.
+
+"What interests you in him, anyhow?" he asked after a little.
+
+"Can't a woman enjoy being with a man without wanting to marry him? I
+like him because he's so original."
+
+"He's original all right," Jack reflected; "that's very, very true. He's
+the first man who ever thought of knocking me down for kissing you."
+
+"It was because I screamed. Why didn't you write that you were coming?"
+
+"I wanted to arrive unexpectedly and see for myself."
+
+"Well, did you see?"
+
+He chuckled.
+
+"Yes, and felt too. He doesn't intend that any one else shall kiss you."
+
+Rosina whirled, her eyes sparkling with anger.
+
+"I'll never forgive you if you say another thing like that," she cried
+hotly.
+
+The cousin judged it advisable to suggest diverging from the
+Ludwigsstrasse, and extending their promenade in the direction of the
+Wittelsbach Palace. Dark streets have a naturally subduing effect, and
+he knew what an upheaval his arrival had produced even better than she
+did.
+
+They went towards the Caserne, and were in the Ameliesstrasse before
+either began another subject. And even then it was really not a new one,
+because Jack, having a definite end in view, could not lose sight of it
+for a minute.
+
+"Why do you think that you don't want to get married again?" he said,
+courageously returning to the fight.
+
+"I don't think anything about it. I know that I don't want to get
+married again!"
+
+"Von Ibn seems to be a mighty nice sort of a fellow. I've met ever so
+many people who told me lots about him. He's got quite a property for
+these men over here, and he'll have two jolly places and a title, too.
+And the family won't kick over his marrying any one; they've been at him
+to get married for years and years. He's the only son, you know."
+
+"All right," she said dryly.
+
+"Have you anything personal against him?"
+
+"No; but I know that I can see all that I want of him without marrying
+him; and as long as we do not get married we have the delightful
+privilege of being able to separate the instant that we grow tired of
+one another. And the ability to stop when you've had enough is a great
+thing."
+
+"Has he bored you any yet?"
+
+"Not yet. Oh, Jack, you ought to hear him talk. He said yesterday that
+we must go somewhere early before the cool grew too hot."
+
+Jack regarded her sympathetically.
+
+"I'd certainly marry him," he said, with decision. "If he can say things
+like that offhand, only think what he'd be to live with day after day."
+
+Rosina was silent for a moment, and then she gave a violent shiver.
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed, in a voice that echoed like a low cry, "I don't
+believe that I ever _can_ marry again--it's so _terrible_!"
+
+Jack took her hand and drew it closely within his arm.
+
+"Don't say that," he said earnestly. "Every one knows that you didn't
+have a fair show first time. Your husband was--Well, you know what he
+was."
+
+"I should say that I did know what he was."
+
+"I always wondered if you just wanted to get your hands on a big
+establishment."
+
+"Oh, what makes you say such things? You know that I was desperately in
+love with him--as much so as a girl can be."
+
+"Do you feel anything like it again now?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No, indeed; I feel that I may get tired of monsieur any day."
+
+They turned down towards the Ludwigsstrasse and Rosina appeared to be
+thinking deeply. At last she spoke, and her accents were firm as
+granite.
+
+"I do not believe that I ever _could_ marry again."
+
+Jack shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"There's no string on you," he declared lightly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning, as the lady was stirring her whipped cream into her
+chocolate, Ottillie entered with a note:
+
+    "DEAR ROSINA,--Von Ibn and I are leaving for the Tagernsee by
+    the early train. Think we'll be gone four or five days.
+
+    "Always yours,
+        "JACK."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eleven
+
+
+It was three o'clock on the last day of September, and the last day of
+September had been a very rainy one. Little draggled sparrows quarrelled
+on the black asphalt of the Maximiliansstrasse because it was wet and
+they came in for their share of the consequent ill-humor; all the cabs
+and cabmen and cab-horses were waterproofed to the fullest possible
+extent; all the cocks' plumes in the forlorn green hats of the forlorn
+street-sweeping women hung dolefully and dejectedly down their backs.
+People coming to the Schauspielhaus lowered their umbrellas at the
+entrance and scooted in out of the drizzle; people coming out of the
+Schauspielhaus raised their umbrellas and slopped away through the
+universal damp and spatters.
+
+All of which but served to deepen the already deep melancholy and
+_ennui_ of Rosina, who leaned in her window across the way, staring upon
+the outer world with an infinite sense of its pitiful inadequacy to meet
+her present wishes, and a most profound regret that her cousin had ever
+crossed the ocean on her account.
+
+For they had not returned from the Tagernsee. On the contrary the
+expedition had stretched to other "sees," to the Herrn-Chiemsee, to
+Salzburg, and now she held in her hand a hastily pencilled scrawl,
+brought by the two o'clock post, which said:
+
+    "Ho for Vienna. Always did want to see Buda-Pesth.      J."
+
+And nothing more!
+
+"It's so like a man," she told herself without troubling to think just
+what she did mean by the words. "Oh, dear! oh, _dear_!" and she turned
+from the window and flung herself despairingly into one of the big red
+velvet chairs, preparing to read or to cry as the fancy might seize her.
+
+There came a light tap at the door and then it opened a very little.
+
+"Oh, pardon me," cried a sweet, sweet voice, "I think you are perhaps
+gone out!"
+
+Then the door opened and the speaker showed herself. It was the daughter
+of the house, an ideally blonde and bonny German girl. She came across
+the room and her face shaded slightly as she asked:
+
+"You have no bad news? no?"
+
+"No," said Rosina, forcing a smile; "I'm only very cross."
+
+"Cross? Why cross? You are but laughing at me. You are not really
+cross."
+
+Rosina was silent; her lip quivered slightly.
+
+"Oh," said Fraulein quickly. "I am come that I may ask you a favor! The
+parlor has a workman to make the window again; it is not good closed,
+and the French lady wishes to call on you. May she come here?"
+
+"Yes," Rosina said, "I shall be so very glad to have her come here, and
+Ottillie can bring us some tea after a while."
+
+She dried her eyes openly in preparation for the visit to be.
+
+"You are lonely to-day," said Fraulein sympathetically. "I am glad that
+your cousin did come."
+
+"Yes," said Rosina, "but he went away so soon again."
+
+Her eyes immediately refilled.
+
+"You love each other so very much in America," said the German girl
+gently; she stood still for a minute and then smiled suddenly. "I will
+tell madame to come here," she added, and left the room.
+
+Rosina went back to the window and her unseeing contemplation of the
+outdoors. Presently some one knocked and she turned, crying:
+
+"_Entrez!_"
+
+The door opened, and instead of the French lady whose husband was
+fleeing the revolution in Caraccas by bringing his family to Munich for
+the winter, a man entered.
+
+The man was tall and dark, with brown eyes and a black moustache, and
+his eyes were oddly full of light and laughter.
+
+She stood still staring for one short minute, and then suddenly
+something swallowed up all the space between them, and her hand was fast
+between his grasp, pressed hard against his lips, while the pleasure in
+her eyes rose and fell against the joy of his own.
+
+"_Vous me voyez revenu!_" he said.
+
+"Where is Jack?" she asked; both spoke almost at once, and Von Ibn was
+conscious of sharing a divine sense of relief with her as he replied:
+
+"He is gone alone to Vienna!"
+
+It was as if a heavy cloud had been lifted from her horizon. She sank
+down in one of the big easy-chairs and he dragged another close, very
+close to her side.
+
+"Not so near!" she exclaimed, a little frightened.
+
+He withdrew the chair two inches and fixed his eyes hungrily upon her
+face.
+
+"Has it been long to you?" he asked, his tone one of breathless
+feeling.
+
+And then she realized to the full how very long it had been, and
+confessed the fact in one great in-drawn sigh.
+
+"Why did you go so far?" she demanded.
+
+"It was one step beyond the another; I have no idea but of the Tagernsee
+when we leave."
+
+"You've been gone weeks!"
+
+He leaned forward and seized her hand again.
+
+"Was it so long?" he questioned softly.
+
+"You know that I only saw my cousin just that one evening!" she had the
+face to say complainingly.
+
+"Yes," he said sympathetically; "he is so nice, your cousin. I have
+learned to like him so very much; we have really great pleasure
+together. But," he added, "I did not come back to talk of him."
+
+"Why did you come back?" she asked, freeing herself and pushing her
+chair away.
+
+He smiled upon her.
+
+"You ask?" he said, in amusement; "shall I say that it was to see you?"
+
+"I hope that you did not return on my account."
+
+He paused, twisting his moustache; then started a little and said:
+
+"No, I am returned wholly for business."
+
+Rosina received the cold douche with a composure bred of experience, and
+after a liberal interval he went on.
+
+"But I wanted also to see you too."
+
+"Well, you are seeing me, are you not?"
+
+"Yes, but you do not smile as before your cousin is come. I want you to
+smile. Oh," he exclaimed, suddenly interrupting himself, "have you ride
+horseback since I left?"
+
+"Oh, yes, almost every day."
+
+His face clouded slightly.
+
+"Who have you ride with?"
+
+"With my friends who are here, and twice with the lieutenant."
+
+Then his face clouded very heavily.
+
+"Is he interesting?" he asked; "yes?"
+
+"It was the Englischergarten that was wonderful," she told him. "We rode
+very early in the morning and the dew was on the grass and we could hear
+the pheasants in the underbrush when the noise of the horses' feet
+frightened them further away."
+
+"And the lieutenant?" he asked.
+
+"And oh," she continued, "you know that place where the woods open so
+widely, and you can see so far across,--_eh bien_, we saw one morning
+the deer standing in the edge of the forest just there, one would have
+said fifty miles from civilization, not at all as if they were in the
+midst of Munich."
+
+"And the lieutenant?" he repeated.
+
+"And then another day the clouds of morning mist were so thick that we
+could see their outlines as they lay upon the earth, and ride into them
+and ride out of them,--a quite new experience for me."
+
+"But the lieutenant?" he exclaimed impatiently, "the lieutenant? what
+did he talk of? what did you speak together of?"
+
+Rosina laughed, nodding merrily over his impatience.
+
+"We talked of the pheasants," she said, "of the deer, of the fog. Are
+you satisfied?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, his frown lifted.
+
+"It is quite one to me," he said indifferently; "you know that I have
+said before that I am not of a _temperament jaloux_."
+
+Then he got up and walked about the room, taking a cigar from his pocket
+and holding it unlighted in his mouth.
+
+"May I smoke here?" he asked.
+
+"I don't care if you do."
+
+He returned suddenly to his chair, laid the cigar on the table, and took
+her hand again.
+
+"Your cousin is so nice," he told her, as if the recollection of Jack's
+charms had necessitated his at once expressing his feelings towards
+Jack's cousin.
+
+"When is he coming back?" she asked.
+
+"In one week."
+
+"When does he sail? Do you know?"
+
+"On the nineteenth day, from Genoa."
+
+She quite sprang from her seat.
+
+"Not really!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, so he tell me."
+
+He drew her back into her chair and she forgot the hand which he still
+held in her desperate feeling of the instant. She was helplessly choked
+with conflicting emotions. October instead of December! That came of
+having a cousin!
+
+The kingdom of the other chair advanced its border-line more than two
+inches, and she did not appear to notice the bold encroachment.
+
+"What does it matter?" she asked herself bitterly; "in a few days I'm
+going, and then I shall never lay eyes on him again," and the tears
+welled up thickly at the thought.
+
+"_Qu'est-ce que vous avez?_" he said anxiously; "you must not cry when I
+am returned, you know!"
+
+At that she sobbed outright.
+
+He looked at her with an intentness very foreign to his usual
+expression, and seemed to weigh two courses of action and deliberate as
+to their relative advisability; he ended by laying her hand down gently
+and going to the window, where he remained for several minutes, looking
+out and saying nothing.
+
+She dried her eyes quickly and quietly (only a foolish woman continues
+to weep after the man has gone), and waited for him to turn. Finally he
+did so.
+
+"It is not raining once more," he said; "let us go out and walk far.
+That will do you quite well; I cannot bear that you weep."
+
+He added the last words in a lower tone, and coming close behind her
+chair suddenly stooped.
+
+She realized all in a flash where he was, what he was meditating, the
+half-open door, and writhed quickly out of the chair and away.
+
+"Why not?" he asked, looking after her unsmilingly. "It will do you no
+hurt and me much good."
+
+"I'm out of the habit," she said shortly, recollecting Jack's words on
+that famous night of his arrival.
+
+They were both on their feet, she by the window and he by the chair
+which she had just left.
+
+"Was your husband very _tendre_?" he asked.
+
+She felt the corners of her mouth give way under the stressful shock of
+this question. "I might say, 'I never tried him to see,'" she thought,
+"but he _never_ would understand," and so there was an instant of
+silence.
+
+"Why do you smile?" he demanded, smiling himself.
+
+"Because we don't call men 'tender.' We call meat 'tender' and men
+'affectionate.'"
+
+"But I _am_ tender," he affirmed.
+
+"Are you? Well, you are younger than my husband and perhaps that
+accounts for it."
+
+He reflected, but did not appear to understand; finally he gave it up
+for a bad job and said, changing to a less abstruse subject:
+
+"We go to walk? yes?"
+
+"Certainly; if you will wait while I have some proper boots found for
+me."
+
+"Yes, I will wait."
+
+He came towards her.
+
+"Oh, you had better go into the corridor and wait," she exclaimed
+hastily. "I'll come in a moment."
+
+He stopped short and smiled his irresistible smile.
+
+"You are so madly queer. _Qu'est-ce que vous avez_? You scream always,
+and yet I have not done nothing."
+
+Then without another word he left the room.
+
+When she was alone Rosina rang for her maid. As Ottillie knelt at her
+feet, she frowned deeply, thinking how more than horrid it was that Jack
+should have come, that she should be obliged to go, and that women may
+not allow themselves to be kissed. Later she recollected that Jack was
+in Vienna, that there was the half of October yet to be lived, and that
+all disembodied kisses must of necessity have an incarnation yet to
+come. And then she smiled once more.
+
+Ottillie brought her wraps and adjusted her hat.
+
+"Will madame take supper here?" she asked.
+
+"_Je le pense, oui._"
+
+The maid muffled a sigh; she would have made Von Ibn a conquering hero
+indeed, if her heartfelt wishes could have given him the victory. And
+apropos of this subject, it would be interesting, very interesting, to
+know how many international marriages have been backed up by a French
+_femme-de-chambre_ burning with impatience to return to her own
+continent.
+
+Rosina went to the salon and found her hero looking at a "Jugend" with a
+bored expression. When he saw her he sprang to his feet and sought his
+hat and umbrella forthwith.
+
+Then they went down the three flights of stairs to the street, and found
+it wet indeed.
+
+"We cannot go on the Promenade," he said, after casting a comprehensive
+glance about and afar. "I think we will go by the Hofgarten and walk
+under the arcade there; there will it be dry, _n'est-ce pas_?"
+
+"Yes, surely it will be dry there," she acquiesced. "It is always dry
+under cover in Europe, because your rain is so quiet and well behaved;
+it never comes with a terrible gale, whirling and twisting, and
+drenching everything inside and outside, like our storms."
+
+"Why do your storms be so?"
+
+"We haven't found any way of teaching them better manners yet. They are
+like our flies; our flies are the noisiest, most intrusive, most
+impertinent creatures. You don't appreciate your timid, modest little
+flies."
+
+"I do not like flies."
+
+"Yes," she laughed, "that is the whole story. You 'do not like flies,'
+while we go crazy if there is one around, and have our houses screened
+from cellar to garret."
+
+"I do not find this subject very amusing," he said; "let us speak of
+another thing."
+
+Rosina glanced up at the prison-like facade which they were passing.
+
+"I find the architecture of the Hoftheater terribly monotonous," she
+said warmly. "Why do you not have a more diversified style of windows
+where so many must be in a straight row?"
+
+"Munich is not my city," he responded, shrugging his shoulder; "and if
+you will to find fault with the way those windows go, you must wait to
+meet the shade of Klenze in the after-world. He made it all in 1823."
+
+"When I get among the Bavarian shades," she said thoughtfully, "I want
+to meet King Louis more than any one else. I think that he is the most
+interesting figure in all the history of the country."
+
+"Perhaps he will be there as here, and not care to meet any one."
+
+"Oh, no," she said hopefully; "he was crazy here, but he will be sane
+there and--"
+
+"_Mon Dieu_, madame, have a care!" he cried in a low tone, glancing
+apprehensively about.
+
+"What is it?" she asked, alarmed.
+
+He lowered his voice to an almost inaudible pitch.
+
+"It is that we do not discuss our kings in public as you are habited to
+do. _Voyons donc_," he continued, "if I said, '_Oh, je trouve l'Empereur
+tres-bete!_' (as I well might say, for I find him often bete enough); if
+I say that, I might find a _sergeant-de-ville_ at my elbow, and myself
+in prison almost as the words were still in the air."
+
+Rosina looked thoroughly frightened.
+
+"And what would they do to you?" she asked, looking up at him with an
+expression which brought a strange answering look into his own eyes.
+
+"That would depend on how _bete_ I had found the emperor," he declared,
+laughing; "but, madame, do not be so troubled, because no one has heard
+this time."
+
+They were walking at a good pace, the puddles considered, and came now
+to the arched entrance into the Hofgarten, where a turning brought them
+beneath the arcades. The south side was crowded, thanks to the
+guide-book recommendation to examine the frescoes there on a day when it
+is too wet to "do" other sights about the city; but the west side, where
+the frescoes are of landscapes only, and sadly defaced at that, was
+quite deserted, and they made their way through the crowd to the
+grateful peace of the silence beyond. It was a pleasant place to walk,
+with the Hofgarten showing its fresh green picture between the frames of
+the arcaded arches. The facade of the Hof formed the background to
+all--a background of stone and marble, of serried ranks of windows
+marshalled to order by lofty portals and balconies.
+
+"Why are women always like that?" he asked, when they had paced in
+silence to the other end and turned to return.
+
+"Like what?"
+
+He threw a quick glance of exasperation at her.
+
+"When I say a question, it is always with another question that you
+reply!"
+
+"Well," she said, "we were talking of the emperor, and now you say 'why
+are women always like that?' and I ask 'like what?'"
+
+He looked more exasperated than before.
+
+"I have all finished with the emperor," he said, as if outraged by her
+want of comprehension as to his meaning. "Is it likely that I will wish
+to talk of the emperor when on the nineteenth you sail from Genoa?"
+
+She felt her eyes moistening afresh at this recurrence to her departure,
+and made no answer. He slashed along vigorously for two or three yards,
+cutting a wide swathe with his umbrella, and then his grievance appeared
+somewhat appeased, and he explained in a milder tone:
+
+"I ask you why are women like that,--like that, that they never will
+like to be kissed?"
+
+Rosina halted in astonishment.
+
+"What is it now?" he asked, turning because he missed her. "Have I not
+yet made myself plain?"
+
+"The idea--after all this while--of your going back to that subject!"
+
+"I have not go back to it," he said coolly; "I have thought of no other
+thing while you were booting yourself or now. Why do women say 'No'? Why
+do you say 'No'?"
+
+"Let me see," she said thoughtfully. "I think it is like this: if I
+allowed you to, you would naturally feel that hereafter you could,
+whereas I very much prefer that you should know that you can't."
+
+He looked in a despair so complete as to be almost ludicrous.
+
+"Oh, say slower," he pleaded, earnestly. "It is so very important to
+well understand."
+
+She laughed at his serious face. For the moment Jack and Genoa were both
+forgotten, and nothing but the pleasure of good company and an
+atmosphere breathing the perfume that follows rain where there are
+flowers, were left to joy her.
+
+"It isn't worth repeating slower," she said, with a smile. "It was a
+positive negative which even if developed in a dark room would make a
+proof that I did not want to be kissed."
+
+They went the entire length of the arcade while he endeavored to work
+out the solution of her second riddle, and then he shrugged his
+shoulders, remarking:
+
+"I have never interest myself in a kodak any," and appeared to regard
+the subject as finished.
+
+They came back up the arcade, and, the sidewalks being now fairly dry,
+went out under the stairway at the corner, into the Galleriestrasse.
+
+"Do you like this country?" he asked presently.
+
+"Bavaria? Immensely."
+
+"I mean, do you like the Continent--Europe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What do think about it?"
+
+"I think Europa showed great good taste in getting down from the bull
+just where she did."
+
+"Then you like this land?"
+
+"I love it! It hurts me whenever I hear my countrymen malign it."
+
+They were in the Ludwigsstrasse, and the scene was like a holiday in
+America. Every one was out after the rain and all faces reflected that
+exuberant gayety which seems to be born about five o'clock in each
+continental city. People in carriages, people in cabs, people on
+horseback, people on bicycles, people walking, people leading dogs,
+people wheeling babies, people following children, all one laughing,
+bowing, chattering procession, coming and going ceaselessly between the
+Feldherrnhalle and the Siegesthor, with the blue Bavarian sky blessing
+all the pleasure, and the tame doves of Munich under the feet of each
+and every one.
+
+Von Ibn stopped to watch the brilliant scene; Rosina stood beside him.
+
+"What ill can one say of us?" he asked, after a while. "How can a place
+be better than this?"
+
+"_I_ never said that any place could be better than this," she
+asseverated; "but I am uncommon in my opinions. The average American is
+born in a land overflowing with steam-heat, ice-water, and bath-tubs,
+and he suffers when he has to lose the hyphens and use the nouns
+separately."
+
+Von Ibn frowned.
+
+"You amuse yourself much with queer words to-day," he said
+discontentedly. "I wish I have stayed with Jack. I was much pleasured
+with him."
+
+"But you said that you had to return because of some business," she
+reminded him.
+
+He raised his eyebrows, and they went on again. After a little she
+turned her eyes up to his and smiled.
+
+"Don't say that you wish you were with Jack. I am so glad that you are
+here."
+
+He returned the smile.
+
+"I have no wish to be with your cousin," he said amicably; "I find you
+much more agreeable."
+
+Then a little dog that a lady was leading by a long chain ran three
+times around his legs and half choked itself to death, and the lady
+screamed, and it was several minutes before all was calm again.
+
+"I find it _bete_ to have a dog like that," he said, looking disgustedly
+over his shoulder at the heroine of the episode, as she placidly
+continued on her way. "It was _grand merci_ that I am not fallen, then.
+What was about my feet I could not fancy, and also,"--he began to
+laugh,--"and also it was droll, for I might not kick the dog."
+
+Rosina laughed too.
+
+"But in America," he went on, suddenly recurring to their earlier topic,
+"have you no art?"
+
+"Oh, yes; but nothing to compare with our sanitary arrangements. Our
+president's bath-tub is cut out of one solid block of marble," she added
+proudly.
+
+"That is not so wonderful."
+
+"Isn't it? The head-lines in the papers led me to think that it was. But
+I'll tell you what I think is a disgrace to America," she went on with
+energy, "and that is that the American artists who come to study abroad
+must pay duty on their own pictures when they take them back."
+
+"Is that really so?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, that is really so. And it is very unjust, for the musician and
+surgeon and scientist can bring all the results of their study in duty
+free."
+
+"They have them within their heads."
+
+"Yes; but they have them just the same."
+
+"Everything costs a great deal with you, _n'est-ce pas_?"
+
+"I should say it did. No one ought to blame us for telling what things
+cost, because everything costs so much. A carriage is six to ten _marks_
+an hour."
+
+"_C'est assez cher!_" he said, laughing.
+
+"_C'est un peu trop!_" she rejoined warmly. "But the well-to-do
+certainly do revel in griddle-cakes and hot-water faucets, and when I
+meet an American man in Europe I am forced to believe that they are the
+only really worthy ambitions to be striven for."
+
+"I could not live there, I think," he exclaimed.
+
+"I'm afraid not," said she sadly. "You don't play golf or drink, and men
+of leisure have almost no other careers open to them with us."
+
+"I have my music."
+
+"But you could never enjoy that there," she cried, shivering
+involuntarily. "Every one talks during music, and some cough, and
+gentlemen clear their throats--"
+
+"And does no one hiss them?" he interrupted, wide-eyed.
+
+"Hiss them? Never! The idea!"
+
+He stopped and lit a cigarette.
+
+"But one can travel?" he suggested.
+
+"Yes, surely there is plenty of room for that," she said dryly; "but you
+don't see many ruined castles or historic battlefields _en route_. And
+the dust, _oh, la, la_! And the steam coils under your seat--and the
+air--and the ventilation--and the nights--and the days."
+
+"You would better stay here," he remarked.
+
+"Oh, _I_ think so," she responded frankly; "it's so jolly getting your
+gloves cleaned for two cents a pair; but if we don't change the subject
+I shall cry."
+
+He looked at her quickly.
+
+"That is the University there," he told her, pointing to their left;
+"shall we go there?"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To look upon it."
+
+"Why, I've seen it dozens of times."
+
+He took his cigarette out of his mouth, examined it carefully, and
+replaced it between his lips.
+
+"But one washes here," he said presently.
+
+"One--washes--" she stammered blankly; and then it flashed across her
+that it was the bath-tub that was rankling in his soul, and she gasped,
+adjusted herself, and answered:
+
+"Of course one washes here. But in America it is all made so
+convenient, and is regarded as less of an event."
+
+"It is no event to me to wash," he said indignantly; "I find no
+excitement in washing."
+
+"I never said you did; I was comparing quite another class of society
+with their equals in the other country."
+
+"But to shave," he went on, "that I find terrible."
+
+"It's no worse than having a _coiffure_ to make."
+
+"But I have no _coiffure_ to make."
+
+"No; but I have."
+
+He threw his cigarette into the street.
+
+"It is not so bad as shaving."
+
+"It takes longer."
+
+"Yes; but shaving you may cut yourself."
+
+Rosina laughed; he heard her and turned suspiciously.
+
+"Why do you laugh?"
+
+"Because."
+
+"What amuses you?"
+
+"You do."
+
+He smiled and they walked one or two blocks in silence. They were now in
+the suburb of Schwabing, far out by the western end of the
+Englischergarten. The street was very uninteresting and comparatively
+deserted.
+
+"Do you see my cravat?" he asked.
+
+She was wondering if they had not better be returning towards home.
+
+"I know that you have one on," she said; "I can't say that I notice
+anything especial about it."
+
+"I will show you something very curious about it."
+
+"You're not going to take it off, are you?"
+
+"I will show you how I tie it."
+
+"I know how to tie that kind myself."
+
+"Not as I tie it."
+
+Then he deliberately handed her his umbrella and untied his cravat, and
+proceeded to turn one end up and fold the other across and poke a loop
+through and draw an end under, and thus manipulate the whole into a
+reproduction of the same tiny bowknot as before. She held the umbrella
+and contemplated the performance with an interest which was most
+flattering to his labor.
+
+"I don't see how you ever do it," she exclaimed when the job was
+complete and he took the umbrella again.
+
+"I will teach you some day," he said readily. "I have myself invented
+four cravats," he added with pride.
+
+"Will you teach me all the four?"
+
+"Yes; I have thought, if I shall ever be poor, to go to Paris and have a
+cab and drive about from house to house each morning and tie cravats
+_pour les messieurs_. You can see how many would pay for that."
+
+"Yes; but when you arrived and they were not ready,--were still in bed,
+you know,--what would you do then?"
+
+He reflected, and then shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I would put on the collar, tie the cravat, and leave monsieur to sleep
+again."
+
+Rosina's marital past presented her mind with a lively picture of one of
+the cravat-tier's clients struggling to bring his shirt into proper
+connection with the _chef d'oeuvre_, when he should arise to attire
+himself for the day. She laughed outright. Then she grew sober and said:
+
+"We ought to go back; it must be after five."
+
+He took out his watch.
+
+"No, it is not."
+
+"Yes, it is; it was after four when we left the _pension_. I know it's
+after five now."
+
+"It is not after five," he declared calmly; "it is not after five
+because it is after six."
+
+She laughed again; he looked at her, smiling brightly himself.
+
+"It is good together, _n'est-ce pas_?" he said, putting his hand upon
+her arm as they turned back upon their steps. There was in his eyes the
+happy look that dispelled every trace of the usual shadow on his face.
+"We are again those same children," he went on, "children that the same
+toy amuses both. What pleasures you always makes joy for me also."
+
+Something came up in her throat as she listened. It might have been a
+choke, but she was so positive that it was only Genoa that she swallowed
+it at once and looked in the opposite direction. He had kept his hand
+upon her arm, and now he bent his head a little and said, his voice
+lowering:
+
+"I think--"
+
+The dusk was gathering heavily. The Siegesthor loomed blackly great
+against the lights of the city beyond. It was no longer quiet about
+them, but the hum and buzz of all the bees swarming home was in the air,
+on the pavement, along the trolley wires.
+
+"I think,"--he said, his fingers closing about her arm,--"I think that
+we might be always very happy together."
+
+She looked up quickly, and then down yet more quickly.
+
+"Why do you speak that way when you know that I am going so soon?"
+
+"Let us turn here," he said eagerly; "by here it will be quiet. Do walk
+so," he added pleadingly, as she hesitated, "we have not long to be
+together. _Il faut me gater un peu._ There is but a week left for us."
+
+She started.
+
+"A week! If we sail the nineteenth we need not leave here until the
+fourteenth surely."
+
+"But your cousin will leave on the eighth."
+
+She looked up at him, and by the light of a street lamp which they were
+just passing, he saw the great tears starting in her eyes, tears of
+helplessness, the tears of a woman who feels and cannot speak. It was a
+very quiet little street, that into which they had turned, with lines of
+monotonous gray houses on either side, and certainly no better place for
+tears was ever invented. Rosina's appeared to know a good thing when
+they saw it, and rolled heavily downward, thus proving in their passage
+the sincerity of both her nature and her color. Her companion drew her
+hand within his own, pressing her fingers hard and fast. He did not say
+one word, and finally she wiped her eyes, smiled through the mist that
+hung upon her lashes, and said with simple directness:
+
+"I don't want to go."
+
+"I know."
+
+"But they want me to, and I must."
+
+There was another long silence, and then he said:
+
+"You would not stay for me?"
+
+His voice was wonderfully soft and persuasive, and for a single instant
+she admitted the possibility into her mental future; but the instant
+after it found itself driven violently forth again.
+
+"No, no," she cried, forcibly, "I will not--I cannot. I _never_ want
+another husband."
+
+He hesitated one step in his gait and then went on as before.
+
+"I do not say that all would be as you wished," he said slowly, with
+pauses between, "or that I would live only to joy your life. That would
+be very untrue. To be with you this week I put aside as it would not be
+right for me to put aside again. These days I have throw away because I
+will not say all in my after life that I did not try." He stopped and
+his voice changed strangely. "I must try with all my strength," he
+continued, drawing each breath as if in great pain; "I must, because to
+me with my work it is what does not trouble, what gives me sympathy,
+that is the most large of all. I have never marry because I know that so
+well. How could I ever do my work if a single discord is there to
+fret--fret--fret? As well ask me to play in concert on an untuned
+instrument. To my ear the untune is agony; to my music, a discord in my
+day is death to what would have been written that day. It is so that I
+have come to expect to never marry. My music must be first, and how can
+I risk--" he stopped his speech and his steps. She tried to move on but
+he held her still. "But," he said, very low but with an accent the
+intensity of which cut into her very heart, "but now I know that better
+work would be if you were there; I should have greater force; I
+should--I--if you loved--"
+
+He trailed his speech helplessly, faltered, and was silent. The night
+had come heavily down and they learned the fact by the discovery that
+they could no longer look into the eyes of one another. The quiet little
+street had led them down to the borders of the Englischergarten, and its
+forest rose up before them. He led her straight towards it.
+
+"It will be wet," he said, in reply to the resistance in her arm; "but
+we must be alone until I have finished all that I will to say. The trees
+about us are best; we do not want cabs and streets just now."
+
+She felt blindly, miserably wretched.
+
+"I don't want to be married again," she declared in a voice that was
+thick with more tears; and then she gathered her skirt well into her
+hand and they plunged together into the darkness beyond.
+
+The park was dusk with night's downfall and heavily misted by the day's
+rain. Its paths, usually like hard gray cement, were a slippery mosaic
+of clay and brown leaves, and on either hand arose a stockade-like
+effect of tree-trunks knowing no light beyond. Wind there was none to
+rustle the leaves, nor sound of bird or beast. An utter and complete
+silence echoed the footfalls of these two who had come into the
+solitude, to the end that they might search there for a solution of
+themselves.
+
+At the first forking of their way, Rosina said timidly:
+
+"We must not go too far; it is so lonely, I am afraid."
+
+Von Ibn stopped short, drew one of her arms behind his back, caught her
+firmly to his bosom, and approached his face so close to hers that his
+breath came and went against her lips.
+
+"Are you frightened?" he asked.
+
+"No," she said, wrapt in a sort of awe at the wonder of her own
+sensations, "I have the utmost faith in you."
+
+He loosed her instantly, and walked a little way off for a moment.
+
+"I felt that you wished not," he said, bitterly, "and so I held myself
+back. _Mon Dieu_, how good I am to you,--how cruel to myself,--and no
+thanks."
+
+Her heart was wrung.
+
+"Oh, let us go back and go home," she cried; "all this is of no use. It
+makes me glad to go away, because I see now that for me to go will be
+better for you."
+
+"And for you?" he asked, returning to her side.
+
+"I said 'for you,'" she answered gently.
+
+"Then not at all for you too?"--he laid his hand insistently upon her
+arm,--"not at all for you too?" he repeated.
+
+She was silent.
+
+"It was there in Lucerne," he went on presently; "I knew it at
+first--the first time I see you; and when I found that it was you
+who had sent for me--I--I dared to hope that you too felt something,
+even then, even so at the very first. Have you never known that
+feeling?"--he exclaimed, his breath rising passionately, "has such
+storm never swept within you?--and you have no other life for a while
+but its longing,--no sleep but the stupid fatigue when one cannot
+think more? What has my existence been since that day on the Quai by
+the Vierwaldstattersee?--_Je ne peux rien faire!_--To the world I am
+dead.--There is perhaps no future for me because I have learned to
+love and have not learned to be loved."
+
+His voice broke utterly; he loosed her arm, walked apart once more, and
+was once more silent.
+
+Then her agitation suddenly found voice and to her own intense horror
+she heard herself laughing--laughing a loud hysterical laughter, that
+resounded hideously and was beyond her own control.
+
+"You are amused," he exclaimed, and his mood took on a justifiable tone
+of outraged anger; "you laugh. You have made me like this and now you
+laugh. If you were suffering and I had made you so, I should be ashamed
+and sorry; but a woman laughs. You are as that other," he continued,
+impetuously, "and it will be the same some time after. When she had made
+me wild, then she laughed. When I heard her laugh, I grew quite cold, I
+cared no more, never more. Then, when I cared no more, she learned to
+care, she grew to love, she wrote me many letters, she became most
+miserable; but for me nothing mattered. Because I could not care more."
+
+Her laughter continued spasmodically in spite of her struggles to check
+it. But between the paroxysms she gasped:
+
+"I never tried--to make you love me. I never wanted you to come where I
+did--"
+
+"But now that I am all yours," he interrupted, "now that nothing is
+left for me, but you--" He paused. "What will I do now?" he added,
+asking the question with a simplicity at once boyish and heartrending.
+
+She was silent; her laughter had ceased. He came close to her and took
+her hand again within his own. And then in the darkness beside him he
+suddenly heard the bursting misery of her sobs.
+
+"You weep," he cried.
+
+"No," she whispered faintly, "no."
+
+"You weep," he repeated slowly, and gathered her warmly and closely
+within his arms.
+
+"What is it necessary that we suffer?" he asked her softly. "Let us
+cease struggling, let us be only happy," and then he bent his head so
+that his cheek touched hers, and waited for the words of her answer.
+"Your heart is very near mine," he whispered to her silence, "let it
+stay near mine, let it rest mine." Still she was silent. "_N'est-ce
+pas?_" he asked, pressing her closer yet.
+
+To her, at that instant, the darkness was flashing with strange lights,
+the silence was roaring in thunder, the trees charging and whirling in
+giant combat. Her head was suddenly light and then suddenly heavy; her
+breath strangled her and then failed altogether. She swayed from side to
+side, her head fell backward, and Von Ibn had it borne upon him, that
+instead of being in love she had fainted.
+
+"_Qu'est-ce que vous avez?_" he cried, as he felt her reeling, and then
+he knew; and knowing, recognized the fact that he was alone in the
+depths of the rain-soaked forest, with a helpless woman on his hands,
+and that the situation was infinitely more novel than amusing.
+
+He was obliged to let his umbrella fall in order that he might raise her
+in his arms; and when she was so raised he felt a poignant wonder as to
+what to do with her next. He had no idea which direction to take, for
+the night was now night in good earnest, and the Englischergarten is so
+large that one may walk for two hours and a half without passing its
+limits. He felt uncertain as to just where they had entered it, the
+common ingress not being from Schwabing, and also uncertain as to just
+how far towards the centre they had penetrated. A pale, young moon
+peeped up above the tree-tops; he looked at the moon and then at Rosina,
+and they both appeared unnecessarily weak and inadequate to the urgent
+necessities of the moment.
+
+"She should be laid on her back and have water thrown upon her face," he
+murmured to himself in French, and then he felt his boots sinking deeply
+into the mud, and recognized the impracticability of that means of
+resuscitation at this particular moment.
+
+"Why did I ever pray that I might hold her in my arms?" he thought in
+German. "_Mein Gott_, what shall I do?"
+
+Failing all other remedies, he shook her hard, and her eyes flew open on
+some wax-doll-like principle. She gave him a look of complete
+unrecognition, and closed them with a sigh.
+
+"You must not faint once more," he cried, anxiously; "you cannot, you
+know."
+
+Something like physical despair swept over him as he felt her tremble
+and sway again.
+
+"What can I do?" he cried, shaking her very hard indeed, "we are far
+from all. I cannot leave you to get a carriage, I cannot take you--"
+
+"I don't care what you do," she murmured, with the usual complete
+resignation of the swooning, always so exasperating to those who care
+for them. He felt desperately that she was telling the truth.
+
+There was a sound in the wilderness beyond, a sound that thrilled him
+with hope and fear at the same instant. The developments of a sound may
+under some circumstances prove one's salvation or destruction. He
+riveted his eyes anxiously in the direction from whence the echo of a
+horse's feet splashing through the mud was now drawing nearer each
+second.
+
+"If it prove the Prinz Regent himself," he said decidedly, "he must take
+us in."
+
+It proved to be, not a royal coach, but a mere ordinary cab, than which
+nothing more welcome had ever crossed his vision in all his life before.
+He hailed the cabman, and the cabman stopped in the greatest possible
+astonishment, and was good enough to descend in the mud and open the
+door. He asked no questions--cabmen never do--but took the address,
+mounted to his seat, and put his horse to a rounder trot in the
+direction of the city.
+
+Rosina leaned back in her corner and shook as if she had the ague. Her
+hands and feet were icy cold; Von Ibn took her hands in his and feared
+that she was ill, or going to be so.
+
+"What did make you like that?" he asked, as the wheels dashed the
+mud-spatters up against the windows; "was it that I distress you, yes?"
+
+"Yes," she sighed.
+
+Then he kissed her hands.
+
+"Forgive me," he said, contritely, "I have not meant it so. There in the
+trees, when you were unconscious, I did not kiss you, I did not touch
+even your hair,--not thirty men in all Germany had been so good as that.
+You see what I try to be for you."
+
+He was leaning over her, the blood seemed to be boiling up into her
+ears. She put up her hand:
+
+"If you speak so," she said, "I shall faint again; I get dizzy when you
+talk to me in that way."
+
+"But if I kiss you only once," he whispered.
+
+"No--no--no," she reiterated, and raised her hand and pushed his lips
+away with it.
+
+"_En effet vous n'etes pas du tout gentille_," he cried, in violent
+anger, for his moods knew no shading in their transposition from one to
+another; "you are cold and without heart. How long do you think that I
+stood there in the wet and hold you back from the mud, and now you will
+do nothing for me; and you were quite heavy too, and--oh, _mon Dieu_!"
+he exclaimed sharply, interrupting himself, "my umbrella!"
+
+"Have you lost it?"
+
+"Have I lost it? Naturally I have let it fall to upraise you, and now I
+have leave it there."
+
+"I will give you another," she said pacifically.
+
+"Another," he commented scornfully; "do you think that I have no other?"
+Then his weathercock cast of mind whirled again: "I do not want an
+umbrella," he said more forcefully, "I want a kiss."
+
+"I thought that you were distressed over losing it."
+
+"Not at all; I have already very many others. But a kiss from you I have
+never yet."
+
+He seized her hand again, and tearing off the glove with a haste that
+demolished two buttonholes, pressed the bare cold fingers to his lips
+and eyes and forehead.
+
+"Oh, I do love you!" he cried in a fresh storm of feeling. "You _must_
+love me, because my much _must_ make of you a little."
+
+Then he kissed her hand many times more, stopping his rapid caresses to
+gaze upon her with that curious, burning glow firing the sombreness of
+his eyes the while he held her wrist against the fever of his face.
+
+"If I obeyed myself," he said hoarsely, "how I would hold you and kiss
+you. _Je vous embrasserais tellement!_"
+
+She wondered why she was not distressed and alarmed. Instead the awe at
+her own emotion that had come upon her spirit in the wood was with her
+again. Something like strength seemed rising within her, and what it
+rose against was--strangely enough--not him, but herself. She was
+conscious of a sympathy for him in place of any fear for herself.
+
+She looked from the window and saw that they were now rolling rapidly
+through the brightly lighted streets, and a glimpse of the Hof told her
+that the end was but five minutes further on.
+
+"You answer not," he said, insistently; "you must say me some word."
+
+"Oh, what can I say?" she cried helplessly.
+
+"Say that you love me."
+
+"But I do not."
+
+Then he loosed her hand and ground his teeth.
+
+"Decidedly you are queer," he said bitterly; "it is there in your eyes
+and you will to deny it. You are senseless,--_vous n'avez pas de coeur!_
+I am always a fool to go on as I go."
+
+She turned her eyes upon him.
+
+"_Je ne suis pas pour vous_," she said gently and very, very sadly;
+"_mais je ne suis pour personne non plus_," she added, and there was a
+tone in her voice that he had never heard before. His temper faded
+instantly.
+
+"You think of me with kindness, always,--_n'est-ce pas_?" he said,
+returning her look.
+
+Their eyes rested steadily upon each other for a little space. Then he
+exclaimed:
+
+"You do love me," and started to seize her in his arms forgetful of
+lights, streets, passers-by, and all other good reasons for
+self-restraint.
+
+But just then the cab stopped before the door of No. 6, the cabman
+descended.
+
+There was no further question as to _les convenances_.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twelve
+
+
+    "BUDA-PESTH.
+
+    "DEAR ROSINA,--If you're laid up I might just as well take a
+    week more in this direction. Plenty to see, I find, and lots of
+    jolly company lying around loose. I'll get back about the
+    twelfth and we'll plan to skip then as fast as we can. Keep on
+    writing Poste Restante, Buda, and I'll have them forward. Don't
+    try to fool me any by being too sick to sail. I've got to go the
+    nineteenth and you must too.
+
+    "Lovingly,
+        "JACK."
+
+She sat in the little salon the night of October fifth and read the
+above affectionate epistle which the postman had brought to keep her
+company, because every one else in the house was gone to the famous
+concert of the famous pianist.
+
+She could not go; that little episode in the Englischergarten and all
+the attendant agitation had put her in bed for three days and rendered
+her quite unable to go out for two or three more. She had been obliged
+to write Jack that she was ill, with the above results, and she read his
+answer with the sensation that life was long, the future empty, and
+none of its vistas worth contemplating. Her heart ached dully--it was
+forever aching dully these days, and she--
+
+There was a tap at the door. Europe has no open-door policy, be it
+known; all doors are always shut. Even those of _pension_ salons.
+
+She looked up, and saw him coming in, his violin case in his hand. Then
+life and its vistas underwent a great transformation, because he smiled
+upon her and, putting the case down carefully, came eagerly to kiss her
+hand.
+
+"_Vous allez bien ce soir?_" he asked pleasantly, standing before her
+chair and looking down into her face.
+
+"Oh, I am almost well, thank you; but why are you not gone to the
+concert?"
+
+He pointed to his violin with a smile.
+
+"It is a concert that I bring to you who may not go out," he said.
+
+"But you are making a tremendous sacrifice for me, monsieur."
+
+He stood before her, twisting his moustache.
+
+"It is that I am regretful for the other night," he said briefly, "for
+that I am glad to give the concert up and make you some pleasure. The
+other night--"
+
+"Don't," she pleaded uncomfortably; "never mind all that. Let it all
+go."
+
+"But I would ask your pardon. _J'etais tout-a-fait fou!_"
+
+"If I have anything to forgive it shall be forgiven you when you play.
+Do so now, please. Oh, you have no idea how impatient I am to hear you."
+
+He stared through her and beyond her for several seconds, and then came
+back to himself with a start.
+
+"Then I do play," he exclaimed, and went to where he had placed the case
+of rosewood, and lifting it from the small table, set it on the floor
+and knelt before it, as a priest at some holy shrine. She leaned her
+head against the chair back and watched him, her eyes searching each
+detail of his appearance without her spirit being cognizant of the
+hunger which led to the seeking, of the soul-cry which strove to fortify
+itself against the inevitable that each hour was bringing nearer.
+
+He felt in his pocket for his key-ring, chose from the many one
+particular key, inserted it, turned it, left it sticking in the hole,
+and then, with a curious breathless tightening of the lips, he raised
+the lid, put aside the knit wool shield of white and violet, and with
+the tender care which a mother bestows upon a very tiny baby lifted the
+violin from its resting-place. As he did so his eye travelled with a
+sudden keen anxiety over its every detail, as if the possibility of harm
+was ever present, and as he held it to his ear and snapped the strings
+one after another, she beheld with something akin to awe the dawning of
+another nature upon his face, of another light within his eyes, the
+strange light of that abnormal, unworldly gift which God gave man and
+which we have elected to call by the name of genius. As he rested there
+before her, tightening one cord, trying another, listening to a third,
+she realized--with a sorrowful sense of her own remoteness at the
+minute--that this man was some one who, in spite of all their hours of
+intercourse, she had never met before.
+
+He loosened the bow from its buttons and rose slowly to his feet. His
+eyes sought hers, and he said dreamily:
+
+"What shall I play?" even while his fingers were forming dumb notes, and
+the uplifted bow quivered in the air as if impatient.
+
+"Oh," she said, acutely conscious of her inferiority,--of the ten
+thousand leagues of difference between his grandeur and her
+commonplace,--"play what you will."
+
+He hardly seemed to hear, his eyes roved over the little salon as if its
+walls were gone, and he beheld a horizon illimitless. He just slightly
+knit his brows and then he bowed his head above the instrument and said
+briefly:
+
+"Listen!"
+
+And she listened.
+
+And the unvoiceable wonder of his magic!
+
+It was an intangible echo of the Tonhalle at Zurich, with the music that
+they had heard there sounding as the waves lapped up against the
+embankment and the crowd laughed and chatted after; those strains to
+which she had then been deaf on account of her agitation came back now,
+and the thrill of her pain was there still, rising and falling amidst
+the music and the water breaking up against the stones. While she waited
+on the verge of tears, the whole shifted to Constance, and through the
+slow sweep of the steamers coming into the harbor sounded the "Souvenir"
+of Vieuxtemps, drifting across the rose-laden air and carrying her back
+to the minutes when--Ah, when! She put her hand before her eyes and it
+was not the cords of his violin, but the sinews of her soul which
+responded to his bow. That which man may not voice he played, and that
+which our ears may not hear she absorbed into the depths of her being.
+Something within them each burst bonds and met at last, but neither knew
+it then, and the wonder carried her out upon the bosom of the Bodensee,
+showed her the charm of its gracious peace, and then drifted as the
+breezes drift, to the concert in the open air that is given each day by
+the Feldherrnhalle, a concert that knows no discord, because the murmur
+of life, the calls of the birds, the splashing of the fountains, and the
+light-hearted joy of the crowd around, all meet and mingle in its
+chorus. He echoed them all with the sublimity of the power which he
+controlled, and all--bird-calls, fountain-drip, desultory laughter, and
+careless joy, all flowed from him, and took from him as they flowed that
+subtle and precious subconsciousness which lines our every cloud with
+the infinite hope that is better than all else in this world.
+
+She leaned forward breathlessly, her fingers interlaced around her
+knees; her eyes had grown as dark as his own, her heart stood still, and
+between its throbs she asked herself if _this_ was the secret of their
+sympathy,--if _this_ was the basis of his mastery.
+
+Then there was silence in the room and he stood motionless, his eyes on
+the floor, the violin still resting against his shoulder in its rightful
+position, above his heart, quite touching his head.
+
+She did not speak and he did not speak,--neither knew for how long that
+period of silence endured. But after a while he lowered the instrument
+and looked at her.
+
+"You like, yes?" he said with a faint smile.
+
+"Can you ask?"
+
+He laid his hand upon a vase that sat upon the table and shook his head.
+
+"All this is not good, you know," he said, as if communing with himself
+alone; "here is no room for the music to spread. All these," he pointed
+to another ornament, "are so very, very bad. But some day, perhaps," he
+added, with another smile, "you will hear me in a good place."
+
+Then he raised the violin to position once more.
+
+"Choose what you will have," he told her.
+
+"Oh, forget that I am here," she pleaded, speaking with a startled
+hushedness, as if no claim of conventional politeness might dare intrude
+itself upon that bewildering hour, "do not remember that I am
+here,--play as you would if you were quite alone."
+
+"That is very well," he said, with a recurrence to his unseeing stare
+and dreamy tone, "because for me you really are not here. Nothing is
+here;--the violin is not here;--I am myself not here;--only the music
+exists. And if I talk," he added slowly, "the inspiration may leave
+me."
+
+He went beside the piano and turned his back towards her, and then his
+prayer made itself real and his love found words....
+
+She wept, and when he ceased to play he remained standing in silence as
+the very reverent rest for a short interval after the termination of
+holy service....
+
+After a while he moved to where the case lay open on the floor and knelt
+again, laying his instrument carefully in its place and covering it with
+its little knit wool quilt. Then he locked the lid down, replaced the
+keys in his pocket, and, rising, seemed to return to earth.
+
+"Can you understand now," he asked, taking a chair by her side,--"can
+you understand now how it would be for me if I lost my power to create
+music?"
+
+"Yes," she said, very humbly.
+
+"I think that nothing so bad could arrive," he went on, pulling his
+moustache and looking at her as he spoke, "because I am very much more
+strong than anything that may arrive at me, and the music is still much
+more strong than I. But if that _could_ arrive, that a trouble might
+kill my power, you can know how bad it would be for me."
+
+She sat there, gazing always at her new conception of him. The tears
+which she had shed during his music filled her face with a sort of
+tender charm. It did not occur to her that any words of hers could be
+other than a desecration of those minutes.
+
+"I am going now," he said presently, rising. "I have done no work since
+in June, but I feel it within me to write what I have played to-night."
+He went over and took up the violin case and then he laid it down again
+and came back to her side.
+
+"I shall kiss you," he said, not in any tone of either doubt or
+entreaty, rather with an imperativeness that was final. "In the music
+that I go to write to-night I want to put your eyes and also your kiss."
+
+He put his arms about her and raised her to his bosom.
+
+"_Regardez-moi!_" he commanded, and she lifted her eyes into his.
+
+Their lips met, and the kiss endured.
+
+Then he replaced her gently upon the sofa, took up the violin and went
+out.
+
+Later that night she reproached herself bitterly.
+
+"I ought to have a chaperone," she told her pillow in strict confidence.
+
+But the kiss had a place now in her life, and the place, like the kiss
+itself, endured.
+
+Von Ibn, in his room at the hotel, paused over his manuscript score,
+laid down his pen and closed his eyes.
+
+"_Elle sera a moi!_" he murmured, and smiled.
+
+For him also the kiss was enduring.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirteen
+
+
+Jack was expected on the morrow, and on the day after the start for
+Genoa was to be made.
+
+Under these cheerful circumstances Von Ibn came to call at the pension,
+and Amelia tapped at Rosina's door to announce to the "_gnadige Frau_"
+that "_der Herr von Ibn ist im Salon_."
+
+Rosina was dressed for dinner and when her visitor saw her gown with its
+long trailing skirt his face fell.
+
+"We go to walk, yes?" he said, in a doubtful tone. She looked from the
+window out upon the rainy view.
+
+"It's too wet," she said hopelessly; but the hopelessness was
+hypocritical, because she had resolved to never walk alone with him
+again.
+
+He threw himself down upon the divan and entered into a species of
+gloomy trance. She took a chair by the window and unfolded her
+embroidery. Since the night of the music their mutual feelings had
+become more complicated than ever, and sometimes she wanted to get away
+with a desperation that was tainted with cowardice, while at other times
+she almost wondered if she should ever have the strength to go at all.
+What he was meditating in these last days she could not at all divine.
+He continued to have fits of jealousy and periods of long and absorbing
+thought. The new knowledge of the spirit which he revealed in his art
+was always with her and always held her a little in awe. Also the
+recollection of the Englischergarten and of her own overwhelming
+sensations there stayed by her with a persistence which knew no
+diminution.
+
+"I wouldn't be off like that with him again for anything," she thought,
+as she drew a thread of red chenille from the skein upon her knee, and
+stole a glance at the dark face opposite her.
+
+"Why may we not walk?" he asked, looking up as if she had spoken aloud.
+"I will be _tres raisonable_."
+
+"It isn't that," she replied, annoyed to feel herself blushing; "it is
+that it is so wet. I should ruin a skirt."
+
+He started to argue the question but just then the salon door opened and
+Mrs. Jones came in with a book in her hand. He saw the book and she knew
+it. Mrs. Jones had evidently come to stay. The salon was public
+property, and Mrs. Jones had just as much right there as they had.
+Nevertheless when she smiled and said, "Shall I disturb you?" they
+resented her question as a sarcasm unworthy of Genoa's proximity. Von
+Ibn stood up and said, "Certainly not," with a politeness which did
+credit to his bringing up, but Rosina as she threaded her needle took a
+vow to remember to _never_, in all time to come, pause for an instant
+even in a room where two people were talking together.
+
+Mrs. Jones seated herself and then made the discovery that she had left
+her glasses in her own room; she rose at once and started to get them.
+
+"Now we _must_ go out," he exclaimed, hurriedly, "we may not talk here
+with her. She speaks French as well as we, and German much better than
+you;" he referred to the cosmopolitan custom of altering one's tongue to
+disagree with an (unwelcome) third party.
+
+Rosina was already huddling her work together in hot haste.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I have a short skirt that I can wear." She rose and
+went towards the door. "I won't be five minutes," she said, turning the
+knob.
+
+Mrs. Jones was leisurely about coming back. She did not want to
+inconvenience them too much, but she did want to find the salon empty on
+her return, and she found it so.
+
+While she was smiling and settling herself, they were going down the
+three flights of stairs and out of the large main door. The rain had
+ceased but it was still blackly and distinctly wet. Von Ibn had a
+tightly rolled umbrella which he held with a grasp that somehow
+suggested thoughts of their other promenade at nightfall.
+
+"You can walk well, yes?" he said, as they turned in the direction of
+the Isar.
+
+"In this skirt," she laughed, glancing down at her costume whose
+original foundations had been laid for golf, "in this skirt I am equal
+to anything!"
+
+"But if you slip?" he supposed, anxiously.
+
+"You ought to see the soles of my boots. I sent them to the little
+shoemaker in the Wurzerstrasse and he soled them with rubber half an
+inch thick."
+
+"How much is an inch?" he asked.
+
+"Twice the width of the rubber on my boots."
+
+"No, but earnestly," he said, "is it a _centimetre_?"
+
+"Two _centimetres_ and a half make one inch."
+
+"You are droll, you English and Americans," he said, "you see nothing
+but your own way. I have heard Englishmen laugh as to how yet the
+Russians count their time different from the civilization part of the
+world, and then all England and America do their measure and weight in
+a manner so uneven that a European is useless to even attempt to
+understand it. There was a man there at Lucerne,--what did he say to me?
+'A mark is a quarter, is it not?' that is what he asked. '_Mon Dieu_,' I
+said, 'if you cut it in four pieces it is four quarters, and if you
+leave it whole it is whole,' then he looked to find me _bete_, and I was
+very sure that he was, and we spoke no more."
+
+Rosina laughed.
+
+"He meant a quarter of a dollar," she explained.
+
+"I know that. You do not really think that I did not know that, do you?
+It was for his poor careless grammar that I find the American even more
+_bete_ than for his ignorance. Do you believe that in my own tongue I
+would speak as many of you speak yours? In my own tongue I am above
+correction."
+
+They were under the long arcade in front of the Regierung and in view of
+the discussion which seemed impending she judged it advisable to say,
+with a gesture:
+
+"There is where we met Jack; you remember?"
+
+Von Ibn looked quickly about.
+
+"Yes, it was here," he said, and then he shuddered slightly. "It was
+very well to laugh after, but that might have been so bad. I was angry
+and I struck a fearful blow then; I have often think of it when we were
+travelling together."
+
+She grew thoughtful also, and her imagination found food among some
+miserable possibilities which might have been.
+
+So they came to the river banks and the Maximilianbrucke, and paused by
+its rail.
+
+The air was grand, fresh and moist, reminiscent of summer's breath while
+also prophetic of winter's bite, and the Isar swept below them, carrying
+its hurry of tumult away, away, far into the west, towards a wealth of
+rose and golden sky. Between the glory and the water, in the middle
+distance, lay a line of roofs stretching irregularly into the blackness
+of their own shadows, and beyond them was the forest, to the fringing
+haze of whose bare branches the distance lent a softness not their own.
+The banks of the Promenade were still green, but the masses of vine that
+trailed in the green ripples were all of a crimson or reddish brown, and
+the shrubs showed here and there an echo of the same color.
+
+It was beautiful and wonderful to see, and they stood still and feasted
+their eyes for some long minutes.
+
+"Oh, Isar," Rosina cried softly, holding her hand out towards the
+singing waters below, "when shall I see you again?"
+
+"You will return some day," her companion said hopefully.
+
+"Who can tell?"
+
+"But always you must come over some bridge to return to-night."
+
+She felt that such levity jarred upon her mood, and refused to return
+his smile. She did not like him to feel like smiling too often these
+days.
+
+"Do not be of a bad humor," he entreated. "I am this afternoon of such a
+good one; and how can you know that you will not return? A woman can
+never be decided, so you may very well see the Isar soon again. _Vous
+comprenez?_"
+
+"Is it being bad-humored to be sad?" she asked; "and why can't I be
+decided if I want to be?"
+
+"Because," he said, wisely, "you are a woman; and a woman is very
+foolish to ever be decided, for she always changes her mind; and then
+all her decided seems to have been quite useless."
+
+Rosina felt that this sentence called for study before reply, and so
+walked on without speaking.
+
+"Is that not so?" he asked, as they went down by the little stone stair.
+
+"I never change."
+
+"Oh, now you know well that you do not speak the truth,--you are so very
+changeable. This afternoon, _par exemple_, when I first come to ask you
+to go out, you say you cannot of any possibility make it, and then, very
+suddenly, we go."
+
+"But I recollected that I might wear this skirt."
+
+"And there was that lady, also," he said thoughtfully.
+
+"Yes, she was there, too."
+
+"But always you did change."
+
+"I don't call it being changeable when one has a good reason for so
+doing."
+
+He stopped short; and she, after going a few steps further, discovered
+herself to be unaccompanied and stopped also.
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"Suddenly, I think."
+
+"Can't you walk and think at the same time?"
+
+He smiled, and came up with her again.
+
+"If I make you a good reason--" he began, and then hesitated and was
+silent.
+
+They followed the muddy path almost to the Luitpoldbrucke before he
+continued his phrase.
+
+"If one can change for a good reason, and if I make you a good reason,
+then will you change about me?"
+
+She drew a quick little breath.
+
+"I can't change in that way," she said; "you know that I do not want to
+marry again: marriage is too awful an undertaking. Don't you see that
+even now it does not make you always happy to be around me--"
+
+"I am never around you," he exclaimed indignantly. "I never have hardly
+touch you. I have been with you not as a man, but as an angel. _Je me
+comporte comme un ange--comme un ange--c'est moi qui vous le dit!_ I
+have given you one kiss such as a small baby might give its mother, and
+that is all;--and then you say that I am always around you."
+
+He ceased speaking, and looked straitly and darkly before him. She
+wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
+
+"I tell you," he continued violently after a short interval, "I am very
+much too good. Whatever you bid me do, that I do. Whatever you bid me
+not do, that I do not. And you do not thank me, or trust me, or treat me
+as a friend. _Vous avez toujours peur de moi._ When I approach you, you
+have always the air to expect that I will displease you. Have I deserved
+that? Have I behaved badly once? Did I kiss you when you knew nothing
+and I held you there in the mud--the night when I lose my umbrella? _Mon
+Dieu_, you are very _drole_, if you have known many men and do not
+appreciate me."
+
+He stopped as if choked.
+
+They had passed beyond the bridge and entered upon a path along the
+river bank, a path bordered with willow trees. The sky was more
+brilliantly gorgeous than ever, but under foot it was wet indeed.
+
+"Try not to stamp so much as you walk," she asked him very gently; "you
+keep splashing me."
+
+"What is splash?" he demanded gloomily; "something that annoys your
+ears?"
+
+"No, something that spoils my boots."
+
+"I do not care if I spoil those boots; I find them most ugly."
+
+"Perhaps; but I could not be here but for them."
+
+He walked on with somewhat less vigor.
+
+"Let us talk about us," he suggested, presently.
+
+"With reference to what?"
+
+"To me."
+
+"No, no," she said unwillingly.
+
+"Yes; why not?"
+
+"You always come back to that same subject; your mind appears to follow
+a circuit, like a squirrel in a ring."
+
+"'Wheel,' you mean."
+
+"Well, 'wheel,' then."
+
+"What squirrel? We never have talked of a squirrel before."
+
+Rosina's laugh rang out among the willows.
+
+"_Decidement vous n'etes pas du tout poli_," he cried angrily. "You say
+I am like a squirrel; I ask what squirrel, and you begin to laugh."
+
+"I never said that you were like a squirrel," she exclaimed, greatly
+shocked; "how can you think that I would say such a thing?"
+
+"You did," he declared bitterly. "You said I was like a squirrel in his
+wheel, because I tell you so often that I love you."
+
+"Oh, monsieur, you _know_ that I never meant it in that way; how can you
+think for an instant that I could have--have said that--that--" She felt
+it impossible to define her offence again without having the corners of
+her mouth give way; but she went close beside him and faced his vexation
+with earnest, upraised eyes the while that she laid one hand upon his
+arm with the sweet impulsive gesture of a pleading child.
+
+The gold had all faded from the sky, and the pink reflection in the far
+west was sunk beyond the horizon. The path was very solitary; they were
+quite alone except for an occasional peasant returning from his labor.
+
+"Say that you understand," she said anxiously, as a break in the trees
+revealed a long stretch of river; "you _must_ say something, because I
+want to know how far it is to the next bridge."
+
+He stopped and stared ahead.
+
+"There are no more bridges," he proclaimed.
+
+"No more bridges," she cried.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Must we go the whole way back along this same muddy path?"
+
+"Yes, surely."
+
+She turned.
+
+"Then let us go back now. There is no fun walking any further this way
+after the sunset is over."
+
+"Is it for the sunset alone that you walk?"
+
+"What shall I say?" she asked, looking up at him.
+
+"Say that you walk for me."
+
+"And then what follows?"
+
+"I follow."
+
+They laughed together.
+
+"I am so good to you," he declared; "even when you laugh at me I am
+never angry. I am truly so very good."
+
+He appeared so well content with himself that they went the whole
+distance to the Peace Monument before she disturbed his placid
+introspection. There was a pleasure to her in simply walking beside him
+in silence; it was a sensation which she had never attempted to analyze,
+but its existence had become a part of her own.
+
+"Do not let us go home," he proposed suddenly, when her turning to cross
+the Luitpoldbrucke recalled him to himself; "let us go somewhere and
+dine alone together. It is perhaps the last time; Jack returns
+to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, let us," she agreed delightedly; but then her voice altered
+suddenly for the worse. "No, it's impossible," she said sadly, "I can't
+go to a cafe and dine in this short skirt."
+
+"Why can you not?"
+
+"Can't you see why?"
+
+He walked off some ways to the side and gazed critically at her skirt.
+
+"Yes," he said, rejoining her, "I can see why."
+
+They were halfway across the bridge; he laid his hand on her arm and
+stopped her.
+
+"_Je vous ferai un propos_," he said eagerly; "we will take a car going
+to the Ostbahnhof, and then we will leave it at a quiet place and seek a
+quiet cafe and dine there."
+
+"All right," she said; "but you must telephone to the _pension_, or they
+won't know what has become of me."
+
+"I can say that we are gone to the theatre," he suggested.
+
+"They won't believe that because of this skirt."
+
+"I will say we are gone too far and must send for a cab, and will eat
+while we wait."
+
+"I think that whatever you say will sound like a lie, so it doesn't
+really matter."
+
+"Then I will say that we do not return until after the supper, and
+nothing else."
+
+"Where will you telephone from?"
+
+"From the cafe. Where would I telephone from?"
+
+Rosina looked vaguely around in the darkness.
+
+"We are only three or four blocks from the _pension_ now, are we not?"
+
+He glanced about.
+
+"It will be droll if we meet some one you know."
+
+"Yes," she said coldly; "it will be very funny--like Mrs. Jones to-day."
+
+"I am quite vexed when she came in," he said seriously; "why do people
+come in like that?"
+
+"We'll be just as thoughtless when we're her age," Rosina said
+charitably. "I think myself that it is astonishing that so many young
+people manage to get betrothed when there are so many old people to keep
+coming in."
+
+"Getting betrothed is very simple," said Von Ibn, "because always the
+young girl is willing; but when she is a young widow and not willing,
+that is what is difficult, and makes Mrs. Jones _de trop_."
+
+She was obliged to laugh.
+
+They were come to the Maximiliansstrasse, and a car was making its way
+jerkily around the corners of the monument in the middle of the square.
+It was a car for the Ostbahnhof, and full--very full.
+
+"Let it go by," he said. "We will walk on and another comes in a
+moment."
+
+They let it pass, and wandered on towards the rushing river.
+
+"You see why it was so foolish to be sad," he remarked, as they
+approached the bridge; "here is the second time that you have seen the
+Isar since you weep good-bye forever this afternoon."
+
+"I didn't weep," she said indignantly.
+
+"Did you not? I thought that you did."
+
+They waited for another car at the end of the bridge; the island where
+the Isarlust sports its lights and music all summer, looked particularly
+deserted in the contrast of this October night. She spoke of the fact.
+
+"You were often there?" he asked; "yes?"
+
+"Yes, very often."
+
+"With who?"
+
+She smiled a little in the dark.
+
+"We used to come in the evenings," she said; "every one used to come."
+
+Another car approached--again crowded.
+
+"Let us walk," she suggested; "all the cars will be crowded for the next
+hour."
+
+"Will your feet go further?" he inquired anxiously.
+
+"Yes, I think so."
+
+They turned their faces to that gardened slope which rises to the right
+of the Maximilianeum. The full moon was coming up behind the stately
+building, and its glorious open arches were outlined against the evening
+sky. The great tower which rose at the end near them seemed to mount
+straight upward into heaven itself.
+
+"I don't want to leave the Maximilianeum," she exclaimed, reft with an
+intense admiration for the grandeur of what was before her; "I don't
+want to leave the Bavarian moon; oh, I don't want to leave Munich; not a
+bit."
+
+"And me?" said her companion, taking her arm, "do you want to not leave
+me also?"
+
+"I don't want to leave you either," she declared. "I don't want to leave
+anything, and I must leave everything. Oh," she exclaimed suddenly and
+viciously, "I wish I might know who it was that wrote home to Uncle
+John."
+
+"But you have thought to know?"
+
+"Oh, I'm almost sure that it was that man in Zurich."
+
+"He was not so bad, that Zuricher man," he said, reflectively. "Did I
+ever say to you that I did go to the Gare with him when he went to
+Lucerne?"
+
+"No, you never told me that. What did you go to the station with him
+for?"
+
+"I thought that I would know whether after all he really went to
+Constance. At the Gare, after he has bought his ticket for Lucerne, I
+find him most agreeable."
+
+"Did you really think that perhaps he _was_ going to Constance?"
+
+"Yes, I did. I find it very natural that he shall want to go to
+Constance. I am surprise that day at every one who can decide to go any
+other place because I so wish to get to Constance myself. _Vous
+comprenez?_"
+
+She was obliged to smile audibly.
+
+"It was very funny the way that you came into the Insel _salle-a-manger_
+that night. I never was more surprised in my life."
+
+"I like to come to you that way," he went on. "When you are so your face
+becomes glad and I believe that you have been really lonely for me
+and--"
+
+He stopped suddenly; two big electric lights loomed at the corner to
+their right and the scene which was revealed by the uncurtained state of
+the window was responsible for the sudden turn of the current of his
+thoughts.
+
+"We can eat there," he exclaimed.
+
+She stopped, astonished.
+
+"Can we?" she asked. "I wouldn't think so."
+
+"But surely yes," he affirmed; "it is a cafe."
+
+He flung the door open as he spoke and stood back to let her pass
+inside.
+
+"It is a little smoky," he continued, as the door fell to, "but--"
+
+"A little!" she interrupted.
+
+"But what does that do to you? and there is another lady, so it is very
+right for you to be here too."
+
+"She doesn't look like a lady to me," said Rosina, dodging under a
+billiard-cue, for in this particular cafe the centre of the room is
+occupied by the billiard-tables; "she looks decidedly otherwise."
+
+Von Ibn glanced carelessly at the person alluded to.
+
+"It is always a woman," he remarked; and then he led the way around to
+a vacant corner where there was somewhat less confusion than elsewhere.
+"Here you may sit down," he commanded, and laid aside his own hat and
+overcoat.
+
+She obeyed him, contemplating her surroundings with interest as she
+began to unbutton her gloves.
+
+For the place was, to her eyes, unique of its kind, her lot having been
+cast hitherto in quite another class of cafes. It was very large, and
+decidedly hideous, wainscoted in imitation panels and frescoed in
+imitation paintings. The columns which supported the ceilings were
+brilliantly banded in various colors and flowered out below their
+pediments into iron branches of oak leaves among which blossomed the
+bulbs of many electric lights. By each column stood a severely plain
+hat-rack. In the middle of the room were four billiard tables, around
+its sides numberless small marble-topped stands where beer was being
+served galore. Against the walls were fastened several of those
+magnificent mirrors which testify so loudly to the reasonable price of
+good glass in that happy land across the seas; each mirror was flanked
+by two stuffed eagles, and decorated above its centre with one ornate
+quirl in gilt and stucco. And the whole was full and more than full of
+smoke.
+
+Von Ibn rapped on the tiled floor with his umbrella, and a waitress
+serving at a table near, five beer-mugs in each hand, nodded that she
+heard. Then he turned to Rosina:
+
+"_Eh bien!_"
+
+"I never was in a place like this before."
+
+"You may very likely never be in such a one again," he told her
+seriously; "so you must be as happy as you can while you're here."
+
+"That reason for having a good time hadn't occurred to me," she
+answered, giving him back his smile.
+
+"Then think to occur it now," he rejoined.
+
+The waitress had by this time gotten rid of her ten mugs and came to
+them, beginning proceedings by spreading the menu down on the table and
+running her pencil through item after item.
+
+"You had better order before everything is gone," Rosina suggested.
+
+"I must think the same," he replied, and took up the menu.
+
+"_Haben Sie bouillon?_" he demanded immediately.
+
+The waitress signified that bouillon was not to be.
+
+"How shall I do?" he asked, looking blank. "In all my life I have never
+eat without a bouillon before?"
+
+Rosina and the waitress felt their mutual helplessness in this
+difficulty, and the proceedings in hand came to a standstill natural
+under the circumstances.
+
+"Can't they make you some?" the American brain suggested.
+
+He turned the idea over in his mind once or twice and then:
+
+"No," he said; "it is not worth. It will be better that we eat now, and
+later, when I am in town, I will get a bouillon."
+
+So, that difficulty being disposed of, he ordered a species of repast
+with an infinite sense of amusement over the bill of fare. The waitress
+then retired and they were left alone in their corner.
+
+"The other lady is getting kissed," Rosina said. The publicity of a
+certain grade of continental love-making is always both interesting and
+amazing to the Anglo-Saxon temperament.
+
+He looked behind him without at all disturbing what was in progress
+there. After a minute's quiet stare he turned back in his seat and
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You see how simple it is when the woman is still," he said pointedly.
+"There is no fainting there; he loses no seventeen-mark umbrella from
+Baden-Baden."
+
+She ignored the gist of this remark, and began to unhook the collar of
+her jacket. Then she decided to take it off altogether.
+
+"You find it too warm?" he said, rising to assist her.
+
+"I certainly do."
+
+"It is curious for you and I to be in such a place, _n'est-ce pas_?"
+
+"Very curious."
+
+"But it is an experience, like eating in the woods."
+
+"I don't think that it is at all like eating in the woods; I think that
+nothing could be more different."
+
+"We are so alone."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Now you understand what I mean."
+
+"Yes, now I understand what you mean. And it is really a little like the
+woods, too," she added. "Those iron acorns and leaves are the branches,
+and the stuffed eagles are the birds."
+
+He looked at the oak-branches and the eagles for some time, and then he
+said:
+
+"Let us talk."
+
+"What are we doing now?"
+
+"We are waiting for what is to be to eat."
+
+"I thought that that in itself was always sufficient entertainment for a
+man."
+
+"I like better to talk. I have not much time more to talk with you,
+_vous savez_."
+
+"We will talk," she said, hastily. Her eyes wandered vaguely over the
+room seeking a subject for immediate discussion; all that she saw was
+the perpendicular cue of one of the billiard players.
+
+"Watch!" she exclaimed. "He's going to make an awfully difficult shot."
+
+Von Ibn looked towards the player with very little interest depicted on
+his countenance.
+
+"Oh, he missed," she exclaimed disgustedly.
+
+"But of course. How could a man like that do such a _masse_? You are so
+hopeful ever. You say, 'See him make so difficult a play,' when only
+looking upon the man's face tells that he himself is sure that he is
+about to fail."
+
+"I'll give you a riddle," she went on, receiving his expostulation with
+a smile. "But perhaps you don't know what a riddle is?" she added
+questioningly.
+
+"Yes, I do know what a riddle is; it is what you do not know and must
+tell."
+
+"Yes, that is it."
+
+"And your riddle is?"
+
+"Why am I like a dragon?"
+
+"Like a--" he faltered.
+
+"Dragon."
+
+"What is a dragon?"
+
+"It's a horrible monster. Don't you know the picture in the Schaak
+Gallery of that creature running its neck out through the slit in the
+rock so as to devour the two donkeys?"
+
+"Yes, I know the picture. But that creature is blue."
+
+"Oh," she said hopelessly, "it's no use trying to tell you riddles, you
+don't understand."
+
+"Yes, I do," he cried eagerly. "I understand perfectly and I assure you
+that I like very much. Dragon is '_drachen_,' _n'est ce pas_?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you are as one?"
+
+"I ask _why_ am I like one?"
+
+He looked particularly blank.
+
+"You are perhaps hungry?" he hazarded.
+
+She began to laugh.
+
+"No, it's because I'm breathing smoke."
+
+"Do dragons breathe smoke? It is a salamander you are believing in."
+
+"In pictures dragons always breathe smoke and fire."
+
+"But there is no fire here."
+
+"There must be somewhere, because there is so much smoke."
+
+He was unmoved and ruminative.
+
+"I do not find your riddle very clever," he said at last.
+
+Rosina buried the poor, weak, little scintillation at once and stamped
+on its grave in hot haste.
+
+"I think that our dinner is coming," she announced presently, turning
+her veil above her brows, "and I am so hungry."
+
+"I find your hunger a much better answer of that riddle than to be
+breathing smoke," he said.
+
+"Of course you do, because that is the answer that you thought of."
+
+The waitress began to arrange the dishes upon the table and when all was
+in order he prepared to serve them both.
+
+"I often start to say most clever things," he said, as he carved the
+fish, "but before I can speak you have always say something else."
+
+She took the plate that he passed her, and picked up her fork at once.
+
+"Then when you are silent for a quarter of an hour or so it would really
+pay me to keep still and wait; wouldn't it?" she inquired.
+
+He took a mouthful and deliberated.
+
+"I think so," he said at last.
+
+A deep stillness fell over the festal board. Von Ibn was mute and his
+companion felt that, the preceding remarks considered, she would be dumb
+herself. The entire meal was accordingly eaten in absolute silence,
+until, when she had finished, she could not refrain from stealing one
+amused glance in his direction.
+
+"You laugh," he said, returning the smile in kind.
+
+"I am sure that it is going to be something very brilliant this time,"
+she told him.
+
+He stared for a minute; and then he understood and laughed aloud.
+
+"I only eat then," he exclaimed, "_mais, Dieu! quels enfants nous sommes
+ensemble_. I must often wonder if you are so happy with me as I am with
+you? I cannot say why it is, but if you only be there I am content. Tell
+me, is it at all so for you?"
+
+"I enjoy you," she answered; "most men are stupid or horrid."
+
+"When?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"When one is much with them."
+
+He looked at her with some alarm.
+
+"But are many men much with you?"
+
+Rosina laughed merrily over the trouble in his face.
+
+"You would have been unbearable if you had been of a jealous
+disposition," she said, nodding.
+
+"Yes," he replied gravely, "I have always feel that myself; for with me
+it is very strong that there shall be no other. But tell me now, truly
+are many men much with you?"
+
+"Why I have hosts of friends," she declared, "and, on account of the way
+that the world is made, half of them are obliged to be men."
+
+"But you said that they were all stupid or horrible," he reminded her
+carefully.
+
+"I said that most of them were."
+
+He thought a moment.
+
+"I wish that there had been a bouillon here," he said then.
+
+She began to put on her gloves, thinking that the hour of departure was
+close at hand.
+
+"_J'ai envie de fumer une cigarette_," he said suddenly, "_ca ne vous
+fait rien d'attender un peu_?"
+
+"I don't care," she answered, and laid her gloves down again.
+
+"Am I ever horrible to you?" he asked, taking a match from the white
+china pyramid that ornamented the centre of the table.
+
+"I didn't say 'horrible;' I said 'horrid.'"
+
+"Is there a difference?" he lit his cigarette.
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+He crossed his arms upon the table, and smiled at her through his own
+personal quota of smoke.
+
+"Tell me the difference. Why are we horrid?"
+
+"Because you so often are. Men never understand."
+
+"_Au contraire_," he said quietly, "men always understand. It is the
+woman who will not believe it, and it is cruel to say her the truth. A
+woman is always _genee_, she will sob in a man's arms and still declare
+that 'No.' Why is it necessary for her to be so? That I cannot
+understand."
+
+Rosina caught a quick little breath; she had not been prepared for such
+a turn of conversation. Von Ibn went on with a degree of nonchalance
+that masked his close observance admirably.
+
+"When a man loves a woman, he knows certainly if she loves him or not.
+It is there every minute in her eyes and on her lips; and yet he must
+ask her, and she must pretend a surprise. Why? We are altogether human.
+Then why must women be different? I am most sorry for a poor woman; she
+cannot be kissed or caressed or loved without the pretence that she
+dislikes it. It must be very difficult."
+
+She felt her face getting warm.
+
+"You do not like what I have say?" he asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"Because it is true?"
+
+"It isn't true."
+
+"An American would not say that to you?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Do you like better the American way of covering up all truth?"
+
+"It is politer, I think."
+
+He looked at her for a moment.
+
+"I have been horrible, _n'est-ce pas_?" he asked.
+
+She felt very uncomfortable indeed.
+
+"Do let us go now," she said in a low tone.
+
+He struck his water-glass with a knife, and their waitress, who was near
+by, looked around.
+
+"_'Zahlen!_" he called to her. She nodded. He went for his coat and hat,
+and when he returned Rosina was fastening the frogs on her jacket.
+
+"I would have put it on if you had waited," he said in a tone of
+remonstrance.
+
+"I am used to getting into it," she assured him.
+
+He looked attentively at her and perceived more than she thought. Then
+the waitress came up and recited all that they had eaten in a sing-song
+tone, and he pushed some money towards her with a gesture that disposed
+of the question as to making change.
+
+"We will go out now," he said, turning towards the door, and the next
+minute they were in the cool, fresh night air. He put his hand upon her
+arm, and bent his head a little.
+
+"Do not be vexed with me," he said softly; "even a little vexing of you
+makes me great pain."
+
+Then he pressed her arm closely.
+
+"It is not long that we have now to talk. I beg you talk to me; do not
+be so sad."
+
+"I'm not sad."
+
+"Then talk."
+
+She gathered up her energy with a mighty effort.
+
+"What shall we talk about?"
+
+"Anything. Have you a letter to-day?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"From who? From Jack?"
+
+"No, from the Marquis de W----."
+
+His fingers came together over her arm in a vice-like grip.
+
+"I have never heard of him," he cried; "where have you know him?"
+
+"In Paris. And then I met him on the train--"
+
+Von Ibn's eyes grew large with fright.
+
+"But you must not meet men on trains," he said; "that is not at all
+proper for you."
+
+"He took charge of me from Paris to Lucerne," she said soothingly; "he
+is really very delightful--"
+
+"I did not see him at Lucerne," he interrupted.
+
+"No, he was gone when you came."
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+"He is seventy."
+
+His heat subsided suddenly, and there was a pause during which she felt
+circulation returning slowly to her arm.
+
+"And you have a letter from him to-day?" he asked, after a while.
+
+"I have a letter from him almost every day."
+
+He looked down at her with an air of genuine astonishment.
+
+"What can a man of seventy say in a letter almost every day?" he asked.
+
+"He can say a great deal. He wants me to marry him!"
+
+He laughed aloud, and then exclaimed gayly:
+
+"What a great lady you will be! and how nice you will look in your
+mourning!" and then he threw his cigarette away and laughed afresh.
+
+His laughter was so infectious that she laughed also.
+
+"He writes me how happy I would be with him," she continued merrily;
+"and he is very positive about it, too. How can he think that I would
+really wish to marry him?"
+
+"He can think it very well from the newspapers of your land. Is he not a
+marquis? If I did not love you, I should always have surprise to think
+that you are an American, and will not let me make you a great lady."
+
+She ignored this speech in its entirety.
+
+"To think," she pursued, "that one cannot travel in a daughterly way
+with a gentleman of seventy without--"
+
+"Yes," he interrupted, "but that is why it is best not to travel in the
+charge of gentlemen. One is always so liable to be disagreeably urged to
+become a marchioness."
+
+She assented with a thoughtful nod.
+
+"I don't answer all his letters," she said; "I burn them."
+
+"Poor marquis!"
+
+"They are good letters of their kind; but there are a whole lot of
+things which it does not pay to write to a widow. You can fool a girl,
+but a widow always knows."
+
+"Does a widow always know?"
+
+"Oh, dear me; yes."
+
+"Then why did you not save the poor marquis his pain?"
+
+"I never dreamed of his feeling that way. How could I? I only thought he
+was delightful. And always, even the first day at Madame de S----'s,
+when he said adieu he would kiss my hands in the most adorable Louis
+XIV. kind of a way."
+
+"And all the while it was in his heart a plot to marry you. You see!"
+
+"Men are so queer," she reflected; "I cannot see why that old gentleman
+should have wanted to marry me."
+
+"I can," said Von Ibn, dryly; "I can see quite well."
+
+The marquis as a topic of conversation seemed at an end. They were in
+the Hellerstrasse, going towards the river, and the heaviness which the
+Isar always cast over her fell down about her spirits.
+
+"Oh, I _cannot_ believe that in forty-eight hours I shall be gone!" she
+exclaimed suddenly.
+
+"Do not go," he said, tightening his hold upon her arm again; "stay with
+me."
+
+"I must go," she declared. "I couldn't stay with you, anyway," she
+added, in a tone of unintended mournfulness.
+
+His mood altered, and the light of a street lamp showed that every tinge
+of gayety had fled his face.
+
+"You have no will of your own," he said with acerbity; "that Jack has it
+all. I find you so very weak."
+
+She raised her eyes to his and they looked strangely at one another. The
+moon was above them, full and beautiful, and the Isar rapids were
+murmuring their far cry.
+
+"We shall return over the Ludwigsbrucke," he said, and they went down
+the incline in silence.
+
+She thought vaguely, "I am here now, and _he_ is here! How will it be
+when I am gone and we are separated forever?" But her brain refused to
+comprehend--only her heart felt the warmth of his touch upon her sleeve.
+
+So they came down to the bridge, which abuts on an island and
+accommodates the tram passing from the Ostbahnhof to the Marien Platz.
+The Isarthor rose up grimly between the city lights and their view.
+Above was the golden moon. Behind, the black outlines of the suburb
+which they had just quitted.
+
+"Let us stop here," he proposed, pausing by the bridge rail, and she
+stayed her steps in obedience.
+
+It was nearly nine o'clock, and the passers-by were few. They had the
+bridge quite to themselves; the water running beneath murmured gently,
+but did not interrupt even their unvoiced thoughts.
+
+The man took out his _etui_ and lit another cigarette, sinking his
+sombre gaze meanwhile deep into the stream below. His companion leaned
+upon the stone parapet.
+
+And then he sighed most heavily.
+
+"It is the autumn," he said; "all the summer is over. _Tout est fini!_"
+There was a profound melancholy in his voice which threw a band of iron
+about her throat and choked all power of speech out of her. "How little
+I know last May of what this summer brings," he continued; "I have
+believe that all summers were to come alike to me."
+
+A tram approached and crossed behind them with a mighty rumble. When all
+was still he spoke again, and the tone of his voice was childishly
+wistful.
+
+"I did not know, there in Lucerne, before you came, how happy I might
+be. You are not so wonderful, but to me you are now a need, like air
+which I must breathe to live."
+
+There was an anguish underlying his words which set her heart to aching
+intolerably.
+
+"Oh," she gasped helplessly, "let us walk on! Let us go home! I cannot
+bear to hear all that again."
+
+She turned to go, but he caught her hand in his.
+
+"I must speak," he said forcefully, though in the lowest possible tones;
+"it is perhaps the tenth time, but it is certainly the last time. Will
+you not think once more again of it all, and say here now that you love
+me?"
+
+He held her hand so tightly that it was impossible for her to withdraw
+it. She looked up in his face, and the moon showed each the unfeigned
+feeling of the other.
+
+"You don't know about marriage," she told him with white lips and
+laboring breath. "One may be very unhappy alone, and there is always the
+strength to bear, but when you are married and unhappiness comes, there
+is always that other unhappiness chained to you like a clog, shutting
+out all joy in the present, all hope in the future; and nothing can help
+you, and you can help nothing." She stopped and put her hand to her
+bosom. "Only death can help!" she cried, in a voice as if a physical
+torture had its grip upon her; "and it is so awful when death alone can
+help!" She looked at the ground and then up at him. "Oh," she sighed
+miserably, "how can I dare to go where I may come to that pass again?
+Don't ask that of me."
+
+He turned his face away from her and she felt his fingers loosen, little
+by little, their clasp upon her arm. Then he loosed her altogether, left
+her side, moved away a space, and stood, his head bowed, his eyes bent
+upon the water. There was a fearful horror of hopelessness in his
+attitude.
+
+Down from the Gasteig came a cab, an empty cab, and he looked up and
+hailed it.
+
+"We will ride home," he said, coming back to her; "I am bereft of
+strength."
+
+The cab halted and he put her inside.
+
+"6 Maximiliansstrasse," he called to the driver, and got in himself and
+banged the door behind him.
+
+Then he threw himself back against the cushions, covered his eyes with
+his hand, and remained silent and motionless the ten minutes that they
+were _en route_.
+
+She did not speak either; she dared not. The air was so heavy with
+sorrow and despair that words would have seemed like desecration; and
+the telepathic misery that emanated from him loaded her soul as if she
+had been guilty of a crime.
+
+When the cab stopped he opened the door, and as he turned to give her
+his hand she caught one shocked glimpse of the grief in his face--of the
+oddly drawn look of suffering in his half-closed eyes. The whole change
+in him, in them, in it all, had come so quickly that as she stepped from
+the cab she was conscious of a stunned sensation, a dazed lack of
+feeling, a cold and stony power to bear much--for a little while.
+
+"Go by the door," he said in muffled tones, "I must pay the cab."
+
+She crossed the width of the sidewalk and stood by the great _porte_,
+waiting.
+
+When the cabman was disposed of he came to her side, and felt in his
+pocket for the keys. Then he took his gloves off and felt again; as he
+felt he stared steadily across the street.
+
+"It's the round key," she said, when he finally produced them. "Have you
+any tapers? I'm afraid that the hall will be dark."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders as if tapers were of no earthly consequence in
+such a time of stress. Then he fitted the key in the lock and swung back
+the massive portal.
+
+Because of that vast key system which is part of the intricacy of the
+very good housekeeping of Frau G----, there was no necessity to disturb
+the Hausmeister; but nothing could lessen the wail of the door which let
+them in with a groan, and closed behind them with a bang that was worthy
+of the occasion. It was the man's place to have lessened the noise by
+laying a restraining hand upon the lock, in accordance with the printed
+directions nailed against the main panel, but Rosina felt intuitively
+that this was no time to remind him of the fact.
+
+With the closing of the door they were left in a darkness thorough and
+complete.
+
+Rosina's voice: "You said you had wax tapers."
+
+Von Ibn's voice: "No, I have not say so."
+
+Rosina's accents of distress: "Haven't you any tapers?"
+
+Von Ibn's voice, dully: "Yes, I have, but I have not say so before."
+
+Rosina, entreatingly: "Then do please light one."
+
+Dead silence.
+
+She began to walk towards the stairs that she could not see; as she did
+so she heard his keys jingling, and knew from the sound that he must be
+hunting the wherewithal for illumination. He struck a match and adjusted
+it in the small hole at the end of the box, and as he did so he called:
+
+"Stop! wait for me to come also."
+
+She paused and looked back towards him. By the white light of the little
+taper his face appeared absolutely ghastly, and his heavy eyelids
+drooped in a way that pierced her heart.
+
+"I think," he said, when he was beside her, "that it is better that I go
+to-morrow very early, and that we meet no more."
+
+At that she was forced to put her hand against the wall in the seeking
+for some support without herself. They were upon the first step of the
+stairs, she leaning against one side wall and he standing close to the
+other. After he had spoken he crossed to her and his voice altered.
+
+"If you had loved me," he said, "here--now--I should have kissed you,
+and all would have been for us as of the skies above."
+
+"Oh, look out!" she exclaimed.
+
+He was close above her.
+
+"You are afraid of me?"
+
+"No, it is the wax; you are letting it drip on us both."
+
+"It should stop upon the box," he said shortly.
+
+She began to mount the stairs, pulling off her gloves as she went. One
+fell, and he stooped quickly for it, with the result that he dropped the
+match-box. Again they were alone in the darkness.
+
+"This is an awful place," he said irritably, feeling blindly for what
+was lost. "That I am on my knees to a match-box this night," he added
+savagely.
+
+Her soul was full of sympathy for him. She bent to aid him in his
+search, and her hand in its wandering encountered his own. He seized her
+fingers and pressed them to his lips, and she knew that he was kneeling
+close at her feet.
+
+"This is impossible," he said vaguely, hurriedly; "we may not part now
+in a minute, like this. You have spoken foolishly, and I have accept it
+too quick. We must speak longer and talk reasonably to each of us. We
+must go where we may sit down and be quiet. _Faut etre raisonable._ Let
+us go out of the door and go to the Cafe Luitpold and there speak."
+
+The Cafe Luitpold is a gorgeous and fashionable resort in the
+Briennerstrasse; its decorations are a cross between Herrn-Chiemsee and
+a Norddeutscher steamer, and its reputation is blameless.
+
+"I can't go to the Cafe Luitpold at ten o'clock at night in a golf
+skirt," she objected gently, and tried to continue on her upward way;
+but he held her fast by her hand, and as he pressed it alternately to
+his face and lips, she felt her flesh wet with hot tears.
+
+"You are crying!" she exclaimed in awe.
+
+"I hope not," he said; "I hope not, but I am near it. If I do weep, will
+you then despise me?"
+
+"No," she said faintly; "no--I--"
+
+He rose to his feet, and in the dark she knew him to be very, very near.
+He still held her hand and his breath touched her cheek.
+
+"Oh," he whispered, "say you love me if it be but so little! _Dites que
+vous m'aimez!_ I have hoped so greatly, I have dreamed so greatly; I
+will ask now no more to possess you for my own; I will content myself
+with what you can so easy give--only a little love--"
+
+He drew his arm about her. Something within her was rising as the slow
+tide rises before the September gale, and she felt that all her
+firmness would be as the sand forts which the children build, when that
+irresistible final wave shall carry its engulfing volume over all. She
+summoned to her aid the most frightful souvenirs of her unhappy
+marriage, and pushed him violently away. His answer was a sudden grasp
+of mighty vigor, at which she gave a muffled scream.
+
+"You detest me, then?" he said through his teeth.
+
+"It is my hat," she cried, freeing herself; "you drove the longest pin
+straight into my head."
+
+He moved a little away, and in so doing trod upon the match-box. Then in
+an instant there was light again, and he could see her, her arms
+upraised, straightening her hat.
+
+"It is most badly on," he told her.
+
+"I know it," she replied, starting swiftly upward.
+
+At the curve he stopped short and shut his eyes; she stopped too, three
+steps farther on.
+
+"Are you ill?" she asked anxiously.
+
+He opened his eyes.
+
+"I am most unhappy," he replied, and went on again.
+
+So they came to the top at last.
+
+"Here we are," she said, halting before the door; "give me the keys,
+they work intricately."
+
+He handed them to her in silence; she took them in her hand and tried to
+smile.
+
+"If you really go to-morrow," she said, as she put one into the lock, "I
+hope--" her lips trembled traitorously and she could not go on.
+
+"_Dites_," he whispered, coming nearer, "you do care a little, a very--"
+
+He dropped the matches a second time.
+
+"_That_ was never an accident," she cried, below her breath.
+
+"It was not my intention," he declared; then he added, "you have only to
+go in, I can very well find my way out in the dark."
+
+But the door refused to open; instead, the key turned around and around
+in the lock.
+
+"I do believe," she said at last, in a curiously inexplicable tone,
+"that we have come up the wrong stairs!"
+
+A sort of atmosphere of blankness saturated the gloom.
+
+"Is there another stair?" he asked.
+
+"Yes; it goes from the other passage. It's the staircase to No. 5. I
+think--indeed I'm sure--that we have come up the stairs of No. 6 with
+the keys of No. 5."
+
+"I have never know that there was another stair," he declared. "If you
+had say that before I--" then a fresh thought led him to interrupt
+himself. "It is a fate that leads us. We must go to the street again,
+and we shall go to the American Bar and talk there."
+
+The "American Bar" is the name which the Hotel Vierjahreszeiten has
+elected to give to a small and curious restaurant situated in its
+basement. There is nothing against the "American Bar" except its name,
+which naturally leads American women to avoid it.
+
+"I don't want to go anywhere," said Rosina, drawing the keys into her
+hand; "it is no use. We are both all used up. I want to get home. And I
+couldn't go anywhere if I wanted to in this skirt."
+
+"It is always that skirt," he cried angrily; "that my heart breaks
+to-night is nothing,--only ever I must hear of your skirt."
+
+"Oh, where _are_ the matches?" she said nervously; "we must find them
+somehow."
+
+He stooped to institute another search, and the umbrella slipped from
+his hand; it struck the floor with a noise that echoed from the attic to
+the cellar.
+
+"Oh!" she gasped sharply; "we shall wake every one in the building
+before we get through."
+
+"It is very terrible--this night," he said quietly, and as he spoke he
+found the match-box and there was light again. Then he picked up his
+umbrella, and they returned down the three flights of stairs. In the
+lower hall he stopped again.
+
+"We _cannot_ separate like this," he said, laying his hand upon her arm;
+"there are doings that one human cannot do. I must speak longer with you
+before I go. It is not talking to be going ever up and down steps with a
+wax taper. I know nothing of what I have say since we leave the cab, and
+here, each minute, any one may enter. When we go out, come with me
+across to the Hofbrauhaus, and there we will talk for but five minutes,
+and then you shall return. Your skirt will go very well there. We shall
+quickly return. _Dites 'oui'_."
+
+The Hofbrauhaus is, as its name indicates, the cafe, or rather
+_brasserie_, of the Court brewery. It is a curious place, the beer of
+which is backed by centuries of fame, and Von Ibn told no lie when he
+said that any skirt would do well there.
+
+"Oh, I can't go," she said, almost crying in her distress and agitation.
+"It will do no good; we just suffer more and more the longer we are
+together. I am miserable and you are miserable, and it takes all my
+strength to remember that if I yield we shall be very much more
+miserable in the end. Let me get home!"
+
+She unlocked the large _porte_ as she spoke, and he blew out the taper,
+pushed it open, held it while she passed through, and then stayed its
+slam carefully behind her.
+
+Then there was the _porte_ of No. 5 to unlock and the taper to relight,
+and three more staircases to mount.
+
+"I shall go to-morrow morning," he said quietly and hopelessly, as they
+went a second time upon their upward way. "I shall put all the force of
+my will to it that I go. It is better so. _Pourquoi vous vexer avec mon
+ardent desir pour vous?_"
+
+Her heart contracted with a spasm of pain, but she made no reply.
+
+"To meet again will be but more to suffer," he continued. "I touch at
+the end of what I am capable to suffer. Why should I distress you for no
+good to any one? And for me all this is so very bad! I can accomplish
+nothing. The power dies in me these days. _Toute ma jeunesse est prise!_
+I feel myself become old and most desolate. I am content that it is
+good-bye here."
+
+It seemed to her that her turn had come to falter, and fail to move, and
+close her eyes in misery. If--if--only--
+
+But they went on slowly until the top landing was just above their
+heads. Both knew that the top landing must bring the termination of all.
+
+She took the door-key in her hand, went a little ahead of him and fitted
+it noiselessly into the lock. It turned. The end was at hand. She looked
+towards him and attempted a smile. He put the match-box on the window
+ledge and drew her within his arms.
+
+"It is for the first and the last time," he said hoarsely, and then he
+kissed her furiously, passionately,--twice, thrice, and once again.
+"_C'est comme ca, l'amour!_" he whispered; "and because you know nothing
+of it, you let it go from you."
+
+Then he put his hand to his throat as if strangling, and, opening the
+door, stepped aside.
+
+"Good-bye," he murmured, as she passed within. "_Bon voyage!_"
+
+The door closed between them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She went to her room and found Ottillie asleep upon the sofa.
+
+She crossed to the window, opened it softly and leaned out; after a
+little she heard the door beneath open and close, and then his shadow
+fell beneath the electric light.
+
+Then he was gone!
+
+This time there would be no return.
+
+The moisture of his lips was yet upon her own, and he was gone forever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She crossed the room and fell upon her knees beside the bed.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+THE BREAKING OF THE BARRIERS
+
+Chapter Fourteen
+
+
+It was very early, very dark, very cheerless, that most miserable hour
+of six o'clock in the morning, the very worst hour ever known in which
+to be routed out of bed in order that an unpleasant journey may be
+begun.
+
+Without, it was faintly light; within, it was brightly gas. What is less
+cheerful than the aspect given a room by the gas burning high at six
+o'clock in the morning? Rosina's room looked absolutely ghastly, for it
+was bare of everything but travelling apparatus, and they were all
+strapped and waiting. She herself sat before her untouched breakfast
+tray and watched Ottillie lace her boots, while she dismally went over
+for the two hundred and seventy-sixth time every detail of the night
+before the last.
+
+There was a tap at the door and Jack came in. He was tanned with his
+recent trip and had a thrilling new travelling ulster with carved
+deer-horn buttons. He had bought the buttons at the Tagernsee and had
+had an ulster constructed in Vienna, just as a background for them. He
+looked at his cousin with a buoyant air that she felt to be bitterly
+unkind, all things considered, and exclaimed:
+
+"You must hurry up, my dear; the cab will be at the door in five
+minutes, and we don't want to miss that train, you know."
+
+"I'm quite ready," she said helplessly.
+
+"Is all this stuff going?" he asked, looking about; "you can't mean to
+carry all this with us to Genoa, surely."
+
+Rosina's eyes strayed here and there over the umbrella case, the two
+dress-boxes, the carry-all, the toilet case, the two valises, the
+dress-suit case, and the hat-box. She did not appear to consider the
+total anything to be ashamed of.
+
+"What's in those two boxes?" Jack continued.
+
+"Clothes."
+
+"Why didn't you put them in a trunk?"
+
+"You told me to send all my trunks _frachtgut_ two weeks ago. I had to
+keep out some to wear, naturally."
+
+He drew a martyr's breath.
+
+"You do beat all! I don't know how we're ever going to get all this
+stuff along with us. There isn't anything more, is there, Ottillie?"
+
+"_Oh, mais non, monsieur!_"
+
+"All right. You better have them take all this down; the cab must be
+there by this time."
+
+Rosina stood up.
+
+"I must say good-bye to Fraulein Helene and her mamma," she said sadly,
+going to the door.
+
+The good-bye was a trying one, and its tears were harshly interrupted by
+a voice in the hall:
+
+"Come on, Rosina, we're going to miss that train for a fact if you don't
+hurry."
+
+"Go, my dear child," said Frau G----; "do not weep so. Many think that
+they are going forever, but they all always return."
+
+Rosina choked, and went.
+
+Jack rattled her down the stairs--those sob-provoking stairs--at a
+tremendous rate, and when they went out of the _porte_ their eyes were
+greeted by a cab that looked like a furniture van, so overloaded was its
+capacity.
+
+"George, but it's full!" Jack cried in dismay. "Well, there's no time to
+get another; we must just pile in some way and let it go at that."
+
+They piled in some way and it went at that.
+
+"The train leaves at 7.20," Jack remarked as they passed the post-office
+clock, "we shall just make it easy."
+
+Rosina made no answer, and no one spoke again until they reached the
+Karl Platz and the cabman slowed up and looked around inquiringly; for
+some trains are reached from the front and some from the sides of the
+main station at Munich, and the cabs suit their routes to the
+circumstances from the Karl Platz on.
+
+"Zurich!" Jack called out, "and hurry!" he added. "We really are making
+pretty close connection," he went on, "it's 7.05 now. But then there is
+only one trunk to check."
+
+"I'm glad that that's yours," Rosina said, thinking of her hand luggage
+and his comments thereon.
+
+He whistled blithely.
+
+"Oh, we'll get there all straight," he said hopefully.
+
+They drew up before the Bahnhof at 7.10, and it behooved the man of the
+party to be very spry indeed. He got their unlimited baggage on to a
+hand-truck, paid the cabman, and hustled the whole caravan inside.
+
+"_Wo fahren Sie hin?_" asked the porter who operated the hand-truck, as
+he went leisurely after their haste.
+
+"Zurich," said Jack, "and _wir haben sehr wenig_ time to spare; you want
+to look lively." Then he rushed to the ticket gate to send Rosina and
+her maid aboard while the trunk was being weighed.
+
+"_Wo fahren Sie hin?_" asked the man at the gate.
+
+"Zurich."
+
+"Train goes at 7.45."
+
+"It doesn't either," said Jack, who understood German fluently, "it goes
+at 7.20."
+
+For answer the man pointed to the great sign above his head, which bore
+out the truth of his statement in letters six inches high.
+
+"Well, I vow," said Jack blankly, "if that man at Schenker's isn't the
+worst fraud I ever ran up against. Say, cousin, we've got over half an
+hour to check my trunk in."
+
+She shook her head as if she didn't care.
+
+"I'll go and see to it now," he said, "and then I'll come back here and
+try to get on to the train."
+
+He went off, and they waited by the gate while the man stationed there
+looked at Ottillie, and her mistress recalled the tone in which a voice
+had said, "It is for the first and last time!" and what came next.
+
+When Jack returned they were permitted to pass the gates and go aboard
+the cars. The porter loaded the entire length of both racks with their
+belongings, and as soon as he was paid Jack hung up his ulster with the
+deer-horn buttons, stretched himself at full length upon the longest
+seat, and was asleep within five minutes.
+
+Rosina took the window corner opposite him and contemplated his callous
+slumber with a burning bitterness.
+
+"And he must see how unhappy I am, too," she said to herself.
+
+Then she leaned her chin upon her hand and fell into a reverie which so
+blinded her with tears that when the train did move out of the yards she
+beheld a Munich of mist and fog, and a Pasing which was a mere blot
+amidst the general blur of her universe. She did not want to go to
+Genoa, she wanted to stay in Germany; and everything which the train
+passed appeared to be returning towards Munich with all possible speed,
+while she, she alone, was being borne swiftly away from all--all--all.
+
+"Leaving for home," she reflected. "I'm not _leaving_ at all; I'm simply
+being wrenched away! Talk about turning one's face towards America! I'm
+not turning my face; I'm having my neck wrung in that direction!" and
+the tears rolled heavily down her cheeks.
+
+Ottillie unfastened one of the small valises and handed her mistress a
+fresh pocket-handkerchief, an attention which was most welcome just at
+that juncture.
+
+About ten o'clock Jack opened his eyes and yawned vigorously twice or
+thrice. Then he got up on his elbow.
+
+"You _are_ a pretty sight!" he said, after a lengthy contemplation of
+her woe; "you look like--like--well, you look pretty bad, and you
+haven't a soul to blame for it all but yourself."
+
+She made no reply.
+
+"There's Von Ibn gone north, declaring that his future is completely
+ruined, and you sit crying like a baby because you must leave him, and
+yet you won't marry him. If he was some worthless scoundrel that
+couldn't be thought of, you know very well that all we might try to say
+or do wouldn't keep you from him for three minutes; but just because he
+is so eminently all right you see a necessity for cooking up a sort of
+tragedy out of nothing, and making him crazy, and yourself about as
+bad."
+
+"Have you heard from him?" she asked coldly.
+
+"I know that he left Munich yesterday early. He must have been awfully
+cut up to have been willing to undertake a trip at that hour. He hates
+to get up early--"
+
+"That's no crime."
+
+"Who said it was? So far from being a crime, it ought to have been
+another bond of congeniality between you two."
+
+"Do you know where he went?"
+
+"If he was a man at home he'd take to drink and go to the devil, but
+being a fellow over here I suppose that he'll just go up the Zug-spitz
+and down the Matterhorn, and up Mont Blanc and down the Dent du Midi,
+until he considers himself whole again."
+
+She choked and said no more.
+
+The train guard came through soon after and put the usual question:
+
+"_Wo fahren Sie hin?_"
+
+"Zurich," said Jack, as he produced their tickets; "about what time do
+we get there?"
+
+"Are you going straight through?" the guard inquired as he punched a
+page in each little book and restored the library to their rightful
+possessor.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then why did you not take the express?"
+
+Jack fairly bounded in his seat.
+
+"The express!" he ejaculated. "Great Scott, do you mean to say that we
+are not on it!!!"
+
+"Oh, no," said the guard, "you are upon the way-train that follows half
+an hour later. The express arrives at two-forty; this train gets in
+between seven and eight at night."
+
+Nothing could bear deeper testimony to the state of Rosina's crushed
+sensibilities than the way in which she received this bit of
+information. While Jack swore violently she continued to look out of the
+window with an indifference that was entirely genuine.
+
+"To think that that other train must have been right there within a
+hundred feet of us!" cried her cousin.
+
+She did not turn an eyelash.
+
+"By George, Rosina, I don't believe I ever was as mad as this in all my
+life before!"
+
+She sighed.
+
+"I don't mind anything," she said sadly.
+
+"You ought to mind getting to Zurich at eight o'clock instead of
+half-past two; there's quite a little difference."
+
+"I don't mind," she repeated.
+
+"Well, I do," said Jack. After a pause of stormy thought he unclenched
+his fist and said, "I bet I get even for this some day, but just at
+present I think that I'll go to sleep again."
+
+Which he did forthwith.
+
+About noon they came to Lindau on the Bodensee. Rosina shivered and felt
+sick, because Constance lay upon the further side. The train did not run
+beyond Lindau and a change was necessary. The change revealed the fact
+that there was a custom-house at that point. An unexpected custom-house
+is one of the worst features of continental travel; but the officials
+of Lindau were delightful, drew chalk circles on everything, and sent
+every one upon their way rejoicing. Our party went around the little
+station and were halted by a guard with the common greeting:
+
+"_Wo fahren Sie hin?_"
+
+"Zurich," Jack answered, hauling out his tickets.
+
+"_Fahren Sie mit Bahn oder fahren Sie mit Schiff?_"
+
+Jack looked nonplussed.
+
+"Which are the tickets for?" he asked.
+
+"Either."
+
+He turned to where Rosina waited, her eyes gazing in the direction of
+Constance.
+
+"Oh, Rosina," he called out, "do you want to _fahr_ from here on _mit_
+the _Bahn_ or the _Schiff_?"
+
+"I don't care," she replied.
+
+"What's the difference, anyhow?" he asked the man.
+
+"With the boat you do not connect with the train on the other shore," he
+was told.
+
+"You don't, eh? Well, I'm very anxious to make that train upon the other
+shore, so I think we'll _fahr_ right along _mit_ the _Bahn_. Come on!"
+he called again to his cousin, "we must get aboard."
+
+They went slowly along the platform to the train gate.
+
+"They call Lindau the German Venice," he said, as they waited to pass
+the gate, "but I don't think that it looks very Venetian; do you?"
+
+She choked, because Venice began with V, and felt herself quite unable
+to frame an answer to his question.
+
+As every one but themselves seemed to have elected for the "Schiff,"
+they found an entire wagon empty and spread their luggage out well. Jack
+even went so far as to establish himself in solitary state in an
+adjoining compartment, to the end that he might consider the proposition
+of more sleep. Before the train was well under way the guard came
+through, and past experience led Rosina to call through the connecting
+door:
+
+"Do ask him if we must change again."
+
+"Do we change again?" he asked.
+
+"_Wo fahren Sie hin?_"
+
+"Zurich."
+
+"You must change in Bregenz."
+
+"We must change in Bregenz," Jack called out.
+
+By that time the German Venice was well behind, and the train was
+skirting the southern shore of the Bodensee. The sun was shining on the
+waves, and the woods upon the banks were spattered with red and yellow.
+And off to the north Constance was lying. Ah, Constance--the
+Stadtgarten--Huss' Tower--the "Souvenir" of Vieuxtemps!
+
+Rosina wept afresh.
+
+"Oh, Ottillie," she sobbed, forlornly, "_que je suis malheureuse
+aujourd'hui_!"
+
+Ottillie opened her little bag and handed her mistress another fresh
+handkerchief; it was the only way in which she could testify to her
+devotion upon this especial day.
+
+At Bregenz they descended, with the aid of a porter, at about half-past
+two. As they left the train it was borne in upon them that this change
+was not a change at all, but just another custom-house.
+
+"What strange country have we run up against, I'd like to know!" Jack
+asked in amazement; and then the black cocks' plumes in the _casquette_
+of the _douanier_ revealed the information that he craved.
+
+"How does Austria get to the Bodensee?" Rosina begged to know, having
+seen the cocks' plumes as quickly as he had.
+
+"I don't know," replied Jack, not at all pleased at the discovery as to
+where they were. "It does seem as if every country in Europe has a
+finger in this lake, though; or, if they haven't, they keep a
+custom-house open on it just as a side line to their regular business."
+
+The porter led them into the great wooden shed, where some unplaned
+boards laid across boxes served as counters, Bregenz being in the throes
+of the erection of a new station.
+
+"I bet they make it plain whether its _kronen_ or _gulden_," said
+Rosina's cousin as he threw his valise on top of the porter's small
+mountain; "if I'd known that I was to come in connection with that vile
+money system again I'd have _schiffed_ it across the lake or walked
+around the northern shore before I'd ever have come this route."
+
+By this remark he testified to a keen recollection of his Viennese
+experiences and the double dealing (no pun intended) of the Austrian
+shopkeeper just at the present epoch in the national finance system of
+that country.
+
+Behind the boards two uniformed officials paced up and down, and when
+all was neatly ranged before them the one bestowed his attention upon
+Rosina while the other turned his in among the infinity of boxes
+belonging to her party. He peeped into two or three of the valises and
+chalked them and all of their kind; then he demanded the opening of the
+largest dress-box. Ottillie unstrapped it and undertook to satisfy his
+curiosity to the fullest possible extent.
+
+The object uppermost of all was a Russian leather writing-tablet. The
+official leapt upon that at once.
+
+"On this you must pay thirty _centimes_," he declared, grabbing it up.
+
+"_Warum?_" said Jack. He found "_warum_" the most useful word in his
+German vocabulary, because by the very nature of things it always threw
+the burden of the conversation on to the shoulders of the other party.
+
+"You cannot pretend that it is an article of wearing apparel for
+madame," said the officer archly.
+
+"I never said that it was an article of wearing apparel for any one,"
+Jack retorted hotly; "I asked why I had to pay thirty _centimes_ on it.
+It isn't new and it isn't dutiable, and I know that, and you know it
+too."
+
+"What is it, anyhow?" asked the man.
+
+"It's to write on."
+
+"Why does not madame write on paper, like everybody else?" inquired the
+witty fellow.
+
+"There's your six cents," said Jack, in great disgust; "I reckon you
+take _pfennigs_, don't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said the Austrian, "we take everything."
+
+"Yes," replied the American, "so I observed in Vienna."
+
+Then he turned away and the porter loaded up again.
+
+They went out on the platform and were told that the train had just
+gone.
+
+"_Wo fahren Sie hin?_" asked the guard, taking pity on their
+consternation at being left high and dry so unexpectedly.
+
+"Zurich."
+
+"Oh, then that wasn't your train anyway; that train went to Rorshack.
+You take the Zurichbahn at half-past three."
+
+There was three-quarters of an hour to wait.
+
+"Do you suppose that there is anything worth seeing in Bregenz?" the man
+of the party suggested.
+
+"I don't want to see it if there is," his cousin replied.
+
+"Well, I do want to see it, even if there isn't," he answered; "you and
+Ottillie can go into the waiting-room and I'll be back in half an hour."
+
+So he went off whistling, his ulster floating serenely around him.
+Rosina established herself in a boarded-off angle which under existing
+circumstances was dignified by the title of "Warte-Saal," and every nail
+that was driven into the new Gare of Bregenz pierced her aching heart
+and echoed in her aching head.
+
+After the lapse of half an hour Jack turned up again, having thoroughly
+exhausted Bregenz and purchased a new cane most ingeniously carved with
+bears' heads and paws interlaced.
+
+He was not overpleased to be informed that the Zurichbahn was late, and
+that there was no probability of their leaving the dominions of Francis
+Joseph before four o'clock at the earliest.
+
+"It's an awful shame the way this world is put on," he said, yawning and
+walking up and down; "it would be Paradise to Von Ibn to have the right
+to cart you and your bags around, and it's h--l for me, and I've got it
+to do notwithstanding."
+
+"I never sent for you to take me home," Rosina said in an outraged tone.
+
+"Oh, I wasn't blaming you," he declared amicably.
+
+"Oh," she said coldly, "I thought that you were."
+
+The Zurichbahn was very late, and did not put in an appearance until
+half-past four. Then they went aboard with a tired feeling that would
+have done credit to an arrival in Seattle from New York.
+
+"Do we change again?" Rosina asked with latent sarcasm, when the guard
+(a handsome guard, worthy to have been a first lieutenant at the very
+least) came through to tear some pages out of their little books.
+
+"_Wo fahren Sie hin?_" he asked, with a beaming smile.
+
+"Zurich," Jack sung out, with renewed vigor.
+
+The guard opened the door leading into the next compartment, and then,
+when his exit was assured, he told them:
+
+"Must in St. Margarethen change," and vanished.
+
+"He knows the time for disappearing, evidently," Jack said; "I bet
+somebody that felt as I do threw him out of the window when he said that
+once. And I have a first-class notion of getting down and taking the
+next train straight back to Munich for the express purpose of murdering
+that fellow that started us out this morning."
+
+Rosina felt a deep satisfaction that none of his heat could be charged
+up to her; _she_ had offered no advice as to this unlucky day. She sat
+there silent, her eyes turned upon the last view of the Bodensee, and
+after some varied and picturesque swearing her cousin laid down and went
+to sleep again.
+
+They arrived in St. Margarethen about half-past five, and night, a damp,
+chill night, was falling fast. The instant that the train halted a guard
+rushed in upon them.
+
+"_Wo fahren Sie hin?_" he cried, breathlessly.
+
+"Zurich, d---- you!" Jack howled. He was making too small a shawl-strap
+meet around too large a rug for the fifth time that day, and the last
+remnant of his patience had fled.
+
+"Must be very quick; no time to lose," said the man and hurried away.
+
+That he spoke a deep and underlying truth was evidenced by the mad rush
+of passengers and porters which immediately ensued. They joined the
+crowd and found themselves speedily flung in some shape into Zurichbahn
+No. II., which moved out of the station at once.
+
+Jack was too saturated with sleep to be able to try any more. He went
+through to the smoker's compartment, and Rosina looked apathetically out
+upon the Lake of Zurich and reflected her same reflections over again
+and again. The moon, which had looked down upon the Isar rapids, rode
+amidst masses of storm clouds above the dark sheet of water, and
+illuminated with its fitful light the shadows that lay upon the bosom of
+the waves. She felt how infinitely darker were the shadows within her
+own bosom, and how vain it was to seek for any moon among her personal
+clouds.
+
+"It's a terrible thing to have been married," she thought bitterly.
+"Before you've been married you're so ready to be married to any one,
+and after you've been married you don't dare marry any one." Then she
+took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. "Oh, dear," she sobbed,
+"it doesn't seem as if I could possibly be more wretched with him than I
+am without him!"
+
+They reached Zurich in the neighborhood of nine o'clock. The end of a
+trip always brings a certain sense of relief to the head of the party,
+and Jack's spirits rose prodigiously as he got them all into a cab.
+
+"We'll get something to eat that's good," he declared gayly, "and then
+to-morrow, after a first-class night's sleep, we'll go over the
+Gotthard, and be in Milan Monday. And then, ho for Genoa, Gibraltar, and
+joy everlasting!"
+
+He seized Rosina's hand and gave it a hard squeeze.
+
+"Cheer up, you poor dear!" he cried; "you'll come out all right in the
+end,--now you see!"
+
+She pressed her lips tightly together and did not trust herself to say
+one word in reply.
+
+She felt that she was beginning to really hate her cousin.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Fifteen
+
+
+They stood at the summit of that double flight of marble steps which run
+up the right-hand side of the Milan Cathedral's roof and down the left.
+There are one hundred steps on either side, and having just mounted the
+right-hand hundred Rosina looked down the left-hand hundred with an
+affright born of appreciative understanding.
+
+"Oh, Jack," she cried, "I never shall get down from here alive! What did
+you ever bring me up for?"
+
+"I brought you up to talk," said her cousin. "Come over here, and sit
+down on the ridge-pole beside me."
+
+The ridge-pole of the Milan Cathedral is of white marble, like all the
+rest of the edifice; it is wide and flat, and just the height for a
+comfortable seat.
+
+The cousins placed themselves side by side thereon, and Jack lit a
+cigarette while he deliberated on just how he should proceed with the
+case in hand.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Well," he said at last, folding his arms, clearing his throat, crossing
+his legs, and in other ways testifying to the solemnity of what was
+forthcoming, "I want you to pay a lot of attention to what I'm going to
+say, Rosina, for I'm going to talk to you very seriously, and you must
+weigh my words well, for once let us get out to sea next week and it
+will be too late to ever take any back tacks as to this matter."
+
+She turned her sad eyes towards him; she was looking pale and tired, but
+not cross or impatient.
+
+"Go on," she said quietly.
+
+"It's just this: it's four days now since we left Munich, and I can see
+that your spirits aren't picking up any; instead, you seem more utterly
+done up every day. So I've made up my mind to give you one more chance.
+It's this way: you know we're all awfully fond of you and proud of you
+and all that, but you know too that no one can ever make you out or
+manage you--unless it's me," he added parenthetically; "and you always
+do what you please, and you always will do what you please, and the
+family share in the game generally consists in having to get you out of
+the messes that your own folly gets you into. You didn't need to marry,
+you know, but you just would do it in spite of anything that any one
+could say, and all we could do was to be sorry for it, and sorry for
+you when you were unhappy, as we all knew that you would be beforehand.
+And that was the one mess that no one could get you out of. Well, then
+he died, and you had another show." Jack paused and jarred his cigarette
+ash off with his finger-tip. "You know and I know just who there was
+waiting there at home, but you elected to turn them all down and come
+over here to travel around alone. And that was all right as long as you
+stayed alone, but terribly risky when,--well, when that letter was
+written in Zurich--"
+
+"Ah," she cried sharply, "then it _was_ from Zurich!"
+
+"Yes, it was from Zurich," he replied indifferently; "and it was
+perfectly natural under the circumstances that the letter should have
+been written. The letter was straightforward enough, only, of course, it
+necessitated Uncle John's sending me over to--"
+
+"But I hadn't known him but three days then," she interrupted.
+
+"That wasn't making any difference to him, evidently. And so I came over
+and looked up everything; and I even did more, I came there to Munich
+and went off with him on that trip so as to learn just everything that
+it was possible to learn, and it all comes to just what I've told you
+before: if you want to marry him, you can; if you don't want to marry
+him, you needn't; but for Heaven's sake why do you persist in refusing
+him if it uses you up so awfully?"
+
+Her mouth quivered and her eyes filled slowly.
+
+"Have you been flirting?" he asked, with a very real kindness veiled in
+his voice, "or do you really love him?"
+
+She lifted her wet eyes to his.
+
+"I don't know," she said, with simple sincerity; and after a minute she
+added, "But I can't make up my mind to marry just for the sake of
+finding out."
+
+Jack whistled softly.
+
+"So that's it!" he said at last.
+
+They remained sitting quietly side by side for two or three minutes, and
+then he spoke again; his voice was gentle, but firm and resolved, and
+there was a sort of finality about his words which clinched into her
+heart like an ice-grip.
+
+"Then the best thing to do is just what we're doing; I know that you
+wanted to stay and see more of him, but, feeling as you do, that
+wouldn't have been right to him or to yourself either. It seems tough on
+you, but you'll get over it in a few months, and if it comes to a
+funeral for Von Ibn--why, it isn't our funeral, anyway!"
+
+He stood up as he spoke, and smiled and held out his hand to her. She
+rose, feeling as if some fearful ultimatum had been proclaimed above her
+head.
+
+"It's sort of hard, you know," Jack said, as he assisted her carefully
+down the steep steps; "it's _awful_ hard to travel with you and have you
+never smile and never say anything, and not be able to explain that you
+feel bad because you won't marry a man who wants you and whom you want."
+
+"I married just such a man once upon a time," she replied sadly.
+
+"Yes," said Jack; "but I didn't like that man, and I do like Von Ibn."
+
+She drew a quick breath.
+
+From the cathedral they returned directly to the hotel.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Sixteen
+
+
+It was Genoa.
+
+The end of all was at hand.
+
+Rosina recollected the careless, callous manner with which in earlier,
+happier days she had spoken of this fated spot.
+
+"Are you going home by the Southern Route?"
+
+"Yes, we sail from Genoa;" or, "Do you leave at Naples?" "Oh, no, it's
+Monte Carlo this time, so we shall get off at Genoa."
+
+Genoa!
+
+Once she had thought its blue mountain masses most sublimely beautiful,
+now anything with hollows and shadows reminded her of those two
+misery-circled eyes, and she was led to wonder afresh if he, or she,
+would ever recover.
+
+It is always astonishing how the port from which we sail partakes of our
+sailing sentiments. It's a "jolly good place" or a "dull old hole," just
+according to who is on the deck or who is on the dock. Handkerchiefs
+flutter gayly in the stolid face of Hoboken every day of the year, and
+many beside Marie Stuart have wept themselves out of sight of sunny
+France. It isn't the place that counts when the anchor goes down or up,
+it's the Who and the When; and in view of what has filled all the
+foregoing pages I trust that the reader will sympathize with Rosina and
+pardon my slang if I state that Genoa appeared to her upon this occasion
+very much more rocky than ever before.
+
+Their arrival had not been auspicious, to begin with. The cab on its
+narrow way hotel-ward had collided energetically with another cab and
+had a wheel taken off. Jack was on the high side, and Rosina was only
+too anxious to have anything happen to her; but Ottillie, who had
+narrowly escaped being pitched out on her head, was quite perturbed, and
+feared that the accident was a bad omen for the voyage.
+
+The following morning Rosina saw her cousin leave for the inevitable
+visit to Fratelli's, and when he was safely out of the way she put on a
+walking-suit, veiled herself thickly, and, taking a carriage, went all
+alone to that grand eastern sweep of boulevard whose panorama of sea and
+city is so beyond the language of any pen to portray. At the summit she
+dismissed the carriage, and rested there alone, leaning against the iron
+balustrade, her eyes turned afar, her bosom riven by emotions as
+limitless as the horizon that lay before her. A sailing-vessel was
+spreading its wings for an Egyptian flight; in the port to her right
+the great white ocean liner was loading her cargo; overhead the gulls
+whirled, shrieking. But to all she was blind, deaf, unwitting.
+
+For with the conversation upon the ridge-pole of the Milan Cathedral
+life had seemed to close for her. The finality of Jack's ruling had
+barred the future out of her present forever. There is no more
+unmitigated grief for a woman than to be chained to the consequences
+begotten of her own way, and to have her judgment taken seriously and
+acted upon, to the end that all possible chance of change is swept
+forever beyond the reach of her will.
+
+She hung there against the cold iron and knew no tears, because her
+wretchedness had outstripped their solace.
+
+Her reasons had reached the pass where they craved to be overruled, and
+no one was going to overrule them. She did not state the facts to
+herself in so many words, but she felt her helplessness and moaned her
+pain.
+
+Oh, that pain! the pain of one who sees the light too late, who divines
+the sun only by the splendor of the glow which it has left behind. What
+memories they hold to torture everlastingly! What reveries they nurse
+from thence on evermore!
+
+If only more had been said, or less! If only more had been denied, or
+granted! There is forever imprinted on the brain some one especial look
+which time can never dim--some special word whose burden nor sleep nor
+wake will lighten.
+
+There, at her feet, the Isar rushed, and through the myriad murmur of
+its rapids his voice came back to her. "_Tout est fini_,--all is
+finished!" he had said, with that enveloping mist of melancholy in which
+his spirit shrouded itself so easily. And then a wax taper flashed
+before the blackness that sheathed her vision, and she looked in
+heart-quivering agony upon the dumb appeal of those great, brown eyes,
+with their shadows doubled by the torturing of the hour.
+
+"He felt perhaps as I feel now," she thought, pressing her hand against
+her bosom; "I didn't know then--I didn't know!"
+
+She turned to walk along the cliff.
+
+"If I was sure," she told herself, "I think that I would--" but there
+she paused, shuddered violently, and left the phrase unfinished.
+
+At luncheon Jack was uncommonly cheerful. He asked her if she didn't
+want to go to Nice and spend one of the two days before their departure.
+She shook her head.
+
+"But why don't you go?" she said; "you could just as well as not."
+
+"I don't know but that I will," he replied; "only I hate to leave you
+here alone."
+
+"Oh, I'll do very well," she assured him, smiling.
+
+About four that afternoon he came into her room, where she was lying in
+a reclining-chair by the window, looking listlessly out and dreaming of
+Munich. He stood before her for a long time, contemplating her and the
+gown of lace and silk which foamed about her throat and arms, and then
+cascaded down to spread in billows on the floor.
+
+"I declare," he said suddenly, "it seems wasteful somehow for you to
+dress like that just to sit here alone."
+
+Her mouth curved a little.
+
+"Is that a night-dress?" he inquired curiously.
+
+"No, cousin, it's a tea-gown."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+He stood still beside her.
+
+"They told me a funny thing at the steamship office this morning," he
+said, after a while; "the man says that there's never a steamer sails
+but that some one who has made their last payment down is obliged for
+some reason to stay behind."
+
+"Do they give them back their money?" she asked, trying to appear
+interested.
+
+"Yes; and they always fill the room either at Naples or Gibraltar."
+
+And still he stood there.
+
+"Why don't you sit down?" she asked at last.
+
+"Where's Ottillie?" he said, without seeming to notice her question.
+
+"I've sent her out to do some errands. Why, do you want anything done?"
+
+"No;" he leaned over and kissed her cheek. "I do love you, Rosina," he
+added, half joking, half serious; "I wonder what sort of a show I'd have
+had if I'd tried--ever?"
+
+She shrank from him with a quick breath.
+
+"Oh, Jack, I beg of you, don't tease me these days."
+
+He straightened up and laughed, taking out his watch.
+
+"It's quarter after four," he said, reflecting. "The mail must be in;
+I'll see if there are any letters," and he went out.
+
+She remained by the window, twirling the shade-tassel with her idle
+fingers, and seeing, not the rattle and clatter of Italian street-life,
+but the great space of the Maximilian-Joseph Platz, with the doves
+pattering placidly over the white and black pattern of its pavement, and
+the Maximiliansstrasse stretching before her with the open arches of the
+Maximilianeum closing its long vista at the further end....
+
+Quick steps in the hall broke in upon her day dream, and her cousin
+re-entered, an open letter in his hand and his face curiously drawn. He
+gave her one strange look and halted.
+
+"What has happened?" she asked hastily and anxiously.
+
+He went to the window and looked out, so that his back was turned
+towards her and his face concealed from her view.
+
+"I've just heard from Von Ibn," he said briefly.
+
+"Is that letter from him?"
+
+"No; he's not writing any letters these days."
+
+"Oh--" she began, and then stopped.
+
+He kept his back towards her, and then, after a short pause:
+
+"He's going all to pieces," he said in a low tone, very slowly.
+
+"Oh--" she exclaimed again, and again stopped.
+
+"I reckon he's pretty badly off; he's got beyond himself. He's--well,
+he's--. Rosina, the long and short of it is, he's gone crazy!"
+
+She rose slowly out of her seat, her face deadly white, her finger-nails
+turned cruelly into her palms.
+
+"Jack!" she stammered; "Jack!"
+
+He continued to look from the window.
+
+"I knew he'd take it awfully hard," he said, in a voice that sounded
+strained, "but I didn't think he'd give up so completely; he's--"
+
+Then she screamed, reaching forth and touching his hand.
+
+"You're not breaking it to me that he's dead! You're not telling me that
+he's dead!"
+
+He turned from the window at that, and was shocked at her face and the
+way that her hands were twisting.
+
+"I know he's dead!" she screamed again, and he sprang forward and caught
+her in his arms as she sank down there at his knees.
+
+"He is _not_ dead!" he told her forcefully; "honestly, he is _not_ dead!
+But he's in a bad way, and with it all just as it is, I don't know what
+to do about you. If you don't care, why, as I said before, it's not our
+funeral; but if you do care, I--well, I--"
+
+"Oh, Jack, can I go to him? I must go to him! Can't you take me to him?"
+
+She writhed in his arms as if she also was become a maniac.
+
+"Do you really want to go to him? Do you know what that means? It means
+no more backing out, now or never."
+
+"I know, I understand, I'm willing! Only hurry! only telegraph that I
+will come! only--" she began to choke.
+
+"I'll tell you," said he, putting her into the big chair again; "you
+shall go to him. Stay there a minute and I'll get my railway guides and
+look it up right away. Collect yourself, be a good girl!"
+
+He went out, and she folded her hands and prayed wildly:
+
+"God, let him live! God, take me to him!" over and over again.
+
+And then her impatience stretched the seconds into minutes, and she
+sought her cousin's room, which was just across the hall from the suite
+given to herself.
+
+She flung the door open without knocking and entered precipitately,
+expecting to find Jack and the railway guides. But Jack was not there.
+
+There _was_ a man there, sitting by the window, twisting his moustache
+and biting his lips in raging impatience. To this man Jack had said
+three minutes before, "She'll be in here in less than sixty seconds. I'm
+going to the steamship office," and then the man had been left to wait,
+and his was not a patient disposition....
+
+A tall man, a dark man, a man whose hair lay in loose, damp, wavy locks
+above his high forehead; a man whose eyes were heavy-circled underneath,
+and whose long, white hands beat nervously upon the chair-arms.
+
+At the sound of the opening door the man looked up. She was there,
+staring as if petrified, by the door.
+
+He made one bound. She was within his arms.
+
+"_Alors tu m'aimes!_" he cried, and something mutual swallowed her reply
+and the consciousness of both for one long heaven-rifting minute.
+
+"_Alors tu m'aimes?_" he said again, with a great quivering breath; "_tu
+m'aimes, n'est-ce pas?_"
+
+"With my whole heart and soul and life," she confessed.
+
+And then he kissed her hastily, hungrily, murmuring:
+
+"_Ma cherie!_ my angel, mine, mine!"
+
+She cried a little and laughed a little, looked up a little and looked
+down a little, tried to draw away from him and found herself drawn yet
+nearer; was kissed, and kissed him; was looked upon and returned the
+look; felt the strength of his love and felt the strength of her own;
+feeling at last that the wavelets of Lucerne which had splashed softly
+up against the stones at Zurich, and murmured in her ears at Constance,
+had been swelled by the current of the Isar into a mighty resistless
+storm that here, this day, upon the rocky coast of the Mediterranean,
+had come resistlessly roaring upwards, and, sweeping away all barriers,
+carried her heart and her life out into its bottomless depths
+forevermore.
+
+"_Attends!_" he said, after a minute, loosing her suddenly to the end
+that he might turn the key in Jack's door; then he took her by the hand
+and led her to the chair where he had been sitting. It was one of those
+vast and luxurious _fauteuils_ which have prevented the Old World from
+ever importing the rocker. He installed her in its depth and placed
+himself upon the broad and cushioned arm.
+
+"_Mon Dieu, que je suis heureux!_" he said, smiling down into her eyes;
+"_alors tu m'aimes vraiment_?"
+
+"Jack told me that you were terribly ill," she said, her eyes resting
+upon his face with a sort of overwhelming content.
+
+"And you have care?"
+
+"I thought that I should lose my mind!"
+
+"_Ma cherie!_"
+
+"But you really look as if you had been ill?"
+
+"Not ill, but most _malheureux_. It has not been easy always to wait and
+believe that you shall love me yet."
+
+"But you always did believe it?"
+
+He smiled his irresistible smile of eyes and lip.
+
+"Your cousin has said to me in Tagernsee, 'She will certainly marry you
+because she declares that she will not, and she always does do exactly
+_le contraire_;' but, _Mon Dieu_, how could I trust to that?"
+
+Rosina laughed ringingly.
+
+"Dear Jack! I wish that I had known myself as well as he knows me."
+
+"He has been very good to me," said Von Ibn, leaning above her and
+breaking his sentences in a manner that was perhaps only natural, all
+things considered; "he has kept me from--the real madness. But for him I
+was quite willing to shoot myself. It has never been anything so
+terrible for me as--when you enter the door of the _pension_ that night
+and shut it between us."
+
+She lifted up her hand and closed his big eyes with its soft touch.
+
+"I loved you in Lucerne," she declared to his blindness, "that first
+moment when I saw you walking on the Quai. I did not know why, but I
+felt that I _must_ know you."
+
+He snatched her hand away and laughed.
+
+"_Voila!_" he exclaimed; "what have I say to you that time in Munich,
+that the women are always _genees_! You love in Lucerne, and insist not
+for all the summer after."
+
+Then they laughed together.
+
+"Would you have liked me to have told you there on the Quai? would you
+have believed it?"
+
+"Yes," he said gravely; "I would have believed it very well, because I
+also knew the same. In the hotel I had seen you, and on the Promenade I
+said myself, '_Voila la jolie Americaine encore une fois!_' You see!"
+
+She wondered how she had ever for a moment thought that his eyes were
+melancholy, they appeared so big and bright and joyous now.
+
+"When did you come?" she remembered to ask after a long time.
+
+"I am come yesterday morning."
+
+"Before we did?"
+
+"Oh, yes; because I have very much here to do."
+
+"In Genoa?"
+
+"Yes; and Jack and I have been out all this morning also."
+
+"And I never knew!"
+
+He looked a little uneasy and rose to his feet.
+
+"There is something very serious that I must say," he said, standing
+before her.
+
+She looked up in a little anxiety; a crowd of ordinary, every-day
+thoughts suddenly swarmed into her mind.
+
+"Do not be _genee_!" he implored parenthetically; "what I have to say is
+so most important."
+
+"I am not _genee_," she assured him.
+
+"Then why do you not come and stand by me?" he asked. "If you love me
+and will not show it, I am to be very unhappy always."
+
+Rosina laughed; but she stood up and went close to him at once.
+
+"I do love you," she said, "and I am not at all afraid to show it. You
+see!"
+
+He took her face between his hands and gazed down fondly upon her.
+
+"Love is good, is it not?" he said. "There is a great joy to me to hold
+you so, and reflect upon those stairs at Munich."
+
+He paused--perhaps in consideration of the Munichian stairs--for a
+moment, and then said:
+
+"I have heard that there is love so strong that it crushes; if I ever
+take hold of you so that your bones break, it is only that I think of
+the stairs in Munich."
+
+She laughed again.
+
+"I will remember," she said, not at all frightened.
+
+He took her two hands tightly within his own.
+
+"I must now say that very serious thing."
+
+"But I shall not run away."
+
+"No, but you may be surprised and unarrange yourself before I can hold
+you to stop."
+
+"Go on," she begged.
+
+"It is this: Jack and I have been out all this morning, because all
+must be very ready; I--" he stopped.
+
+"You are going with us?" she exclaimed joyously.
+
+"No; I--"
+
+"You are not going before we do?"
+
+He smiled and shook his head.
+
+Then he drew her very closely and tenderly to him and kissed her eyes
+and forehead.
+
+"It is that I am to be married to-morrow," he told her softly, and held
+her tightly as the shock of his words ran quivering through her.
+
+"And I!" she gasped, after two or three paralyzed seconds.
+
+"Naturally you are to be married also."
+
+She stared mutely up into the reassurance of his smile.
+
+"Jack and I find that best," he said. "I have no time to go to America
+to bring you again, and all is quite good arranged. I have telegraphed
+to Dresden about a larger apartment, and those papers from the lawyers
+in New York waited here when you came. We may not marry like peasants,
+you and I, you know."
+
+She felt completely overcome.
+
+"_To-morrow!_" she said, at last.
+
+"Yes," he said placidly; "I am much hasted to be again in the north, and
+we have arranged with the consuls--your consul and my consul--for
+to-morrow."
+
+"But my steamer passage!"
+
+"Oh, that your cousin has given up; all the money has been returned. I
+think for a little that we will go with him as far as Naples, but I go
+and look at your stateroom this morning, and I have just a _centimetre_
+more than the berth."
+
+Rosina was forced to laugh; her humor began to bubble riotously upwards
+at the notion of Von Ibn and Jack measuring the berth that morning. He
+did not know why she laughed, but he kissed her without caring.
+
+"For me there is no comfort under two _metres_," he declared vigorously.
+
+Just then the owner of the room tried the door.
+
+"This is my room," he called through the crack.
+
+They looked at each other, and she ran lightly to the door, unlocked it
+and let her cousin enter.
+
+"You fearful liar!" she exclaimed, as he put his arm about her, and held
+out the spare hand to her lover. "Oh, Jack, you awful, _awful_ liar,
+what shall I say to you?"
+
+"Say to him that you are most happy," her lover suggested.
+
+Jack was beaming.
+
+"I never said a word that wasn't true," he declared. "You asked me if
+the letter was from him, and I said that he wasn't writing any letters
+these days, and then I said that he was going crazy."
+
+"And that was most true," the other man broke in; "I have no manner to
+think left in my head these later nights."
+
+"And you began to scream that you must go to him, and I told you that
+you could go; and I see that you went."
+
+Von Ibn crossed to the chimney-piece and picked up a cigarette and a
+match. He was smiling to himself.
+
+"She consents to be married to-morrow," he said, facing about.
+
+"Yes," said Rosina airily; "I see that conventionality and I are to be
+more two than ever henceforth, so I am going to yield up my own way at
+once."
+
+"You are a brave fellow," Jack said to his friend; "I have always been
+able to do more with her than any one else, but, honestly, I tell you
+that I, even I, would never dare to undertake her forever."
+
+Von Ibn lit his cigarette and laughed.
+
+"She will obey me," he said easily; "she will have to. It will be a
+great good for her. I shall be very tender with her and most severe,
+that is what is best for a woman."
+
+"Oh, Rosina!" said Jack, and in his tone resounded a succession of many
+feelings each more indescribable than its predecessor.
+
+"It is not needful that you kiss her," the lover went on, coming back
+across the room; "I wish that you would not, that does me no pleasure to
+watch."
+
+"I don't care anything about kissing her," the cousin replied; "Rosina's
+novelty in kisses was over for me before I was five years old. Don't you
+remember--"
+
+Some one rapped at the door.
+
+"_Entrez!_" they cried in chorus.
+
+It was a _garcon_ with a card.
+
+"'Madame La Francesca,'" said Rosina, reading. "Who is Madame La
+Francesca?"
+
+The two men exchanged glances.
+
+"Where is the lady?" Jack asked.
+
+"She is gone at once to madame's room," the boy replied.
+
+"You'd better go and see who's in your room," Jack suggested; "and you,"
+he added, turning to her _fiance_, "you must come with me and attend to
+what yet remains to be done."
+
+Rosina hesitated, her hand upon the door-knob.
+
+"I will come at once," she told the boy, who was waiting, and then she
+looked towards the man by the chimney-piece.
+
+"Never mind me," said her cousin kindly; "I'll look out of the window,
+if you wish."
+
+Von Ibn threw his cigarette into the grate.
+
+"You need not look from the window," he said, laughing; "you may look
+straight to us, and see two most happy."
+
+He put his hand on either side of her smile and took the smile to
+himself. Then she went out.
+
+"I can't tell you," the American said warmly, "how glad I am for you
+both. I do honestly think that she'll make you very happy. And I hope
+and pray that you'll be good to her."
+
+"I shall be good to her," said his friend seriously; "I know her well.
+She is very '_tendre_' and I love her much; she will not have her own
+will always, but with her love she will do mine. It is that that makes
+the life so happy with us. We give much affection and little liberty; it
+is not well for you, because with you all is so different. In America it
+is all liberty, and no time for love."
+
+"Maybe not," said Jack carelessly; "but we make a lot of money all the
+same." He picked up his ulster with the deer-horn buttons. "You're
+coming, aren't you?" he said.
+
+The other man sought an eminently correct overcoat and silk hat in the
+adjoining room.
+
+"_Naturlich_," he said, "you know that I am of at any rate an equal
+interest with you in what is to be to-morrow."
+
+Jack laughed.
+
+"Perhaps if you knew your lady as well as I do--" he began, and then he
+stopped.
+
+They went out to the staircase, and Von Ibn descended several steps in
+advance. Jack contemplated his back, and his lips twitched with the
+conquering of a rebellious smile.
+
+"So there walks the end of all," he said to himself. "Who would have
+thought it of Rosina! Poor girl, she is about over; in fact, I'm afraid
+that, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, 'Rosina' has already
+ceased to exist--knocked under for good, so to speak. Only to think of
+that particular girl choosing a thorough-bred European husband with a
+Tartar syllable in his name!" He paused and chuckled. "I've proved my
+truth to Carter, anyhow. I told him that there was but one man in
+America clever enough to marry my cousin, and now he'll perceive that
+that man's brains so far surpass the brains of all others, that,
+although capable of marrying her, he took precious good care to marry
+her to another fellow. Well, if they're happy they owe it all to me; and
+if they're miserable, they have no one but themselves to blame."
+
+Von Ibn had paused at the foot of the stairs and now looked up, smiling,
+into his friend's eyes.
+
+"I am this day so greatly rejoiced," he said earnestly, "what life is to
+have for me, and for her, after this! You may not divine it, I think."
+
+Jack looked into the warm and shining light of his uplifted face.
+
+"I hope you'll both be just everlastingly happy," he said sincerely.
+
+"But that is certain," the lover said, in a tone of deep feeling. "Did
+you look at her to-day? It is heaven she brings me with her. We were two
+in the great world, and Lucerne brought us to one. Then love did all the
+rest."
+
+"Oh, I say," Jack remonstrated; "I certainly worked some too!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Seventeen
+
+
+When Rosina opened her door it was Molly who stood there; a gorgeous
+Molly, put forth by all that was uppermost in the Karntnerstrasse of
+that year.
+
+"Why, where ever did you come from?" she cried.
+
+"From Vienna," said Molly; "from Vienna by way of Botzen and Venice."
+
+"And Madame la Princesse?"
+
+"I've left her and qualified as a chaperone on my own hook."
+
+"You're with Madame--Madame--" Rosina looked down at the
+_carte-de-visite_ which she held in her fingers still.
+
+"I'm not with her; I'm _her_!"
+
+"You're--"
+
+"Madame La Francesca."
+
+"Molly, you're not--"
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"Not _married_?"
+
+The Irish girl, or rather the Italian lady, nodded.
+
+"Why, Molly, however did you do it? you said he was too poor."
+
+"He was too poor."
+
+"And how--"
+
+Molly was pulling off her gloves and laughing.
+
+"My dear, this is another."
+
+Rosina sank abruptly on the sofa.
+
+"'Tis a fact. I never told you a thing about him, but he's as
+handsome--wait!" She put her hand to her collar. "No getting them
+tangled any more," she said, smiling, as she felt for her chain. "I wear
+only one now, but I wear that one night and day."
+
+Rosina could do little else than gasp and stare.
+
+"But who is he?" she asked.
+
+"He's the lieutenant's colonel. He called on me to--Well, I do believe
+I've left that locket on the washstand after all!"
+
+"Haven't you got it on?"
+
+"No, I haven't. And I meant to wear it forever."
+
+"Never mind, go on about the colonel."
+
+"I do hope he won't find the locket, that's all. He put it on me the day
+we were married, and I promised to never unclasp it. Of course I never
+thought of baths when I spoke."
+
+"But do go on about how you came to--"
+
+"I didn't come to any one; he came to me, to beg me to give up the
+lieutenant, who was taking to absinthe. My dear, you should just see the
+man! (Oh, if I _only_ had my locket!) All Italy can't show such another!
+I gave up the lieutenant that day and married the colonel just as fast
+as was possible. That's why I haven't written you this last month."
+
+"Is he rich?"
+
+"Well, not in pounds; but he's a millionaire in these Italian _lire_. We
+shall live like princes,--Italian princes, _bien entendu_."
+
+"But when were you married?"
+
+"Day before yesterday; to-day's the first time I've taken off the
+locket."
+
+"And where?"
+
+"In Venice. Oh, 'twas like heaven, being paddled to church."
+
+"And now you're--"
+
+"Signora La Francesca."
+
+"Well, I declare!"
+
+Rosina leaned back, staring helplessly. Finally she said:
+
+"And how did you happen to come here?"
+
+"To your wedding. I hurried my own a little on that account."
+
+"_Molly_, then you knew about me!"
+
+Molly swept down upon the sofa and folded her friend in her arms.
+
+"Knew about you! Why, my dear, I knew about you in Zurich. How could I
+help it? How could any one help it?"
+
+"Why, Molly, was it as bad as that?"
+
+"Worse," said the signora briefly.
+
+"But you never could have known that I would marry him in Genoa then?"
+
+"Oh, no; of course I didn't know about Genoa, I only knew you were bound
+to marry him somewhere."
+
+"When did you know about Genoa?"
+
+"Last week. Your cousin wrote me."
+
+Rosina's face was a study, but finally she began to laugh.
+
+"Molly, I have been tricked and deceived at every turn by those two men.
+Just listen while I tell you all about it."
+
+Molly listened and was told all about it, from the Isar to the
+Mediterranean, the roof of Milan's cathedral included.
+
+"You wouldn't believe it, would you?" the heroine of all concluded when
+she paused, altogether out of breath.
+
+"Yes, I would. Because really I never saw two people so tremendously in
+love before."
+
+"And you thought I--cared for him when we were there in Zurich?"
+
+"I didn't think; I could see it with my eyes shut."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Sure! and as to him--" the signora shrugged her shoulders expressively.
+
+Rosina threw her arms around her and kissed her.
+
+"Oh, I am so delightfully glad to be so happy, and for you to be so
+happy at the same time."
+
+"Yes, I like to be happy myself," Molly confessed.
+
+"You _are_ happy, aren't you? You do like being married, don't you?"
+
+"Pleasantest two days of my life," declared the bride, with apparent
+sincerity.
+
+"Do you think your husband is as good-looking as monsieur?"
+
+Molly started violently.
+
+"_As good-looking!_ Why, my dear, didn't I tell you that he was the--Oh,
+if I _only_ had my locket!"
+
+"Never mind," Rosina said soothingly; "you can think he's handsomest, if
+you like, I don't mind. At any rate, he isn't a great musician."
+
+"No," said Molly proudly; "but he's a colonel, and a colonel ranks a
+genius anywhere, any day, in Europe."
+
+"All right," said the _fiancee_ amicably; "but, dear, didn't you think
+that it was awful in Jack to tell me that he'd gone crazy, and frighten
+me half to death?"
+
+"It must have been a terrible blow when you found that he hadn't cared
+enough to go crazy, after all."
+
+"_Molly!_"
+
+"And however are you going to exist with the _'temperament jaloux_'?"
+
+"I never minded that a bit. Every time he is angry he is _so_ adorable
+afterwards. We shall have such lovely makings-up. Oh, I expect to just
+revel in his rages!"
+
+Madame La Francesca's dimples danced afresh.
+
+"And I," she said, "I was raised with a hot-headed Irish father and four
+hot-headed Irish brothers, and I've been engaged to one peppery
+Scotchman and to frequent red-peppery continentals, so I find my ideal
+in an Italian who is, as the French say, '_Doux comme un agneau._'"
+
+"I thought it was '_Doux comme un mouton_,'" said Rosina cruelly, even
+while she was conscious of a real and genuine pity for her friend, under
+the circumstances.
+
+"No, it's '_agneau_,'" the other replied placidly, and then she rose and
+shook out her stunning blue grenadine self. "I must go. I've been away a
+long time."
+
+"You don't get a bit tired of him, do you?"
+
+"Well, I haven't yet."
+
+"Isn't it curious? I used to be so bored if I had to talk to the same
+man into the second hour, and then I never guessed what made me so
+contented to walk around with this one forever and ever."
+
+"But you know now?"
+
+"Yes, I know now."
+
+"I shall see you to-night," Molly said, adjusting her hat before the
+pier-glass; "your cousin is going to give an especially magnificent
+dinner to just we five."
+
+"I didn't know that he was going to give a dinner," Rosina exclaimed,
+starting up affrightedly. "Why, all my trunks are down on the steamer!"
+
+"They aren't now," said Molly, "they're in the next room; and your gown
+is laid out on the bed, and on the table is a diamond star from your
+cousin, and a bracelet from my beloved and myself, and a perfectly
+ripping tiara from your beloved to yourself."
+
+Rosina put two bewildered hands to her head.
+
+"Nobody tells me _anything_!" she wailed.
+
+"No," said Molly mockingly; "you're so set on having your own way that
+it really seems wiser not to."
+
+Then they threw their arms about one another, kissed, laughed, kissed
+again, and parted.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eighteen
+
+
+It was some ten or twelve days later, and the hour was half-past nine,
+and the scene a private salon in the Schweizerhof at Lucerne. It was
+early November, or very close upon it, and so a fire blazed on the
+hearth, and the looped-back curtains at the windows showed only a
+mirrored reflection of what was within. Beside the chimney-piece stood a
+wee table with a coffee service upon it, and scattered on the floor
+beside was a typical European mail,--letters, postals and papers galore;
+the "Munchener Jugend," the "Town Topics," a "Punch," a "Paris-Herald,"
+the "Fliegender-Blatter," three "Figaros," and two "Petit-Journaux."
+There was a grand piano across one corner of the room, and the priceless
+Stradivarius lay in its unlocked case beside it. Upon the music-rack was
+spread "Le Souvenir" of Vieuxtemps, with directions in pencil dashed
+across it here and there, and upward sweeps and great fortes and
+pianissimos indicated by the hand that was never patient with life, but
+always positive in the painstaking of perfection as to its art.
+
+The artist himself lay in a deep chair before the fire, smoking and
+dreaming in his old familiar way; his wife sat on the floor beside him,
+her head leaning against the arm of his chair, her clasped hands hanging
+about his knee, and in her eyes and on her lips there rested a charm of
+utter joy as sweet as it was beautiful.
+
+They were so silent in the content of their mutual reverie that the call
+of the cuckoo clock startled them both slightly. Von Ibn took his cigar
+from between his lips and discovered that it had gone out some time
+since. Rosina smiled at his face and extended her hand towards the
+coffee table, on the side of which lay two or three wax matches.
+
+"No, no," her husband cried quickly, "it is no need. I have quite
+finish," and he threw what remained of the cigar to the flames as he
+spoke. "What have you think of?" he asked, as she laid her head back on
+the chair-arm; "was it of a pleasant thing?"
+
+"I was thinking," she said slowly, "of that man in Zurich, and wondering
+when and where he would learn of our marriage."
+
+"Who of Zurich?"
+
+"Surely you haven't forgotten that man in Zurich that I went to the
+Tonhalle with."
+
+"Oh, yes," he exclaimed quickly; "the one I did go to the Gare with."
+
+"Yes, the one who wrote Uncle John about you."
+
+"Did he write about me? What has that Zuricher man to say of me?"
+
+She rose to her feet and stood beside the fire, staring down into its
+leaping blades of light and flame.
+
+"You know what he said as well as I do,--just everything that he could
+to make trouble for you and me."
+
+Then her wrath began to rise, as it always did when her mind recurred to
+this particular subject.
+
+"What do you suppose made him bother to do such a mean thing? Why did he
+want to make all that trouble for? Why couldn't he stick to his own
+business and let us alone? It is maddening to think of. I shall never
+forgive him--never!"
+
+Von Ibn raised the heavy darkness of his eyes up to her profile, and a
+dancing light passed over the unutterable tenderness that shadowed their
+glow.
+
+"What trouble has he make?" he asked gently; "why may you never forgive
+him? Come to me, here upon my knee, and tell me of that."
+
+He held out his hand, smiling, and she smiled too, and came to take her
+place upon the seat which he had indicated to her.
+
+"He made all the trouble that he possibly could," she said, touching his
+hair here and there with a fanciful hand, while the expression of her
+face indicated a conflict between the sentiments with which the man of
+Zurich inspired her and those provoked by her hearer.
+
+"Ah, so," said the latter; and then after a little he added, "But
+because he writes, your cousin is caused to arrive, and of that arriving
+we are become married. I see no trouble in that. _Au contraire_, I see
+much good. If I think it were really that Zuricher man that has write to
+America I should be most grateful of him. I think I should at once buy
+him a cane as that one which I get myself this afternoon."
+
+"Oh, it was he," she said confidently; "Jack told me as much himself. I
+asked him if the letter was from Zurich, and he said 'Yes.'"
+
+Von Ibn flung his head far back against the chair cushions and laughed
+heartily.
+
+"Oh, _mon Dieu_!" he exclaimed, "I must ever amuse myself of a woman; a
+woman does always know!"
+
+Rosina looked at him.
+
+"Why, it _couldn't_ have been any one else," she said positively; "you
+know _that_."
+
+He caught her face quickly between his hands and kissed it.
+
+"It could very well be myself," he exclaimed, laughing.
+
+"_You!_"
+
+"Yes; quite with ease. _Pourquoi pas?_"
+
+"_You!_"
+
+Then he laughed afresh in the face of her most complete bewilderment.
+
+"_Tu es tordante!_" he said, and then he crushed her suddenly up in his
+arms. "It was I that wrote; it was like this.--You shall hear."
+
+She freed herself so as to regain an upright position and the ability to
+fully satisfy her desire to stare in amazement full in his face.
+
+"It _wasn't you_!" she said incredulously; "not _really_?"
+
+"Yes, it was very really I. _Ecoutez donc_, you shall know all."
+
+He raised her hands in his, palm to palm, the fingers interwoven, and
+looked into her eyes.
+
+"It was because I am quite decided to marry you," he began.
+
+"There, in Zurich!" she interrupted with a gasp.
+
+"No, not in Zurich.--Naturally in Lucerne; here that first day, out
+there where the Quai lies so still in to-night's darkness. When you have
+spoken first to me I have decided, and from that hour on it is become
+only stronger, never less sure."
+
+She was drawn to lay her two arms about his neck and to listen
+breathlessly to his recital.
+
+"If you had been rich and I nobody, it had been so simple to marry you,
+perhaps; but being myself somebody, I cannot risk anything. It is so
+easy to marry an American when one desires but her money, but when one
+has also money and desires to marry, _voila ce qui est difficile_. It
+was for that that I go to the Gare with that man of Zurich,--ah, he has
+surely serve us well, that Zuricher man,--and I get of him the address
+of your uncle, and then I may write to that uncle and beg that one be
+sent over who will have full power to arrange for you, if I can ever
+bring you to say 'Yes.'" He stopped and his voice sank. "I could not be
+sure that you would say 'Yes' ever," he continued softly; "but in your
+eyes, even at first, I have thought to find a hope."
+
+"Go on," she whispered, touching his lips very lightly with her own.
+
+"I am cabled to Leipsic that your cousin will arrive at Havre, and we
+meet there."
+
+Rosina's head flew upward suddenly.
+
+"You met Jack!"
+
+"But certainly. We go together to Dinard that he may meet all my family,
+and then we go to Cassel, where there is a castle to us, and to hunt in
+the Schwarzwald, and then he has written to America that I am quite rich
+and most honest, and of a real love for you; and when there has come an
+answer of your uncle, then I return to Munich to you."
+
+"And I never knew a thing about any of it!"
+
+"_Ah, ma cherie, pour l'instant on n'avait pas besoin de toi_," he
+reminded her, smiling.
+
+"Go on!"
+
+"Jack is very sure that all goes well at the end, and I am full of hope
+when--"
+
+"But if you knew him, why did you strike him that night in front of the
+Regierung?"
+
+"But I did not know him there in the dark, and that he should kiss you
+there in the street, that did me great surprise. And you have scream so,
+naturally I have not think but of a stranger; one would not expect a
+cousin of such a scream."
+
+"And you went off with him the very next day; why didn't you let him go
+alone?"
+
+"He has say you were better left. _Mon Dieu_, but I have been the angel
+these past months! I must despair, you are so much decided; and when I
+despair the most, Jack will always say, 'Wait and you shall see that she
+sails never from Genoa.' But I was most unhappy. And my work, my work
+that should have gone so greatly out to the world this summer!
+_Perdu_--lost--lost!"
+
+She laid her cheek softly against his.
+
+"But that music is not really gone," she whispered; "it will find a
+voice again, a better voice, because--"
+
+She kissed him fondly.
+
+"Oh, of a surety," he said, returning the kiss twofold; "do not think
+that I repent me of one second lost in your winning. _Mon Dieu_, what
+life was left me if I had get you not? That I will never bear to
+remember for a second. But you must now say that you forgive the man who
+did write the letter from Zurich. You will, will you not?"
+
+"Yes," she declared fervently; "I forgive him for ever and always. I
+even," she smiled into his eyes,--"I even feel obliged to him for the
+trouble that he took. But," she added, "I truly never expected to learn
+in the end that ours was simply a '_mariage des convenances_' after
+all!"
+
+"It was as the marriage of a queen," he laughed, taking her hand within
+his own and raising it reverently to his lips; "with such a marriage
+every one knows, everything is quite well ready, the lawyers are done,
+all the papers are signed, and then it is last of all that they go to
+the queen, and the queen does then say 'Yes.'"
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_A New Romance by the Author of "The Shadow of the Czar"_
+
+THE VIKING'S SKULL
+
+    By JOHN R. CARLING, author of "The Shadow of the Czar," etc.
+    Illustrated. 12mo. $1.50
+
+Mr. Carling has written a spirited story of love and adventure, with an
+ingeniously constructed plot, which tells how Idris Marville, true Earl
+of Ormsby, recovered a treasure hidden by one of his progenitors,--a
+Viking of the Ninth Century,--and how he cleared the memory of his
+father, who had been wrongfully convicted of murder. There are many
+powerful scenes in the book and abundant love interest. The whole story
+is exceptionally strong, dramatic, vivid, and interest-compelling. It is
+a worthy successor to the author's remarkable and successful novel, "The
+Shadow of the Czar."
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_A Story of Modern Quebec by Miss Ray_
+
+BY THE GOOD SAINTE ANNE
+
+    By ANNA CHAPIN RAY, author of "The Dominant Strain," etc.
+    With frontispiece. 12mo. $1.25
+
+A young Englishman, Cecil Barth, visiting Quebec on his way to a ranch,
+a New York physician and his daughter Nancy, a Canadian of English
+descent, and a young French-Canadian studying law are the chief
+characters of this charming summer novel, abounding in bright and
+interesting conversations. This pleasing story of the love affairs of
+vivacious Nancy, the heroine, has for a background the many places of
+interest in and around Quebec.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_A Stirring Tale of the Plains_
+
+THE RAINBOW CHASERS
+
+    By JOHN H. WHITSON
+    Author of "Barbara, A Woman of the West," etc. Illustrated.
+    12mo. $1.50
+
+Full of the atmosphere of the West, with a cowboy, land speculator, and
+lover for its hero, Mr. Whitson's new novel, without being in the least
+a copy, has many of the attractions of Mr. Wister's hero, "The
+Virginian."
+
+"The Rainbow Chasers" is a virile American novel and treats of the
+elemental forces of Western life and the results of the great fever of
+speculation in land. The prairies and forests of the West are the scenes
+which the author has chosen for a novel which is full of interest and
+strength.
+
+The characters of the story are vigorous men, men with red blood in
+their veins, men of action who build up new communities.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_By the Author of "A Prince of Sinners"_
+
+ANNA THE ADVENTURESS
+
+    By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM, author of "A Prince of Sinners," etc.
+    Illustrated. 12mo. $1.50
+
+Mr. Oppenheim's new story of London life shows this talented and
+increasingly popular author at his best. The subtle character study of
+two sisters, Anna and Annabel, is masterly. The latter "got herself
+talked about" when she and her sister lived in Paris, and when Sir John
+Ferringham proposed to her, believing her to be Anna, she keeps up the
+delusion. The consequences of this bold deception Mr. Oppenheim has
+unfolded to us with remarkable ingenuity. The story increases in
+interest as it progresses, and sparkles with brilliant conversation and
+strong situations.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_The Story of a Man's Triumph over the Flesh_
+
+THE WOOD-CARVER OF 'LYMPUS
+
+    By MARY E. WALLER, author of "A Daughter of the Rich," etc.
+    Illustrated. 12mo. $1.50
+
+The hero of Miss Waller's new story is one of the most powerful and
+original characters portrayed in recent fiction. Hugh Armstrong, used to
+a busy out-of-door life, in felling a tree meets with an accident and
+loses the use of his limbs. At first he finds it impossible to adjust
+himself to his shut-in life, but a friend suggests wood-carving to him.
+Through work and love a great change comes over him, and the author has
+portrayed to us in a powerful manner Armstrong's salvation. The scenes
+are laid in the Green Mountains of Vermont.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_A New Novel of Present-Day Virginia Life_
+
+WHERE THE TIDE COMES IN
+
+    By LUCY MEACHAM THRUSTON, author of "Mistress Brent," "A Girl
+    of Virginia," etc. Illustrated. 12mo. $1.50
+
+In her new story Mrs. Thruston portrays a heroine as charming as her
+delightful "Girl of Virginia." The scenes of the novel are laid at
+Norfolk and Portsmouth, and the vicissitudes of the Southern vegetable
+farmer, who depends on the irrepressible negro, are strongly pictured.
+The novel is a genuine love-story with a touch of politics, and the
+Southern atmosphere is delightfully unhackneyed.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_A Tale of Norway in the Tenth Century_
+
+THE NORTH STAR
+
+    By M. E. HENRY-RUFFIN. Illustrated. 12mo. $1.50
+
+This Viking romance is a tale of love and adventure with King Olaf
+Tryggveson for the hero. The story opens with a scene at a fair in
+Ireland, where Olaf meets a beautiful Irish princess, and later changes
+to Norway, where Olaf returns to be received as King. Such history and
+legend as have come to us of that time furnish fertile imagination a
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+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
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+
+_By the Author of "The God of Things"_
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+THE EFFENDI
+
+    By FLORENCE BROOKS WHITEHOUSE. With illustrations. 12mo. $1.50
+
+The Prologue of this engrossing romance of the Soudan deals with the
+siege of Khartoum and the death of the hero, Gordon, and the Epilogue
+with the retribution which England exacted from the Arab hordes. Between
+the two is placed a dramatic story of love and adventure.
+
+The author of this stirring story has been highly praised for
+characterization and imagination, and for her knowledge of the Nile
+country.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_Some New Stories by Sienkiewicz_
+
+LIFE AND DEATH
+
+    AND OTHER LEGENDS AND STORIES. By HENRYK
+    SIENKIEWICZ, author of "_Quo Vadis_," etc.   Translated
+    from the original Polish by JEREMIAH CURTIN.   Illustrated.
+    16mo.    $1.00.
+
+Contents: I. Life and Death: a Hindu Legend. II. Is he the Dearest One?
+III. A Legend of the Sea. IV. The Cranes. V. The Judgment of Peter and
+Paul on Olympus.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS
+    BOSTON, MASS.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman's Will, by Anne Warner
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