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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: UTF-8
+
+*** 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 Maximilianbrücke�                “  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
+
+
+
+
+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 Düsseldorf 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 Génève, 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 Düsseldorf, 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
+_ungemüthlich_, 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 _drôle_ 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; _déjeuner_ 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 fâche 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 _déjeuner_,� 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 _déjeuner_,� 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 _garçon_ in the hotel livery brought up a card,
+and, Continental etiquette made it quite _en règle_ 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 portières 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,
+“_ça ne me fait rien_. What he may think of me matters me not at all.
+_Pauvre garçon_, 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 _mètres_ 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 êtes 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 êtes si drôle!_� 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 fâche!_� 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 café 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’Amérique’?�
+
+“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 _étui_ 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, ça!_� 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?�
+
+“_Natürlich._�
+
+“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 _déjeuner_. 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 cherché!_� 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 _garçon_ 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 _fiancés_?�
+
+“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 moiré 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 _garçons_.
+
+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 à 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’Américain 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 _garçon_, 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
+‘_tempérament 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
+Aârburg.�
+
+“To Aârburg!--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 Aârburg 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 _ennuyés_ 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
+Aârburg.�
+
+“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 êtes
+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 fâche 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? _Ça--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? _Bête 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 café, 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 tête-á-tête 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 _drôle_ 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’étais 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?�
+
+“_Natürlich!_ 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 fâche
+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 _bête_, 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?�
+
+“_Espérons!_� 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.
+
+“_Assurément._�
+
+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 café. “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 êtes 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-à-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 Maximilianbrücke,
+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 Luitpoldbrücke
+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 _gemüthlich_, in Dresden together.�
+
+“It will be _gemüthlich_ 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.
+
+“_Ça ne m’intéresse 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 Améliesstrasse 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 Fraülein 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 Fraülein 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 _tempérament 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 façade 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 très-bête!_’ (as I well might say, for I find him often bête
+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 _bête_ 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 façade 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 _bête_ 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’œuvre_, 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 gâter 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 wasyou
+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’êtes 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
+cœur!_ 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’étais tout-à-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 à 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 “_gnädige 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 _très 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 _centimètre_?�
+
+“Two _centimètres_ 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 _bête_, 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
+_bête_ 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 Maximilianbrücke, 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 Luitpoldbrücke 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 _drôle_, 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.
+
+“_Decidément vous n’êtes 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 Luitpoldbrücke 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 café 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 café 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 café. 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-à-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 café.�
+
+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 café 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 cafés. 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 ménu 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 ménu.
+
+“_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 _massé_? 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 fûmer une cigarette_,� he said suddenly, “_ça 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 _genée_, 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 Ludwigsbrücke,� 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 _étui_ 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 être raisonable._ Let
+us go out of the door and go to the Café Luitpold and there speak.�
+
+The Café 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 Café 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 café, 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 désir 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 ça, 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 Hélène 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.
+
+“_Voilà!_� he exclaimed; “what have I say to you that time in Munich,
+that the women are always _gênées_! 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, ‘_Voilà la jolie Américaine 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 _gênée_!� he implored parenthetically; “what I have to say is
+so most important.�
+
+“I am not _gênée_,� 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 _centimétre_
+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 _métres_,� 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 _garçon_ 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 _fiancé_, “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.
+
+“_Natürlich_,� 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 Kärntnerstrasse 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 _fiancée_ 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 _‘tempérament 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-Blätter,� 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. _Écoutez 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, _voilà 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 Hâvre, 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 chérie, 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
+frame for stirring incident and rapid action.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_By the Author of “The God of Things�_
+
+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.
+
+
+    +--------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber’s Note:                              |
+    |                                                  |
+    | Accents are as they appear in the original book. |
+    |                                                  |
+    +--------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman's Will, by Anne Warner
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diff --git a/27225-0.zip b/27225-0.zip
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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: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** 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 Maximilianbrücke"                "  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 Düsseldorf 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 Génève, 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 Düsseldorf, 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
+_ungemüthlich_, 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 _drôle_ 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; _déjeuner_ 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 fâche 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 _déjeuner_," 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 _déjeuner_," 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 _garçon_ in the hotel livery brought up a card,
+and, Continental etiquette made it quite _en règle_ 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 portières 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,
+"_ça ne me fait rien_. What he may think of me matters me not at all.
+_Pauvre garçon_, 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 _mètres_ 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 êtes 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 êtes si drôle!_" 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 fâche!_" 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 café 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'Amérique'?"
+
+"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 _étui_ 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, ça!_" 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?"
+
+"_Natürlich._"
+
+"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 _déjeuner_. 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 cherché!_" 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 _garçon_ 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 _fiancés_?"
+
+"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 moiré 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 _garçons_.
+
+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 à 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'Américain 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 _garçon_, 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
+'_tempérament 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
+Aârburg."
+
+"To Aârburg!--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 Aârburg 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 _ennuyés_ 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
+Aârburg."
+
+"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 êtes
+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 fâche 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? _Ça--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? _Bête 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 café, 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 tête-á-tête 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 _drôle_ 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'étais 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?"
+
+"_Natürlich!_ 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 fâche
+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 _bête_, 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?"
+
+"_Espérons!_" 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.
+
+"_Assurément._"
+
+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 café. "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 êtes 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-à-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 Maximilianbrücke,
+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 Luitpoldbrücke
+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 _gemüthlich_, in Dresden together."
+
+"It will be _gemüthlich_ 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.
+
+"_Ça ne m'intéresse 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 Améliesstrasse 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 Fraülein 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 Fraülein 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 _tempérament 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 façade 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
+très-bête!_' (as I well might say, for I find him often bête 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 _bête_ 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 façade 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 _bête_ 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 gâter 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'êtes 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'étais tout-à-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 à 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 "_gnädige 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 _très 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 _centimètre_?"
+
+"Two _centimètres_ 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 _bête_, 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
+_bête_ 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 Maximilianbrücke, 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 Luitpoldbrücke 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 _drôle_, 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.
+
+"_Decidément vous n'êtes 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 Luitpoldbrücke 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 café 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 café 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 café. 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-à-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 café."
+
+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 café 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 cafés. 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 ménu 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 ménu.
+
+"_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 _massé_? 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 fûmer une cigarette_," he said suddenly, "_ça 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 _genée_, 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 Ludwigsbrücke," 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 _étui_ 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 être raisonable._ Let
+us go out of the door and go to the Café Luitpold and there speak."
+
+The Café 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 Café 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 café, 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 désir 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 ça, 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 Hélène 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.
+
+"_Voilà!_" he exclaimed; "what have I say to you that time in Munich,
+that the women are always _gênées_! 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, '_Voilà la jolie Américaine 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 _gênée_!" he implored parenthetically; "what I have to say is
+so most important."
+
+"I am not _gênée_," 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 _centimétre_
+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 _métres_," 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 _garçon_ 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 _fiancé_, "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.
+
+"_Natürlich_," 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 Kärntnerstrasse 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 _fiancée_ 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 _'tempérament 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-Blätter," 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. _Écoutez 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, _voilà 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 Hâvre, 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 chérie, 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
+frame for stirring incident and rapid action.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_By the Author of "The God of Things"_
+
+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.
+
+
+    +--------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                              |
+    |                                                  |
+    | Accents are as they appear in the original book. |
+    |                                                  |
+    +--------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman's Will, by Anne Warner
+
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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: UTF-8
+
+*** 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
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1 class="head">A Woman&#8217;s Will</h1>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 395px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" class="jpg" width="395" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="link"><a name="front" id="front">&nbsp;</a></div>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 392px;">
+<img src="images/gs01.jpg" class="jpg" width="392" height="600" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;And the unvoiceable wonder of his magic&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="center"><span class="head">A Woman&#8217;s Will</span>
+<br /><br />
+<span class="by">By</span><br />
+
+<span class="author">Anne Warner</span><br />
+<br /><br />
+
+<span class="illus"><em>Illustrated by J. H. Caliga</em></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/title.jpg" class="jpg" width="250" height="99" alt="con passionato." title="" />
+<span class="caption">con passionato.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="center"><small>Boston</small><br />
+<br />
+Little, Brown, and Company<br />
+<br />
+<small>1904</small><br /><br /><br />
+
+<em>Copyright, 1904</em>,<br />
+
+By Little, Brown, and Company.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+<p class="center"><em>All rights reserved</em><br />
+
+Published April, 1904<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+
+<span class="o">THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2 class="contents"><a name="contents" id="contents"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="contents" style="width: 26em;">
+<colgroup>
+<col width="80%" />
+<col width="20%" />
+</colgroup>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="right" colspan="2"><span class="smcap"><small>Page</small></span></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center">PART I</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="left"><span class="smcap">The Rise of the Storm</span></td>
+<td class="right"><a href="#i">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center">PART II</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="left"><span class="smcap">The Beating of the Waves</span></td>
+<td class="right"><a href="#ii">171</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="center">PART III</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="left"><span class="smcap">The Breaking of the Barriers</span></td>
+<td class="right"><a href="#iii">297</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="hr5" />
+
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<h4><em>From Pastel Drawings by I. H. Caliga</em></h4>
+
+<table summary="Illustrations" style="width: 40em;">
+<colgroup>
+<col width="80%" />
+<col width="20%" />
+</colgroup>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="lefth">&#8220;And the unvoiceable wonder of his magic&#8221;</td>
+<td class="right"><a href="#front"><em>Frontispiece</em></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="lefth">&#8220;She rose to receive them with radiant countenance&#8221;</td>
+<td class="right"><a href="#she"><em>Page</em> 19</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="lefth">&#8220;They stood together on the Maximilianbr&#252;cke&#8221;</td>
+<td class="right">&#8220; <a href="#they">173</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="lefth">&#8220;&#8216;I want you to pay a lot of attention to what I am
+going to say, Rosina&#8217;&#8221;</td>
+<td class="right">&#8220; <a href="#want">319</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><big>A Woman&#8217;s Will</big><br />
+<br />
+<a name="i" id="i"></a><span class="smcap">Part I</span><br />
+<br />
+THE RISE OF THE STORM</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr class="hr4" />
+
+<h2>Chapter One</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 8px;">
+<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="cap">GOOD-BYE&#8212;good-bye, Rosina!&#8221; 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. &#8220;But oh!&#8221; he added, as he and
+Carter turned to quit the dock, &#8220;how the family are just agoing to revel
+in peace for these next few months! The Milennium!&#8212;well, I don&#8217;t know!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not see how you and your Uncle John ever came to let her go off
+all alone like that,&#8221; Carter said, with a gloom that did not try to mask
+a terrible reproach; &#8220;she&#8217;ll be so awfully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> liable to meet some
+foreigner over there and&#8212;and just marry him.&#8221; He threw up his cane as
+he spoke, intending to rap on the boarding by which they were that
+instant passing.</p>
+
+<p>Jack thrust his own cane out quickly and barred the other with an
+excellent fencing <em>fente</em>.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No rapping on wood!&#8221; he cried sharply; &#8220;not after that speech!&#8212;you
+know!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Carter turned two astonished eyes friend-ward.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you mean?&#8221; he asked; &#8220;do you mean to say that you&#8217;d stand her
+marrying any one over there for one minute?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Stand it!&#8221; said Jack, &#8220;would we <em>stand</em> it, did you say? My dear
+fellow, how plainly you betray the fact that you are in love with
+Rosina. We,&#8212;myself and the family,&#8212;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nonsense!&#8221; said Carter, with an air of deep annoyance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you how I personally regard Rosina,&#8221; Jack went on, paying no
+attention to the other&#8217;s exclamation; &#8220;I look upon her as very likely to
+marry abroad, because I don&#8217;t know of but one man at home clever enough
+to be able to marry her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>He laid his hand upon Carter&#8217;s shoulder as he spoke, and Carter, who
+didn&#8217;t at all understand what he meant, thought that he understood, and
+was correspondingly happy.</p>
+
+<p>They boarded the ferry then, and went from Hoboken straight back to
+civilization.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>The &#8220;Kronprinz&#8221; meanwhile was slowly wending her way down the river,
+past the skyscrapers, and out towards the open sea.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Her year and a half of widowhood had been one long-continued period of
+quiet ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>Standing alone in her own room the morning after the funeral, she had
+made a vow to never marry again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Enough is as good as a feast,&#8221; she had said, surveying her crape-draped
+self with a deep sense of satisfaction; &#8220;it never approached anything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+like a feast, but it certainly has taught me to know when I have had
+enough.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And then new orders had been issued to every department of her
+establishment, and a peace approaching Paradise reigned in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m going abroad in May,&#8221; was her sole response when he had quite
+finished.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, my God! don&#8217;t go and marry some one over there!&#8221; he cried out, in
+the sudden awful stress of the moment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall marry no one,&#8221; she declared with freezing emphasis. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+in both the bow and quiver of Rosina&#8217;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&#8212;</p>
+
+<p>And yet?&#8212;</p>
+
+<p>Oh, the thought was unendurable!</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;Kronprinz&#8221; out to sea.</p>
+
+<p>And, if the truth must be told, it is to be feared that if Rosina&#8217;s
+unhappy suitor could have caught a glimpse of her as night fell over
+that same day&#8217;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&#8217;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> its owner would have stirred the feelings of
+any casual lover whose bad luck it might be to happen along just then.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina nestled back into the soft fur folds and smiled a smile of
+luxurious content.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am so thoroughly imbued with utter bliss,&#8221; she said; &#8220;only to think
+that I am going <em>where</em>-ever I please, to do <em>what</em>-ever I please, just
+<em>when</em>-ever I please,&#8212;indefinitely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It sounds like Paradise, surely,&#8221; 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; &#8220;what do you suppose you&#8217;ll do first?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think that I shall do almost everything first,&#8221; she answered
+laughing, and then, taking a long look out upon the twinkles of Fire
+Island, she sighed deeply and joyfully, and added, &#8220;Ah, but I&#8217;m going to
+have a beautiful time!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The man plunged a hand into his breast-pocket.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you ever smoke a cigarette?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never!&#8221; she exclaimed delightedly; &#8220;never till this minute. But will
+you teach me now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her and laughed, his silver case in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must not go too fast at first, you know. Are you sure that it will
+not make you ill?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>&#8220;Oh, yes, yes! I&#8217;m sure!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps it isn&#8217;t really the first time,&#8221; he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, it isn&#8217;t really the first time, but it will be the first time in
+just about one minute.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed again and held out the case; she took one from it and looked
+at it in a way that proved her ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Does it make any difference which end?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not with that kind.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have I anything to bite, or to pinch, or to poke?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, only something to light.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very well, light the match.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m so original,&#8221; said the man; &#8220;you see I say nothing about your
+eyes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I noticed your thoughtful consideration,&#8221; she replied with a smile.
+&#8220;Many thanks. And now the match, please.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He scratched it somewhere and offered it. The cigarette lit easily,
+being of a good kind, and the same light did him equal service.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How do you find it?&#8221; he asked presently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I find it horrible,&#8221; she gasped; &#8220;but my husband never would have
+allowed it, and so I shall go through with it to the bitter&#8212;the
+<em>awfully</em> bitter&#8212;other end.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t stick to it if it makes you feel badly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>&#8221; he said a little
+anxiously; &#8220;remember you have the whole wide ocean before you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Rosina, &#8220;I&#8212;I was just thinking of that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you apt to be seasick?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sometimes I have to lie still a day or two.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In your chair?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In my berth.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Please throw it away at once; I don&#8217;t want you to be lying still in
+your berth a day or two on <em>this</em> voyage, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a very earnest note in his voice; she took the cigarette from
+between her lips and looked at it meditatively.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do throw it overboard immediately,&#8221; he begged.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I couldn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I entreat!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then she began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It isn&#8217;t the cigarette that I can&#8217;t manage,&#8212;it&#8217;s the throw!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He sprang to his feet with one vast and comprehensive untuck.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A thousand pardons! Give it to me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> caused the bosom of the ocean to appear unduly agitated.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us walk about a bit,&#8221; he suggested, coming back, and noting a
+certain vagueness in her expression; &#8220;come, it&#8217;s the best thing for us
+both,&#8212;exercise, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled faintly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think so too; if you&#8217;ll just unswathe me, please.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He extricated her, and they made the tour of the deck three times.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you get off at Plymouth?&#8221; he asked, when they finally came to a
+standstill beside their own chairs again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, at Cherbourg.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And then Paris?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Naturally.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And then?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Anywhere I want to.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m going to Hamburg and then to Berlin; with me it&#8217;s a case of
+business first and pleasure afterwards.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Berlin&#8217;s a nice place,&#8221; she said thoughtfully; &#8220;I&#8217;ve been there twice.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t you enjoy going there again?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No.&#8221; She shook her head. &#8220;No, I don&#8217;t believe that I should. You see I
+went to Berlin both times with my husband, and my present state<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> of mind
+is such that if I think Berlin will recall my husband to me, I&#8217;d rather
+remain permanently in Cherbourg.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She stooped and gathered up her rugs preparatory to building a new nest.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you travel much with your husband,&#8221; he asked, taking the nest
+materials from her and sorting them over his arm.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I did.&#8221; She sat down in the chair. &#8220;I travelled a great deal with
+him; but I intend to travel a great deal more now that I&#8217;m without him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You might some day have another,&#8221; he suggested in a tone low enough to
+be thrilling to the thrillable.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina squared herself smilelessly, and the electric deck-light which
+faced her seat showed up her sobriety in unmistakable colors.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Watch me!&#8221; she said briefly, and her enunciation was clear and very
+distinct.</p>
+
+<p>He heard.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>Chapter Two</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">THERE was at that particular date a man in D&#252;sseldorf 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 G&#233;n&#232;ve, 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&#8212;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 D&#252;sseldorf, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> pages to Leipsic, the scene of his
+studies and the spot where his one incentive to labor dwelt.</p>
+
+<p>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 <em>en
+route</em>. 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.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>It was the next morning that Rosina, walking on the Quai with an
+American man (not the one on the &#8220;Kronprinz,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That man?&#8221; said her companion, turning to make sure who she was
+referring to, &#8220;that dark man with the gray gloves? oh, that&#8217;s Von<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> Ibn.
+He&#8217;s to be very great indeed some day, I&#8217;m given to understand.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hasn&#8217;t he stopped growing yet?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There is &#8216;great&#8217; and &#8216;great,&#8217; you know. He is in for both kinds, it
+appears.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because of his &#8216;von&#8217;?&#8221; demanded Rosina, whose thirst for knowledge was
+occasionally insatiable.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, because of his violin.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Does he play?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You show ignorance by asking such a question.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He plays well, then?&#8212;is known?&#8221;&#8212;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He is a composer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let me look at him!&#8221; she cried below her breath; &#8220;how more than
+interesting! He appears just as one might imagine that Paganini did
+before he made his famous bargain.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> and men who fall in love with college girls are nearly always
+widow-proof.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you know him?&#8221; she asked, looking up at the man beside her; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The American appeared frankly amused.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I should really enjoy seeing you turned loose upon Von Ibn,&#8221; he said,
+&#8220;it would be such wild sport.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then be nice and bring him to me, and you can have all the fun of
+standing by and watching us worry one another.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her friend hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221; she asked impatiently; &#8220;why don&#8217;t you go? Is there any
+reason why I may not meet him? Is he a gambler who doesn&#8217;t settle fair?
+Has he deserted his own wife, or run<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> away with any other man&#8217;s? Does he
+lie, or drink beyond the polite limit, or what?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, the truth is,&#8221; said the American slowly, &#8220;many people consider him
+an awful bore. The fact is, he&#8217;s most peculiar. I&#8217;ve had him stare at me
+time and again in a way that made me wonder if he was full-witted. I
+don&#8217;t know anything worse against him than that, though.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If that&#8217;s all,&#8221; Rosina answered, laughing, &#8220;you need not fear for me.
+I&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But some consider him a very big bore indeed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;One can see that at the first glance, and just on that account I shall
+have infinite patience with him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I warn you beforehand that he&#8217;s very much of a character.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I always did like characters better than people who were well-behaved.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The American took one step away and then halted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your mind is set upon meeting him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, quite; and do hurry. He may disappear.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="link"><a name="she" id="she">&nbsp;</a></div>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 391px;"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+<img src="images/gs02.jpg" class="jpg" width="391" height="600" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;She rose to receive them with radiant countenance&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Possess yourself in patience for five short minutes,&#8221; he began, but she
+cut his speech off.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There, there, never mind; while you&#8217;re talking he&#8217;ll take a train or a
+boat, and I&#8217;ll be left to go geniusless to my grave.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;that particular man; for he was one of those whom the
+man bored out and out.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shall we walk on?&#8221; she suggested; &#8220;that is the pleasantest, to walk and
+talk, don&#8217;t you think?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>Von Ibn stood stock-still before her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What will monsieur do?&#8221; he asked, with a glance at the other man.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He will enjoy walking,&#8221; Rosina answered.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After which astonishing beginning he waited, pulling his moustache as he
+contemplated them both. The American glanced at Rosina as much as to
+say, &#8220;There, I told you that he was the worst ever!&#8221; But Rosina only
+smiled cheerfully, saying to her countryman:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Since Herr von Ibn feels as he does, I think <em>you&#8217;d</em> better go and
+study the Lion or meditate the glaciers, and leave me here with this
+lion to do either or both.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s popularity, and being a man of sense he
+recognized the fact.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;At your service, madame,&#8221; he said; &#8220;I&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>Von Ibn bowed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do appreciate,&#8221; he said gravely; &#8220;thank you. Good-morning.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then as the other walked away he turned to Rosina.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Was I impolite to him?&#8221; he asked, in quite the tone of an old and
+intimate friend.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, very,&#8221; she answered, nodding.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are then displeased?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not at all; I wanted him to go myself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, yes,&#8221; he exclaimed eagerly, &#8220;you feel as I. Is it not always
+<em>ungem&#252;thlich</em>, three people together?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Always.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He glanced about them at the crowd of passers-by.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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,&#8221;&#8212;he paused&#8212;&#8220;well,&#8221; he
+added.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you really want to know me&#8212;well?&#8221; she asked, imitating his pause
+between the last two words.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>&#8220;And I wanted to know you,&#8221; she said, looking and speaking with
+delicious frankness. &#8220;I wanted to know you because of your music.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because of my music!&#8221; he repeated quickly; &#8220;you are then of interest in
+the music? you are yourself perhaps a musician?&#8221; and he turned a glance,
+as deep as it was burning, upon her face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A very every-day musician,&#8221; she replied, lifting her smile to his deep
+attention. &#8220;I can accompany the musician and I can appreciate him, that
+is all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But that is quite of the best&#8212;in a woman,&#8221; he exclaimed earnestly.
+&#8220;The women were not meant to be the genius, only to help him, and rest
+him after his labor.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Really!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of a surety.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But what made you want to know me?&#8221; she continued. &#8220;I had a good reason
+for desiring your acquaintance, but you can have had no equally good one
+for desiring mine.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; he said quickly and decidedly; &#8220;that is, of an undenying, most
+true.&#8221; 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> the
+bridges, and then he spoke. &#8220;I do not know just why, yet I am glad that
+it is to be.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Would you have asked some one to introduce you if I had not sent for
+you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He thought again, this time for the space of six trees only, then:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I do not think so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why not? since you wanted to meet me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do most people weary you&#8212;later.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, so very much,&#8221; he declared, with a sincerity that drew no veil over
+the truth of his statement.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina, remembering the American&#8217;s views in regard to him, stifled a
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Our friend,&#8221; she asked, &#8220;the man who presented you to me, you know,
+does he weary you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn frowned.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But he is a very terrible bore,&#8221; he said; &#8220;you surely know that, since
+you know him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then she could but laugh outright.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I, monsieur,&#8221; she demanded merrily, &#8220;tell me, do you think that I
+too shall some day&#8212;?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>He looked at her in sudden, earnest anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hope otherwise,&#8221; he declared fervently.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;the town&#8217;s traditionary
+godfather&#8212;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I like the bridge better than I do the Lion,&#8221; Rosina remarked; &#8220;I think
+it is much more interesting.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn was looking down into the water where they had stopped by the
+bridge&#8217;s steps. He did not pay any attention to what she said, and after
+a minute she spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you think?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He made no answer. She turned her eyes in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> the direction of his and
+wondered what he was looking at. He appeared to be lost in a study of
+the Reuss.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you always think before you speak,&#8221; she said, somewhat amused, &#8220;or
+are you doing mental exercises?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But still no reply.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is superficial!&#8221; Von Ibn suddenly declared.</p>
+
+<p>She quite started.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is superficial?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>&#8220;Your comparison. You may not compare them at all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;May not compare what?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina simply stared at him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is that what you have been thinking of all this long time?&#8221; she asked
+in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Was it so long?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What did you think of in that so long time?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She told him about the bank, and the Englishman on the Gotthardbahn, and
+her dress. He smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How <em>dr&ocirc;le</em> a woman is!&#8221; he murmured, half to himself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I think that you are droll too,&#8221; she told him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; he said energetically, &#8220;I assure you, madame, you do not as yet
+divine the tenth part of <em>my</em> drollness.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you think that I shall ever become sufficiently well acquainted with
+you to learn it all?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He regarded her seriously.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>&#8220;If you interest me,&#8221; he remarked, &#8220;I shall naturally see much of you,
+because we shall be much together. How long do you stay in Lucerne?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Until Monday. I leave on Monday.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I do not want to leave on Monday. I have only come the last night.
+I want to stay two weeks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She felt herself forced to bite her lips, even as she replied:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you <em>can</em> stay two weeks, monsieur.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked blank.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you go?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Naturally; but what does that matter? You would not be going where I
+went anyway.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where do you go?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To Zurich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Alone? Do you go alone?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have my maid, of course; and I am to meet a friend there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A friend!&#8221; His whole face contracted suddenly. &#8220;Ah,&#8221; he cried, sharply,
+&#8220;I understand! It is that Englishman.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What Englishman?&#8221; she asked, utterly at a loss to follow his thought.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your friend.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But he&#8217;s an American.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28])</a></span>&#8220;You said he was an Englishman.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never did! How could I? Why, can&#8217;t you tell at once that he is an
+American by the way that he talks?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never have hear him talk.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She stared afresh, then turned to walk on, saying, &#8220;You must be crazy!
+or aren&#8217;t you speaking of the man who presented you to me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why should I be of any interest as to that man? Naturally it is of the
+Englishman that I speak.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What Englishman?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But that Englishman upon the Gotthardbahn, of course; the one you have
+said was so nice to you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, pardon me, but you are so funny, you are really so very funny;&#8221;
+then pressing her handkerchief against her rioting lips, &#8220;you will
+forgive me for laughing, won&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are to see him again, <em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never expect to.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Really?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Really.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29])</a></span>He stopped short and offered her his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221; she asked in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your word that you do not hope to meet him again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She began to laugh afresh.</p>
+
+<p>Then, still holding out his hand, he repeated insistently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What shall I say to you?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Certainly I do not expect to meet him again; although, of course, I
+might meet him by chance at any time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked into her face with an instant&#8217;s gravest scrutiny, and then
+some of his shadow lifted; with the hand that he had held out he
+suddenly seized hers.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are truthfully not caring for him, <em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?&#8221; he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina pulled her hand from his grasp.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>&#8220;Of course not,&#8221; she said emphatically. &#8220;Why, I never saw the man but
+just that once.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But one may be much interested in once only.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn drew a breath of relief.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am so glad,&#8221; he said; and then he added, &#8220;because really, you know,
+it had not been very nice in you to interest yourself only for the
+getting up of your window.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He put it down too,&#8221; she reminded him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is quite nothing&#8212;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina walked on and looked the other way,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think we had better return,&#8221; she said, pausing in the last patch of
+shade.</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn looked at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said, &#8220;we must; <em>d&#233;jeuner</em> is there now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you are sure that you go Monday?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, indeed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To Zurich, and then to where?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then to Constance.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And then?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not know where we shall go next.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He started slightly, and a fresh cloud overspread his face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Much pleasure to you,&#8221; he said, almost savagely.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32])</a></span>She looked up quickly, surprised at his tone, but her answer was spoken
+pleasantly enough.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thank you; and the same to you&#8212;all summer long.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In response he shrugged his shoulders so fiercely as to force her to
+notice the movement.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do you shrug your shoulders like that?&#8221; she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am amused.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t look amused.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He raised his eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am amused to see that all women are the same; I have that thought
+just now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you in the habit of shrugging your shoulders whenever that thought
+occurs to you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He tossed his head to one side.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Women are all the same,&#8221; he repeated impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In what way?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They can never tell the truth!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What makes you say that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She felt very nearly vexed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Please explain,&#8221; she commanded.</p>
+
+<p>He simply gave another shrug.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33])</a></span>She decided to keep her temper.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I might be clever enough to read minds,&#8221; she said mildly, &#8220;and still be
+dense about divining shoulders; I confess I miss the point that you&#8217;re
+trying to make with yours.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He was silent.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced sideways at him and was thoroughly startled at the black
+humor displayed in his countenance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is really the matter?&#8221; she asked, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He is a genius,&#8221; she thought, &#8220;and they are entirely different from
+other men,&#8221; so she waited a moment and then spoke with the utmost
+earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Please tell me what it all means, monsieur; why are you like this?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because,&#8221;&#8212;he cried with a sudden passionate outburst of
+feeling,&#8212;&#8220;because you have lied to me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34])</a></span>&#8220;Monsieur!&#8221; she exclaimed, in a shocked voice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have done that,&#8221; he cried; &#8220;you have lift your eyes to heaven and
+swear that you were not interested in him, and then&#8212;&#8221; he stopped, and
+put his hands to either side of his collar as if it strangled him.</p>
+
+<p>She grew pale at the sight of his emotion.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it that man still?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But naturally it is that man still! <em>Je ne me f&acirc;che jamais sans
+raison.</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But what is there new to worry about him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She dared not contemplate smiling, instead she felt that the Englishman
+was rapidly becoming the centre of a prospective tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn scowled until his black brows formed a terrible V just over his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You do expect to see him in Zurich,&#8221; he declared.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I told you that I didn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed harshly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know; but you betrayed yourself so nicely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Just now, when I say where do you go from Constance, you quite forget
+your part, and you say, &#8216;I do not know where <em>we</em> shall go next.&#8217; Yes,
+that is what you say, &#8216;We&#8212;<em>we</em>!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And if I did.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35])</a></span>&#8220;But of a surety you did; and I must laugh in my interior when I hear
+your words.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; she exclaimed quickly, &#8220;you must not say that you laughed in your
+interior, it isn&#8217;t good English.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where must I laugh within myself?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We say, &#8216;I laughed <em>to</em> myself.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He gave another shrug, as if her correction was too petty a matter to
+rightfully command attention at that crisis.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This all does seem so foolish,&#8221; she said, &#8220;the idea of again having an
+explanation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not care for you to explain,&#8221; he interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you want to know what I meant?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know quite well what you meant.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I meant my maid, she always travels with me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked his thorough disbelief.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very pretty!&#8221; he commented.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Just think,&#8221; she said softly, &#8220;our friendship is so very young, and you
+are already so very angry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am not angry; what I feel is justified.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because I call my maid and myself &#8216;we&#8217;!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36])</a></span>He stopped short, and held out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will you say that it is only the maid?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then she felt sure that she should be obliged to scream outright, even
+while she was summoning all her self-control to the rescue.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Upon my word and honor,&#8221; she declared, with all the gravity which the
+occasion seemed to demand, &#8220;I swear that when I leave Constance my maid
+will be my only&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Assez, assez!</em>&#8221; he interrupted, hastily dropping her hand, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This kaleidoscopic turn to the conversation quite took Rosina&#8217;s breath
+away, and she remained mute.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What hotel in Constance do you stop at?&#8221; he asked presently.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>&#8220;The Insel House, of course.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a note-book.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps I will want to remember,&#8221; he said, as he wrote. Then he put up
+the book and smiled into her eyes; he had a beautiful smile, warm and
+winning. &#8220;I find that we are very <em>sympathique</em>,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;that is
+why I may perhaps come to see you again. People who can enjoy together
+are not many.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you enjoyed this morning? I thought you had not at all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But, yes,&#8221; he protested gravely, &#8220;I enjoy it very much. How could you
+think otherwise?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She felt silence to be safest, and made no reply. He too was silent for
+a little, and then spoke suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is fortunate,&#8221; she agreed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he answered, &#8220;for me it was very good.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They had come to the crossing of the great square, and the sunlight was
+dazzling and dancing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shall I see you this afternoon?&#8221; Von Ibn asked as they went leisurely
+through the heat.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish it was after the <em>d&#233;jeuner</em>,&#8221; he said, looking out upon the lake
+and the crest of the mountain beyond.</p>
+
+<p>She wondered if she had better say &#8220;Why,&#8221; or not, and finally decided to
+say it. He brought his eyes back from the Rigi and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because I have the habit of always sleeping after <em>d&#233;jeuner</em>,&#8221; he
+explained.</p>
+
+<p>They crossed to the hotel. It was late, and more people were coming down
+in the lifts than going up.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you tired?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I think that I am&#8212;a little.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I advise you to sleep too,&#8221; he said gravely.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I always do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So,&#8221; he cried triumphantly, &#8220;you see I say the truth when I say that we
+are very <em>sympathique</em>!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina looked up at him and her eyes danced; he returned the look with a
+responsive glow in his own big pupils.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39])</a></span>&#8220;I am so glad we meet,&#8221; he exclaimed impulsively.</p>
+
+<p>She stepped out of the lift and turned to dismiss him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you?&#8221; he asked, bowing above her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m glad too,&#8221; she said, and her tone was most sincere.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Chapter Three</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">LATE in the afternoon of the same day Ottillie, coming in to wake her
+mistress from a nap which the morning&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> nowhere, was fastened everywhere ere the town
+bells rang five.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes after, a <em>gar&#231;on</em> in the hotel livery brought up a card,
+and, Continental etiquette made it quite <em>en r&#232;gle</em> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Then Ottillie opened the porti&#232;res beyond, and Rosina appeared between
+them, delightfully cool and fresh-looking, and flatteringly glad to see
+him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We seem like quite long friends, do we not?&#8221; he said, as he bent above
+her hand and kissed it lightly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, certainly, I feel that I have the sensation of at any rate three
+weeks,&#8221; she answered; and then she sank luxuriously down in a great
+<em>fauteuil</em>, 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>&#8220;Why do you say three weeks,&#8221; he asked; &#8220;why not three months or three
+years?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But in three years one learns to know another so well, and I do not
+feel&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; he interrupted, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you get tired of every one?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He passed his hand across his eyes and sighed and smiled together.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, madame,&#8221; he said, and there was a sad note in his voice, &#8220;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. <em>Comprenez-vous?</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She made a movement of assent that he seemed to have paused for, and he
+continued.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When I meet a stranger I must always wonder how soon I shall be
+finished with him. It comes very soon with nearly all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And are you sure that you are always the weary one?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked blank for a moment, then,</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have already bore you; yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not at all, but I was warned this morning that you might possibly
+commit such a crime.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And have I?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43])</a></span>She looked on his earnestness and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have I?&#8221; he reiterated; &#8220;yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then she spoke suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do foreigners always say &#8216;yes&#8217; at the end of every question that
+they ask in English? I get so tired of it, it&#8217;s so superfluous. Why do
+they do it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He reflected.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is polite,&#8221; he said, after a moment. &#8220;I ask you, &#8216;Do I bore you?&#8217;
+and then I ask you, &#8216;Do I?&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But why do you think that it is polite to ask me twice?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He reflected again, and then replied:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are equally droll in English; you are even more droll in English, I
+think. You say, &#8216;You will go to walk, will you not?&#8217; and the &#8217;not&#8217;
+makes no sense at all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was her turn to reflect, and be forced to acquiesce.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, that is true.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And anyway,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;it is polite for me to ask you twice
+anything, because that shows that I am twice anxious to please you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes;&#8221; he took a violet from the bowl at his side and began to unclose
+its petals. &#8220;Why did he say that?&#8221; he asked, suddenly raising his eyes
+from the flower to her.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44])</a></span>&#8220;He! who?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Our friend.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why did he say what?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why did he say that I was stupid? I have never been but nice to him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She looked startled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He never said that you were stupid.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You said that he told you that I was stupid.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I did not. I said that he warned me that&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it matters not,&#8221; he broke in, shrugging his shoulders slightly,
+&#8220;<em>&#231;a ne me fait rien</em>. What he may think of me matters me not at all.
+<em>Pauvre gar&#231;on</em>, he is so most uninteresting himself that I cannot
+expect interest from him. <em>Ecoutez-donc!</em> 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
+<em>argot</em>; 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45])</a></span>He put the violet to his lips and smiled a little.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He speaks but English,&#8221; he added; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he was silent, biting the purple flower. Rosina rested her chin
+upon her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Please go on,&#8221; she said briefly, &#8220;I am listening.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do like Americans,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are we so?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&#8212;always how much everything has cost; that is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He paused to get a fresh violet, and then continued:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I see no possible beauty for a place of four walls fifty <em>m&#232;tres</em> 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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The question terminated his monologue with such suddenness that she
+started involuntarily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do you ask?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Naturally because I want to know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I go because I am anxious to be out of Switzerland before the first of
+July.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But Switzerland is very nice in July.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know; and it is also very crowded.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where shall you be in July?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am not sure; probably in the Tyrol.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall remain here all summer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47])</a></span>&#8220;In Lucerne?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; not perhaps always at the hotel, but somewhere on the lake. I am
+born here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are Swiss, then?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; if I am Swiss because I am born here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Were you born in Lucerne?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, but at a place which my father had then by Fluellen. It is for that
+that I love the Vierwaldstattersee.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish that I had been born here,&#8221; Rosina murmured thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where are you born?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In the fourth house of a row of sixteen, all just alike.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How most American!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed a little.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I amuse you?&#8221; he asked, with a look of pleased non-understanding.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, so very much!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He came a little forward and smiled down at her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We are really friends, are we not?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She looked into his big, earnest eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think so,&#8221; she answered simply, with a little nod.</p>
+
+<p>He moved slowly across the room and, going to the window, turned his
+back upon her.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>&#8220;It is cooler out now, let us go out and walk. I like to walk, and you
+do too, do you not? yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, <em>please</em> stop saying &#8216;yes&#8217; like that, it makes me so horribly
+nervous.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He continued to look out of the window.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you nervous?&#8221; he said. &#8220;I am sorry, because it is very bad to be
+nervous.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall not be so if you will only cease tacking that &#8216;yes&#8217; on to the
+end of every question that you find occasion to ask me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is &#8216;tacking&#8217;?&#8221; he asked, whirling around.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Attaching.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why did you not pronounce it plainly the first time?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I asked you to go out with me,&#8221; he reminded her; &#8220;will you go? Yes?&#8212;I
+mean &#8216;No&#8217;?&#8221; he added in hasty correction.</p>
+
+<p>She bent above the flowers, just to see what he <em>would</em> say next.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can you go to walk so,&#8221; he inquired, &#8220;or shall I go down and wait while
+you undress?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She straightened up.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49])</a></span>&#8220;I can go out this way,&#8221; she told him; &#8220;I have only to get my hat.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you will go now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, with pleasure.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it long to get a hat? I will go down to wait for you, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is five minutes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it really five minutes?&#8221; he asked anxiously; &#8220;or shall I be there
+very much longer?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If I say five minutes it will be five minutes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He took his hat and cane in his left hand and extended the other to her
+with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I will go and wait,&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>She gave him her hand; he held it a minute, looking down into her eyes,
+which wavered and fell before his.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Comme vous &#234;tes charmante!</em>&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>After which he left the room at once.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina caught a quick breath as she went in to where her maid sat
+mending some lace.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Get my things, Ottillie, I am going out.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What a beautiful color madame has,&#8221; Ottillie remarked, as she rose
+hastily and went towards the wardrobe.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina looked at herself in the mirror. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do hurry, Ottillie,&#8221; she said impatiently, &#8220;and get me out a pretty, a
+<em>very</em> pretty, hat; do you hear?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where shall we walk?&#8221; he asked, when she came down to him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;On the Quai, of course. No one ever walks anywhere else.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do often, and we did this morning,&#8221; he replied, as they passed out
+through the maze of tables and orange-trees that covered the terrace
+before the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I should have said &#8216;no one who is anybody.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her, a sadly puzzled trouble in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it a joke you make there,&#8221; he asked, &#8220;or but your <em>argot</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; she said, unfurling her parasol; &#8220;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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her fixedly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51])</a></span>&#8220;Why should I do so? or is <em>that</em> a joke?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I asked that in dead earnest.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In dead&#8212;in dead&#8212;&#8221; he stammered hopelessly; &#8220;oh,&#8221; he exclaimed,
+&#8220;perhaps it is that I am really stupid, after all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, no,&#8221; she laughed; &#8220;it is I that am behaving badly. It amuses me to
+tease you by using words that you do not understand.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But that is not very nice of you,&#8221; he said, smiling. &#8220;Why do you want
+to tease me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know, but I do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed lightly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We amuse ourselves together, <em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?&#8221; he asked. &#8220;It is like
+children to laugh and not know why. I find such pleasure very pleasant.
+One cannot be always wise&#8212;above all, with a woman.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not want to be wise,&#8221; she said, as they joined the promenading
+crowd; &#8220;I much prefer to have my clothes fit well.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he laughed outright.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Vous &#234;tes si dr&ocirc;le!</em>&#8221; he said apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t mind your laughing,&#8221; she said, &#8220;but I do wish that you
+would walk on the other side.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The other side of the street?&#8221; he asked, with surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, no; the other side of me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52])</a></span>&#8220;Why should I not be on this side as well as on that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because that&#8217;s the wrong one to be on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is not! I am on the very right place.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No; you should be between the lady and the street.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221; he demanded, as he raised his hat to some one.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To protect her&#8212;me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To protect you how? Nothing will come up out of the lake to hurt you.&#8221;
+Then he raised his hat to some people that she bowed to.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It isn&#8217;t that, it is that the outside is where the man should walk.
+It&#8217;s the custom. It&#8217;s his proper place.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, it is not. I am proper where I am; I would be improper if I was
+over there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In America men always walk on the outside.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But we are not in America, we are in Lucerne, and that is Europe, and
+for Europe I am right. <em>Mon Dieu</em>, do you think that I do not know!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am really distressed when we meet any Americans, because I am sure
+that they think that you have not been well brought up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn shrugged <em>his</em> shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There are not many Americans here to think anything,&#8221; he said
+carelessly, &#8220;and all the Europeans<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> whom we meet know that I am well
+brought up whichever side I may choose to walk upon.&#8221; He bowed again to
+some carriage people.</p>
+
+<p>She trailed her pace a little and then paused; he was such a temptation
+that she could not resist.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do wish,&#8221; she said earnestly, &#8220;that to please me you would do as I
+ask you, just this once!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped short and stared first at her and then at the lake.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wonder,&#8221; he said slowly,&#8212;&#8220;I wonder if we are to be together ever
+after these days?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do you wonder that? Would you rather never see me again than do
+something to please me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, no,&#8221; he said hastily, a little shock in his tone, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> 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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s lot with a
+hungry duck&#8217;s, until the duck gave up in despair and paddled off,
+leaving a possible lesson in her wake.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh dear!&#8221; she exclaimed then, &#8220;I&#8217;m going to Zurich Monday, and you&#8217;re
+going to stay here all summer; we shall never meet again, so what is the
+use of thinking so long over nothing!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+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&#8212;stronger perhaps than she was understanding just then.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t feel altogether positive as to your summer plans, I see?&#8221; she
+queried, with a little glance of fun.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never am positive,&#8221; he said, almost grimly. &#8220;I will never bind myself
+even by a thread. I must go free; no one must think to hold me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sure I don&#8217;t want to hold you,&#8221; she laughed; &#8220;I think you are
+dreadfully rude, but of course you can do what you please.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You find me rude?&#8221; he asked soberly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ask me what you will,&#8221; he said, after a moment&#8217;s pause, &#8220;and you shall
+have it; but to that first most absurd asking I shall always refuse.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56])</a></span>Her eyes began to dance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If I asked you to buy me an automobile!&#8221; she ventured.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at her quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you ask me for an automobile?&#8221; he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes wandered towards a certain shop on the other side of the
+carriage way.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If I asked you for that necklace in the window there!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He raised his shoulders slightly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ladies prefer to buy their own necklaces,&#8221; he said briefly.</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a furtive look out of the corner of her eye.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Monsieur, suppose I beg you to take me back to the hotel and henceforth
+never speak to me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think the automobile will be best,&#8221; he said tranquilly. &#8220;I will find
+you a good chauffeur, and you can go to Zurich on its wheels.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I only said &#8216;if,&#8217; you know,&#8221; she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I know,&#8221; he replied; &#8220;but an automobile is always useful.&#8221; He
+thought a moment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> and then added, &#8220;About how much will you choose to pay
+for it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In spite of herself she started and stared at him. He met her eyes with
+a smile of mockery; Its innuendo was unbearable.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know very well,&#8221; she burst forth impetuously, &#8220;that I would never
+have thought of really accepting an automobile from you!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he laughed again with fresh amusement.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Comme madame se f&acirc;che!</em>&#8221; he cried, &#8220;it is most droll! All that I may
+say you will believe.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I find you very exasperating,&#8221; Rosina exclaimed, her cheeks becoming
+hotly pink; &#8220;you amuse yourself in a way that transcends politeness. I
+honestly think that you are very rude indeed, and I <em>am</em> in earnest
+now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He made a careless movement with his head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Would you have preferred that I should believe you really expect of me
+an automobile?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He rapped on a tree with his cane as he passed it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Might,&#8217; and &#8216;would,&#8217; and &#8216;should,&#8217;&#8221; he said placidly, &#8220;those are
+the hardest words for a stranger to learn correctly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58])</a></span>She felt her temper slipping its anchor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He struck another tree with his cane.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When you talk so fast and use such great words I cannot understand at
+all,&#8221; he said calmly.</p>
+
+<p>Then she fairly choked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you quite really angry?&#8221; he asked with curiosity. She turned her
+face away and kept it averted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us go into the caf&#233; of the Nationale and dine,&#8221; he proposed
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she said quickly,&#8212;&#8220;no, I must go home at once. I have a dinner
+engagement, and I must change my dress before I go.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then I shall not see you this evening?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No&#8221; (very bitterly); &#8220;what a pity that will be!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But to-morrow?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am going with a party to the Gutsch.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But that will not be all day?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated in his step, and then came to a full stop.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us go up this little street,&#8221; he suggested. &#8220;I was there yesterday;
+it is interesting really.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59])</a></span>She continued to walk on alone and he was obliged to rejoin her; then he
+glanced downward somewhat anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We cannot speak here,&#8221; he said in a low tone, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the Quai at Lucerne has a trick of slipping away beneath
+one&#8217;s feet to the end that the hotel is forever springing up in one&#8217;s
+face. At this moment it loomed disagreeably close at hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you want to walk farther, monsieur, you will have to walk alone; I
+am going home.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The instant that they were out of the crowd his manner and voice altered
+materially.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must forgive me,&#8221; he pleaded. &#8220;I thought that you understood; I
+thought that we were together amused; it was against my intention to
+offend you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She stopped and looked at a window full of carved bears and lions;
+various expressions contended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> in her face, but none of them were soft
+or sweet.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You pardon me, do you not?&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>She shook the hand off quickly with an apprehensive glance at their
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I ask you ten thousand pardons,&#8221; he repeated; &#8220;what can I do to make
+you know my feeling is true?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She bit her lip, and then a sudden thought occurred to her. Her anger
+took wings at once.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will you walk back to the hotel on the outside,&#8221; she asked seriously,
+looking up into his face.</p>
+
+<p>He gave a quick movement of surprise, and then made his customary pause
+for decision.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How drolly odd women are,&#8221; he murmured presently, &#8220;and you are so very
+oddly droll!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But will you do it?&#8221; she repeated insistently.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>Few women are proof against such smiles, or the men who can produce them
+at will, and the remnants of Rosina&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you will walk home on the outside, will you not?&#8221; she asked, quite
+secure as to his answer now.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed lightly and turned to continue on their way.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of a surety not,&#8221; he said; &#8220;but we will be from now on very
+<em>sympathique</em>, and never so foolishly dispute once more.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>At the dinner-party that evening was the young American who was engaged
+to the girl at Smith College.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I saw you walking with Von Ibn this afternoon,&#8221; he said to Rosina as
+they chanced together during the coffee-and-cigarette period.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where?&#8221; she asked. &#8220;I don&#8217;t remember seeing you anywhere.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No; he appeared to engross you pretty thoroughly. I feel that I ought
+to warn you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What about?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He isn&#8217;t a bit popular.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62])</a></span>&#8220;Poor man!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;None of the men ever have anything to do with him; you never see him
+with any one, and it&#8217;s odd, because he talks English awfully well.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you suppose they have against him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, nothing in particular, I guess, only they don&#8217;t like him. He isn&#8217;t
+interesting to any one.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, there I beg to differ with you,&#8221; she said quickly; &#8220;I saw him speak
+to some one to-day who I am sure found him very interesting indeed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who was it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Myself.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>Chapter Four</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 8px;">
+<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="cap">HAVE you ever thought what is love and what is passion?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;clock, at the Gare by seven-ten.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina simply shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am going to tell you that,&#8221; he said, turning his dark gaze down upon
+the shadows in the wake behind them; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never shall love,&#8221; she said thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>He did not appear to hear her at all.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is as this,&#8221; he said, his eyes glowing into the tossing foam below:
+&#8220;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> has a
+passion only for what one may hope for one&#8217;s own. Love, that is a
+feeling, a something of the heart,&#8221;&#8212;he touched his bosom as he spoke
+but never raised his eyes,&#8212;&#8220;what I may have known,&#8212;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 <em>must</em> be two, and one <em>must</em> 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.&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am going to speak to you in my tongue,&#8221; he went on presently, &#8220;I am
+going to explain what I say with my music. Will you think to
+understand?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I will try,&#8221; she told him simply.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is so easy there,&#8221; he said; &#8220;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> at my language&#8212;it is not so
+easy to place your soul on a strange tongue.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall not smile,&#8221; she reassured him, &#8220;I am deeply interested.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is good of you,&#8221; he replied, raising his head to cast a briefly
+grateful glance at her, &#8220;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,&#8212;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not my heart,&#8221; said Rosina decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, now it reminds me what I have begin to tell you,&#8221; he
+exclaimed,&#8212;&#8220;of love and of passion. I must get some music and teach you
+that. Do you know the &#8216;Souvenir&#8217; of Vieuxtemps?&#8221; he asked her
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>&#8220;The &#8216;Souvenir d&#8217;Am&#233;rique&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, no,&#8221; he said impatiently, &#8220;not one of those. &#8216;Le Souvenir&#8217; 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he paused and, producing his <em>&#233;tui</em> for the second time, lit a
+cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is like this,&#8221; he went on, staring again upon the now rapidly
+darkening waters, &#8220;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, &#8216;E,&#8212;F,&#8212;F sharp,&#8212;G;&#8217; and it is not a cry, rather a scream,
+strength, force,&#8212;a Must made of the music,&#8212;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.&#8221; He stopped and took his
+cigarette from between his lips. &#8220;<em>Mon Dieu</em>,&#8221; he cried violently, &#8220;of
+what was the composer thinking when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with such force,&#8212;such a tremendous force of feeling, that her
+face betrayed her wonder.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I frighten you,&#8212;yes?&#8221; he asked with a smile of reassurance; &#8220;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,&#8221; he flung his cigarette to the waves, and for the first time during
+his monologue turned squarely towards her, &#8220;but if I have a passion come
+to me <em>now</em>, <em>that</em> 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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68])</a></span>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I want to go there to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But why do you not want to on Tuesday&#8212;or next week?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My friend is there,&#8221; she reminded him.</p>
+
+<p>His brow clouded, and she knew the reason why.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are so typically European,&#8221; she laughed; &#8220;I do believe that
+humanity over here has only two bases of action, and they are governed
+by &#8216;<em>Cherchez la femme</em>&#8217; and &#8216;<em>Cherchez l&#8217;homme</em>.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Mais c&#8217;est vrai, &#231;a!</em>&#8221; he said doggedly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not always,&#8221; she replied; &#8220;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 &#8216;<em>cherchant la femme</em>,&#8217; and, as I told you
+before, it is a woman that I go to meet, or, rather, it is a girl.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you sure?&#8221; he asked suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t believe my word yet, do you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I did not say that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, but really you do not.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He gave a slight shrug.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My friend is an Irish girl,&#8221; Rosina went on placidly. &#8220;I do love her
+so. We shall have such a good time being together next week.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69])</a></span>&#8220;You are sure that she is not English?&#8221; the man asked, with a little
+touch of sarcasm in his inflection.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you could hear her speak you could tell that from her accent.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn took out his case and lit another cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What hotel do you go at in Zurich?&#8221; he asked presently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall go wherever my friend is.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where is she?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know; I write her <em>Poste Restante</em>. She has been travelling for
+a long time with a Russian friend,&#8212;a lady,&#8221; she added, with a jerk.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hope you will go to the Victoria,&#8221; Von Ibn said slowly; &#8220;that is
+where I always have stay in Zurich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So that we may have our dining-room souvenir in common, I suppose?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is a very nice place,&#8221; he cried hotly; &#8220;it is not at all common! It
+is one of the best hotels in Zurich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What time do you travel in the morning?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>&#8221; he asked then, turning his
+eyes downward upon her face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By the first express; it goes, I believe, about eight o&#8217;clock.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall not be awake,&#8221; he said gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall not be, either; but Ottillie will get me aboard somehow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If it was noon that you go, I should certainly come to the Gare,&#8221; he
+said thoughtfully; then he reflected for a short space, and added
+eagerly, &#8220;why do you not go later, and make an excursion by Zug; it is
+just on your way, and a so interesting journey.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know Zug, and the lake too; I&#8217;ve coached all through there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then it would not again interest you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No; I want to go straight to Molly as fast as I can.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To Molli! Where is that? You said to Zurich you went.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and explained.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Molly is the name of my girl friend.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, truly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he was silent, and she was silent, and the lights of Lucerne
+continued to draw nearer and nearer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wonder if I shall really never see you again,&#8221; he said, after a long
+interval.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>&#8220;I wonder.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is very unlikely that we shall ever meet again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In spite of herself her voice sounded dry.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where is your bank address?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Deutsches-Filiale, Munich, while I am in this part of the world. But
+why? Were you thinking of writing me weekly?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no,&#8221; he said hastily, &#8220;but I might send you a <em>carte-postale</em>
+sometimes, if you liked.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She felt obliged to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Would you send a colored one, or just one of the regular <em>dix-centime</em>
+kind,&#8221; she inquired with interest.</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn contemplated her curiously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have such a pretty mouth!&#8221; he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed afresh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But with the stamp it is fifteen <em>centimes</em> anyway,&#8221; he continued.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Stamp, what stamp? Oh, yes, the postal card,&#8221; she nodded; and then, &#8220;I
+never really expect to see you again, but I&#8217;m glad, very glad that I met
+you, because you have interested and amused me so much.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;American men are so very stupid, are they not?&#8221; he said
+sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72])</a></span>&#8220;No, indeed,&#8221; she cried indignantly; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You need not speak to me so hotly,&#8221; said Von Ibn, &#8220;I always take a
+cab.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The ending of his remark was sufficiently unexpected to cause a short
+break in the conversation; then Rosina went on:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I saw a man do a very gallant thing once, he hurried to carry a poor
+old woman&#8217;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&#8217;t that royal
+in him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He did not appear impressed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Does that man take the broom and sweep a little for the street-cleaner
+when he meets her?&#8221; he asked, after a brief period for reflection.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We do not have women street-cleaners in America.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>After a minute or two he took out his note-book and pencil.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Deutsches-Filiale, Munich, you said, did you not?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can you write my name?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If strict necessity should drive me to it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Write it here, please.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall send you a card <em>Poste Restante</em> at Zurich,&#8221; he announced, as
+the lights of Lucerne blazed up close beside them.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Be sure that you spell my name right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said, taking out his note-book again; &#8220;it is like this, <em>n&#8217;est
+ce pas</em>?&#8221; and he wrote, and then showed her the result.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, that&#8217;s it,&#8221; she assented.</p>
+
+<p>He continued to regard his book with deep attention.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It exasperates me to have my name spelled wrong,&#8221; she went on; &#8220;doesn&#8217;t
+it you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said; &#8220;it is for that that I look in my book.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She came close and looked at what she had written,&#8212;&#8220;Von Ebn.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Isn&#8217;t that right?&#8221; she asked in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is your English E, but not my letter.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How do you spell your name?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74])</a></span>&#8220;I-b-n.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, and he laughed with her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That was very stupid in me,&#8221; she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he replied, with one of his rare smiles; &#8220;but I would have said
+nothing, only that at the <em>Poste Restante</em> I shall lose all my letters
+from you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All! what leads you to suppose that there would ever be any?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He turned and looked steadily at her, his eyes widely earnest.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What, not even a post card?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina forgave the yawn, or perhaps she had forgotten it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you really want to hear from me again?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, really.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shall you remember me after I am gone?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Nat&#252;rlich.</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For how long?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At that he shrugged his shoulders. Down below they were making ready for
+the landing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who can say?&#8221; he answered at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;At least, monsieur, you are frank.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am always frank.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is that always best?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>People were beginning to move towards the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> staircase. Below, the man
+stood ready to fling the rope.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us go to the other landing and walk back across the stone bridge,&#8221;
+he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There is not time; it is quite seven o&#8217;clock now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I shall not again be with you, and there is something that I must
+say.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must say it here, then.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can you hear if I speak now,&#8221; he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You will see that I really interest myself in you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want to ask you something; will you do it if I ask you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will you promise me to do it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They were now squeezing past the ticket <em>kiosque</em>.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76])</a></span>&#8220;But what is it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is this&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A man behind stepped on Rosina&#8217;s skirt and nearly pulled her over
+backward; something ripped violently and she gave a low cry. The man
+said, &#8220;<em>Mille pardons</em>,&#8221; and Von Ibn looked ready to murder him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you undone?&#8221; he asked her solicitously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I&#8217;m only badly torn.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you want a pin?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; have you one?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Malheureusement que non.</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think that I can hold it up,&#8221; she said bravely.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is unpardonable&#8212;a such man!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He turned to scowl again at the offender. They were now in the
+Promenade.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He couldn&#8217;t see in the dark, I suppose,&#8221; she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But why was he come so near? If it was I who had torn from being too
+near, that would be quite different.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you don&#8217;t take care it will be exactly the same thing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, and gave way three inches.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have not yet promise,&#8221; he said then.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Promised what?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To do what I ask.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77])</a></span>&#8220;Tell me what it is; if I can do it I will.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He took her arm to cross towards the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can do it if you will,&#8221; he said; &#8220;it is this&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I&#8217;m so late,&#8221; she cried, &#8220;and I have <em>such</em> a toilette to make!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn had his hand upon her arm still.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is this,&#8221; he said emphatically, &#8220;promise me that you will go to the
+Victoria Hotel at Zurich; yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;From the &#8216;Souvenir&#8217; to the Victoria,&#8221; she murmured; &#8220;oh, he is most
+certainly a genius!&#8221; then she sighed a little. &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry that we shall
+probably never meet again,&#8221; she added sadly.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>Chapter Five</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, my dear,&#8221; began the Irish girl, when they found themselves five
+minutes later being rolled away in one of the villainous Zurich cabs,
+&#8220;begin away back in the early days of our sad separation and tell me
+everything that has happened to you since.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not much has happened,&#8221; Rosina replied. &#8220;I crossed in May and got some
+clothes in Paris, and then came Lucerne, and this is June. Before I came
+over <em>nothing</em> happened. How could things happen while I had to wear a
+crape veil?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To be sure!&#8221; said Molly wisely; &#8220;and yet they do sometimes,&#8212;I know it
+for a fact. And anyway the veil is off now, and you look so well that I
+should think perhaps&#8212;lately?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, <em>dear</em>, no,&#8221; said Rosina, turning quickly scarlet; &#8220;don&#8217;t harbor
+such an idea for a second. Nothing of that sort will ever happen to me
+again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> A burnt child dreads the fire, and I can assure you I&#8217;m cinders
+to the last atom. But never mind me, tell me about yourself. That is
+much more interesting.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;About myself is it you&#8217;re inquiring&#8217;?&#8221; laughed the Irish girl; &#8220;&#8217;tis
+easy told. Last winter, like a fool, I engaged myself to a sweet young
+Russian colonel, and this spring he died&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Molly!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never mind, my dear, because I can assure you that <em>I</em> didn&#8217;t. Russians
+are so furiously made up that he couldn&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it his mother that you are travelling with?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;His mother! No, dear, I can&#8217;t stand any of the family now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whose mother is she?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She isn&#8217;t anybody&#8217;s mother. That&#8217;s how she can be sixty-five and look
+forty-two by gaslight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Does she look forty-two by gaslight? Oh, imagine looking forty-two by
+gaslight!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By men&#8217;s gaslight she looks forty-two. Any woman could just
+instinctively see through everything from her wig to her waist, and
+that&#8217;s why she has grown to hate me so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>&#8220;Does she hate you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hate me! Well, wait until you see her look at me. It&#8217;s a sort of cross
+between a mud-turtle and a basilisk, and she&#8217;s forever telling my age
+and telling it wrong. And she lays for every man that comes near me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, Molly, how awful!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m going slowly mad. You&#8217;ve no idea! she&#8217;s so jealous that life is not
+only a burden, it&#8217;s a weight that&#8217;s smashing me flatter every day. I&#8217;m
+getting a gray hair and a wrinkle, and all because of her. And she wrote
+Ivan&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who&#8217;s Ivan?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s one of the men that I&#8217;ve accepted lately; he&#8217;s her cousin. He&#8217;s a
+prince and she&#8217;s a princess; but oh, my soul and body, my head is uneasy
+enough with lying and I&#8217;ve ceased to care a bit about the crown.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, Molly, wouldn&#8217;t you like to be a princess?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not after this trip. Do you know what straits she&#8217;s driven me to?
+actually I came near taking a Turk at Trieste.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I didn&#8217;t. I thought it over and I decided I wasn&#8217;t built for the
+monopoly of a harem.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina burst out laughing.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>&#8220;Molly,&#8221; she gasped, &#8220;imagine <em>you</em> confined to only one man, and he
+your lord and master!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I couldn&#8217;t possibly imagine it, and I make it a point to never go in
+for anything that I can&#8217;t imagine. But, my dear, I must tell you the
+great news. Being engaged is an old habit with me; but&#8221; (she put her
+hand to her throat and felt within her high stock) &#8220;you must know that I
+am now actually in love, for the first time in my life, too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Molly, since when?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Three weeks. Wait till I fish up my locket and you shall see him.
+Handsome is nowhere! And our meeting was <em>so</em> 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&#8217;t have fallen
+unless we were standing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Molly, who is he? do show me the picture.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s what I&#8217;m trying to do, but I think the clasp has hooked on to
+Captain Douglas&#8217; locket,&#8212;you remember Captain Douglas!&#8212;I can&#8217;t pull it
+anyway. Never mind, I&#8217;ll show you to-night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82])</a></span>&#8220;Is he English?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;English, no; he&#8217;s Italian. Such eyes you never saw. They&#8217;re warmer than
+white porcelain tile stoves in early autumn. And he belongs to the
+Queen-mother&#8217;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&#8212;ah!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly stopped to draw a deep breath and sigh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where is he stationed?&#8221; her friend inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Rome; and he hasn&#8217;t a cent beyond his pay, so we can&#8217;t think of any
+future which makes him <em>so</em> blue.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Poor fellow! do you consider yourself engaged to him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course I&#8217;m engaged to him. He came a whole day&#8217;s journey to propose.
+You don&#8217;t suppose I&#8217;d say &#8216;no&#8217; to a chap who was awfully hard up, and
+then took a long, expensive trip just on my account! Besides, I&#8217;m most
+desperately in love with him, and he is the kind of man who couldn&#8217;t
+come to time any other way. He is a most awfully good sort&#8212;the sort
+that believe in everything. Why, he has such a high opinion of me that
+it&#8217;s almost depressing at times. I can&#8217;t live up to a high opinion; it&#8217;s
+all I can do to keep above a low one.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But how will it come out, Molly?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83])</a></span>&#8220;It won&#8217;t come out at all unless you tell it. No one else knows. He
+<em>can&#8217;t</em> say anything without compromising himself, and I&#8217;m not likely to
+let it out unless I some day pull up the wrong locket by accident.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But don&#8217;t it trouble you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Trouble me! Why should it trouble me? It&#8217;s that old Russian woman who
+troubles me. I&#8217;d be idiotic to add to my miseries by thinking up any
+other torments while I&#8217;m around with her. Here we are at the
+Quai,&#8212;that&#8217;s the hotel yonder. And I&#8217;ve talked one continuous stream
+ever since we left the Gare and you&#8217;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&#8217;ve met <em>some one</em>. Who?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;An old French marquis,&#8221; Rosina told her thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And no one else?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes, of course there were loads of others. But this was such a dear
+old gentleman, when he kissed my hand&#8212;well, really, I almost felt like
+a princess.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But not like a marchioness?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, dear no! I wouldn&#8217;t think of undertaking the gout before I&#8217;m
+thirty.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Lord preserve me from dear old men!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>&#8221; Molly ejaculated with fervor.
+&#8220;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,&#8212;a man like that with devoted
+attention and plenty of rare beef might live ten years, you know,&#8212;so I
+told him &#8216;no,&#8217; and the valet came in and stood him up and led him
+away.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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 <em>d&#233;jeuner</em>. 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>Molly began by winding her arm about her friend&#8217;s shoulders and kissing
+her warmly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis like Paradise to be with you instead of that fussy old woman,&#8221; she
+said warmly; &#8220;now go on with what you were telling me in the
+carriage,&#8212;the marquis, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There isn&#8217;t any more to tell you about him, he&#8217;s all over, but I&#8217;ll
+tell you about some one else, if you&#8217;ll be good.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll be good. Who, and where, and which, and what is the other?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t any faith in you, I&#8217;m afraid you will tease me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did I ever tease you before?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was married then and I didn&#8217;t mind. I feel differently now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I promise not to tease you one bit. Where did you meet him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In Lucerne.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s his name? I know a lot of people who are in Lucerne just now.
+Perhaps I know him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish that you did know him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell me his name.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the composer, Herr von Ibn.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly screamed with joy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, my dear, what luck you do have! Did he play for you? Have you heard
+any of his things?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86])</a></span>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What fun to know him! He&#8217;s going to be so tremendously famous, they
+say; did you know that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So they told me there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And he plays in such a wonderful manner, too. What a pity he didn&#8217;t
+play for you. Don&#8217;t you love a violin, anyhow?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said Rosina thoughtfully; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What kind of a fellow was he to talk to? Was he agreeable?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Most of the American men didn&#8217;t like him, I believe,&#8221; said Rosina; then
+she added, &#8220;but most of the American men never like any foreigners, you
+know, unless it&#8217;s the Englishmen, perhaps.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But what did you think of him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought he was very queer; and he got the better of me all the time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That ought to have made you hate him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is what seems so odd to me. I&#8217;ve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> 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&#8217;t stay angry with him.&#8221; 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&#8217;s shoulder. &#8220;Molly, dear,&#8221; she said softly,
+&#8220;he had a way of smiling,&#8212;if you could only see it! Well!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I could forgive anything to that smile,&#8212;honestly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly looked thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Saturday to Monday,&#8221; she murmured apropos of nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina lifted her head and gave her a glance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish that <em>you</em> might meet him,&#8221; she said gravely.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish that he was here in Zurich,&#8221; her friend replied.</p>
+
+<p>At that instant there sounded a tap on the door.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Herein!</em>&#8221; Rosina cried.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is anything the matter?&#8221; Rosina asked,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It <em>can&#8217;t</em> be that he is here in Zurich!&#8221; she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is his card, anyway.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Mercy on us!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shall he come up here,&#8212;he had better, don&#8217;t you think?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; she gasped. &#8220;I&#8217;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 <em>forever</em> last night. I&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Show monsieur to the room,&#8221; Molly said to the man, cutting Rosina short
+in the full tide of her astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course you must see him,&#8221; she said, as the door closed, &#8220;and, not
+being entirely devoid of curiosity, I can&#8217;t help feeling awfully glad to
+think that now I shall see him too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s deft touch. She found Molly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> still before the
+mirror, and as her own reflection appeared over her friend&#8217;s shoulder
+the other nodded and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You seem to have made a deep impression,&#8221; she said gayly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t understand it all,&#8221; Rosina began; &#8220;he made <em>such</em> a fuss over
+his good-bye last night and&#8212;and&#8212;well, really, I never dreamed of his
+doing such a thing as to come here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m heartily glad that he&#8217;s come, because now I shall meet him, and
+I&#8217;ve heard&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She was interrupted by a slight tap at the door, and before either could
+cry &#8220;<em>Entrez!</em>&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is a very great surprise,&#8221; she began, but he interrupted her at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Comme je vous ai cherch&#233;!</em>&#8221; he cried, with violence. &#8220;Why are you not
+gone to the Victoria as you say&#8212;as I ask you to?&#8221; His face was like a
+thunder-storm.</p>
+
+<p>The corners of her mouth felt suddenly traitorous;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> she tried to speak,
+beginning, &#8220;I did not know&#8212;&#8221; but he broke in, and went hotly on with:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;a scene&#8221; two are infinitely better company than three.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How most absurd I have been made,&#8221; Von Ibn continued wrathfully, &#8220;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 <em>gar&#231;on</em> 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. <em>Figurez-vous?</em> Why are you acted so? Why are you always so oddly
+singular?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina appeared struck dumb by the torrent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> of his words; she stood pink
+and silent before his towering blackness. Molly, at the window, judged
+it prudent to interfere, and, turning, began:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s all my fault, monsieur. Rosina wanted to go to the Victoria; she
+wept when she found that she couldn&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn turned his eyes upon the new speaker, and their first expression
+was one of deep displeasure. But Molly&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <em>her</em> temper, beginning by saying, with a very haughty
+coolness:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>&#8220;It&#8217;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&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And that could have truthed itself by chance,&#8221; he interrupted eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8212;And I believed you, and you know it,&#8221; she finished, not noticing his
+interpolation.</p>
+
+<p>He stood still, looking straight at her, and when she was altogether
+silent he stepped forward and raised her hand within his own.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Does one meet a real friendship on Saturday to let it go from him for
+always after Monday?&#8221; he asked her, speaking with a simple dignity that
+suddenly swept the atmosphere free from clouds and storms.</p>
+
+<p>Molly crossed the room hastily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hear madame calling,&#8221; she explained.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> absence appeared to be a very desirable quota in the general
+scheme of things. So the girl went away and stayed away&#8212;being wise in
+her views as to life and love affairs.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are not angry that I be here?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She drew a quick little breath and then turned to seat herself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must have known that I must come,&#8221; he continued.</p>
+
+<p>She felt her lips tremble, and was furious at them for it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I played the &#8216;Souvenir&#8217; last night,&#8221; he said, dropping his eyes and
+sinking his voice; &#8220;it is then plain to me that I must travel to-day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Something dragged her gaze upward until their eyes met.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, and she blushed deeply....</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>Chapter Six</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">IT was very late that night&#8212;indeed the hour was dangerously close upon
+the morning after&#8212;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, you know him now,&#8221; Rosina said at last, the inflection of her
+voice rampant with interrogative meaning.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; was the non-committal answer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t be horrid, Molly; you know I want so much to know what you think
+of him? Isn&#8217;t he delicious? Isn&#8217;t he grand? Didn&#8217;t he impress you as
+being just an ideal sort of a celebrity?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly opened her eyes to an exceeding width.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; she said slowly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95])</a></span>&#8220;Don&#8217;t know! then you don&#8217;t like him? What don&#8217;t you like about him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;d prefer a Russian myself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why! what do you mean?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re not so fierce, and if one likes fierceness they&#8217;re plenty
+fierce enough.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What are you talking about?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The way that he came bursting in on us to-day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But that was splendid! it was lovely to see him so worked up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You never can count on when he&#8217;ll work up, though.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I like men you can&#8217;t count on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You see, I could always count on my husband, and that sort of
+arithmetic isn&#8217;t to my taste any more.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, dear, from the little I&#8217;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&#8212;or otherwise&#8212;will.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I like that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, so I gathered from your actions.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And, after all, whatever he is&#8212;&#8221; Rosina paused and ran her fingers
+through her hair. &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t any of it amount to anything, you know,&#8221;
+she added.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96])</a></span>&#8220;Oh, dear no. That&#8217;s evident enough.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina started.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you mean?&#8221; she cried.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, nothing as far as he&#8217;s concerned;&#8212;only as far as you are.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But,&#8221; Rosina insisted, &#8220;you did mean something. What was it? You
+mean&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t mean anything,&#8221; said Molly; &#8220;if he don&#8217;t mean anything and you
+don&#8217;t mean anything, how in Heaven&#8217;s name could <em>I</em> mean anything?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I only met him Saturday, you know,&#8221; Rosina reminded her. &#8220;And this is
+Monday,&#8221; she reminded her further. &#8220;Nothing ever can happen in such a
+short time,&#8221; she wound up airily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Molly thoughtfully, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish you wouldn&#8217;t laugh.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not laughing, I&#8217;m thinking.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What are you thinking?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&#8212;&#8221; she hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I shouldn&#8217;t,&#8221; Rosina declared flatly.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause, during which Molly finished her braids and proceeded
+to establish herself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> on the foot of her friend&#8217;s bed in a most
+confidence-provoking attitude.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s talk about the lieutenant,&#8221; the American suggested at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s too mild for to-night,&#8221; her friend said; &#8220;it would be like toast
+and rain-water after a hunt meet to discuss him just now. Let&#8217;s talk
+about Dmitri.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whose Dmitri? another one of your <em>fianc&#233;s</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, dear no. He&#8217;s a cross Russian poodle that was given me last
+Christmas. When you try to be nice to him he bites. I don&#8217;t know what
+makes me think of him just now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina laughed, and held her hand out lovingly towards the pretty girl
+at her feet.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Forgive me, Molly. I really didn&#8217;t mean to be vexed. Let us talk of
+something pleasant and leave my latest to sleep in peace at the
+Victoria.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you sure that he&#8217;s at the Victoria?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not at all; he may have moved to this hotel, or returned to Lucerne.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I should think so, indeed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But never mind.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly took her knees into the embrace of her clasped hands.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wonder if you ever <em>will</em> marry again,&#8221; she murmured curiously.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98])</a></span>&#8220;Never.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you sorry that you ever married?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No-o-o,&#8221; said the other reflectively, &#8220;because I never could have known
+the joy of being a widow any other way, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Would you advise me to marry,&#8221; Molly inquired; &#8220;one can&#8217;t be sure of
+the widowhood, and if one has courage and self-denial a life of single
+blessedness is attainable for any woman.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t believe it is for you, though.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why not, pray?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your eyes are all wrong; old maids never have such eyes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I got my eyes from my father.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, he wasn&#8217;t an old maid, surely?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, he was a captain in the Irish Dragoons.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There, you see!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly stood up and shook her gown out, preparatory to untying its series
+of frontal bows.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But if you were to marry again&#8212;&#8221; she began.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina threw up an imploring hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You send cold December chills down my warm June back,&#8221; she cried
+sharply.</p>
+
+<p>Molly flung the dressing-gown upon a chair and proceeded to turn off the
+lights.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want you to think I&#8217;m cross,&#8221; began an apologetic voice in the
+dark which descended about them.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99])</a></span>&#8220;I wasn&#8217;t thinking of you at all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What were you thinking of?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of Dmitri.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then low laughter rippled from one narrow bed to the other and back
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later there was a murmur.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do wish, Molly, that you&#8217;d tell me what you <em>really</em> thought of him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought he was grand. How could any one think anything else?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then through the stillness and darkness there sounded the <em>frou-frou</em> of
+ruffles and the sweetness and warmth of a fervent kiss.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>Chapter Seven</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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 &#8220;winding up&#8221; a liberal supply of honey, and
+Rosina was salting her egg, when there came a tap at the door of the
+salon.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, Monsieur von Ibn is up early,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>It proved to be nothing more unconventional than the maid of Madame la
+Princesse, a long-suffering female who bore the name of Claudine.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is the matter?&#8221; Molly demanded anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, mademoiselle, I am sent to say that it must that all go to-day!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>&#8220;To-day!&#8221; Molly screamed; &#8220;I thought that we were to remain until Friday
+anyway?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now, did you <em>ever</em>?&#8221; Molly asked emphatically of Rosina, who shook her
+head and looked troubled in good earnest. &#8220;Do you really think that she
+means it?&#8221; she continued, turning to the maid once more; &#8220;she sometimes
+changes her mind, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not of this time, mademoiselle, I have already arrange her hairs, and I
+am bidden place her other hairs in the case.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then it&#8217;s settled,&#8221; cried the Irish girl despairingly; &#8220;when her hair
+is done, the end of all is at hand. What train do we go by, Claudine?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am not of all sure, mademoiselle; madame has spoken of he who runs by
+Schaffhausen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Irish girl sighed heavily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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,&#8221; and then
+she picked up the honey-jar and sighed again.</p>
+
+<p>The maid went out.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102])</a></span>&#8220;What makes you go?&#8221; Rosina asked; &#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, my dear, I&#8217;ve stayed at their place in the Caucasus weeks at a
+time, and I have to be decent, and she knows it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why did you ever accept an invitation to travel with such a horrid
+person?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly was out of bed and jerking her hair-ribbons savagely loose.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She isn&#8217;t a horrid person,&#8221; she said; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t,&#8221; said Rosina decidedly; &#8220;I certainly wouldn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish I&#8217;d taken the Turk,&#8221; the Irish girl exclaimed, as she wove her
+hair back and forth and in and out upon the crown of her head, &#8220;I&#8217;d have
+been free of Russia then; &#8217;tis a hint for European politics, my present
+situation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina suddenly gave a sharp cry.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Molly,&#8212;and me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly looked over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221; she asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103])</a></span>&#8220;Why, what am I to do? I came here to be with you, and now you&#8217;re going
+away.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll have to go too if you can&#8217;t stay behind without me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I only came yesterday.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, what of that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And, oh Molly, that man! I&#8217;ll <em>have</em> to go!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, because&#8212;because&#8212;Oh, you know why. And then,&#8212;if I go&#8212;what <em>do</em>
+you suppose he will think?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly snatched her dressing-gown.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll come too, I fancy. At least, judging from what I&#8217;ve seen of him I
+should suppose that he&#8217;d come too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come too!&#8221; Rosina gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why not? He&#8217;ll be just as interesting in Constance as he is here, or in
+Lucerne.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t really think that he would come too; Molly, not <em>really</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Certainly I think that he would.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Molly!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis their way here on the Continent; they&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104])</a></span>Rosina appeared most uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want him to go to Constance&#8212;I don&#8217;t want to go myself!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, if it comes to that, you can both remain in Zurich indefinitely, of
+course.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, we can&#8217;t; that is, I can&#8217;t. You know that. If he&#8217;s going to stay
+I&#8217;ve got to go. Oh dear, oh dear, how aggravating it all is! I don&#8217;t
+<em>want</em> him to follow me about.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why don&#8217;t you tell him so, then?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Molly!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, just tell him so, and if you really mean it, he&#8217;ll understand,
+never fear.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I don&#8217;t want to do that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I didn&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But, Molly&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought that you liked him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do like him, but there&#8217;s a wide difference between liking a man and
+wanting to have him tagging along behind all the time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, as to that, I don&#8217;t believe that <em>der</em> Herr von Ibn will stay
+enough behind to be considered as tagging very long.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina twisted uneasily in bed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see what to do,&#8221; she murmured.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>Molly was getting into her clothes with a rapidity little short of
+marvellous.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll be curious to see what you <em>do</em> do,&#8221; she said, sticking pins
+recklessly into herself here and there, while she settled all nice
+points with a jerk. &#8220;It&#8217;s ten o&#8217;clock,&#8221; she added, with a glance towards
+the chimney-piece, &#8220;you&#8217;d better be arising, for I presume he is coming
+this morning?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina smiled delightfully.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You heard him say so last night, didn&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps; somehow the remark didn&#8217;t make an impression on me, if I did.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll get up directly you go. And oh, Molly, do tell me just once more
+before you leave me that you think he&#8217;s&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think he&#8217;s desperately in love,&#8221; she said, &#8220;and I&#8217;ve no blame for him
+if he is.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But do you really think that he is?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, of course one can never be sure with foreigners.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Molly!</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis a fact, my dear. But then you know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> one can never be sure with
+one&#8217;s self either, so there you are.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina laughed ringingly. Then they kissed one another and Molly
+departed.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Then came work for Ottillie, and her mistress was hardly completed as to
+embroidered batiste and black moir&#233; 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 <em>gar&#231;ons</em>.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Vous allez bien?</em>&#8221; he asked eagerly, as he came quickly forward to bow
+over her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, very well;&#8221; and then, because she always became nervous directly
+she lived beneath his steady look, she plunged wildly into the subject
+uppermost in her mind. &#8220;And I ought to feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> very well, because in all
+probability I must travel again to-day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You leave Zurich already so soon?&#8221; he asked, and his voice betrayed
+neither surprise nor even interest.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she answered, &#8220;we are all going to Constance this afternoon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have change your plans?&#8221; he inquired; &#8220;yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She looked up quickly at the much-objected-to word, and he received the
+little glance with a shrug of apology and a smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Madame la Princesse wishes to go on,&#8221; said Rosina, &#8220;and mademoiselle
+thought that I would be so lonely without her that I&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You would have wished to stay, <em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?&#8221; he asked, interrupting
+her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t like to travel two days in succession.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I would beg you to stay,&#8221; he said, looking at his gloved hands, &#8220;but I
+also go to-day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She felt her heart jump suddenly; Molly&#8217;s prediction assaulted her
+memory with great violence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;it happens oddly that my plans are also suddenly
+changed. It is to say good-bye that I am come.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Ah, then he was not going to Constance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am called to Leipsic by a telegram.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108])</a></span>&#8220;No one is ill, I hope?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, fortunately,&#8221; he replied pleasantly; &#8220;but in Leipsic I am much
+interested.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do hope that you will have a pleasant journey,&#8221; she said cordially.</p>
+
+<p>He was staring steadily at her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shall we meet again?&#8221; he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very likely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And your address?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, yes, truly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he stood up.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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,
+<em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am so glad that you came to Zurich and met her,&#8221; she said, rising
+also and lifting her eyes to his.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>&#8220;Is it only because that I have the pleasure to meet mademoiselle that
+you are glad I come?&#8221; he asked, holding out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, smiling, but ignoring the hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In Lucerne you gave me your hand in good-bye,&#8221; he said presently.</p>
+
+<p>She offered her fingers with a frankness unequalled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good-bye,&#8221; she said.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her rings.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is &#8216;<em>au revoir</em>,&#8217;&#8221; he replied, in an almost inaudible tone.</p>
+
+<p>She wondered which was true, the indifferent look or the inaudible tone.</p>
+
+<p>He took up his hat.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Pensez &#224; moi quelquefois</em>,&#8221; he said cheerfully, and departed.</p>
+
+<p>When Molly was made acquainted with this piece of news her comment was
+simplicity itself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How queer!&#8221; she said, folding a lace fichu into a tulle hat, for she
+was packing fast and furiously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course I shall not go now; I shall stay here until Thursday and buy
+silk stockings.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very commendable in you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m really too tired to go before Thursday. I&#8217;ve been around night and
+day in Lucerne until I&#8217;m all worn out.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110])</a></span>&#8220;Yes?&#8221; said Molly, ramming down shoes into the corners; &#8220;well you can
+rest now, sure.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You will engage rooms for me near yours for Thursday, won&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I will.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll sleep and shop to-morrow, and come on that ten o&#8217;clock express
+Thursday.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis settled,&#8221; said Molly, slamming down the trunk-lid; &#8220;we&#8217;ll be at
+the Insel, and expect you day after to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What number do you wear?&#8221; Rosina asked, as she watched the trunk
+locked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where,&#8212;round my neck or my waist?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;On your feet?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Two-and-a-half.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, what a fairy!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then they hurried down to lunch.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>Chapter Eight</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> brilliantly blue beneath the
+midsummer sun, and far away, upon the opposite shore, the Alps rose
+upward, dark gray below, and shining white above.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sudden exclamation, and out from among the crowd thronging
+before her came that American whose steamer-chair had elbowed Rosina&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And since Berlin?&#8221; Rosina asked, interestedly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Since Berlin&#8212;&#8221; 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), &#8220;oh, I&#8217;ve been lots of places since
+then,&#8212;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&#8217;ve never quit seeing new places since I finished my
+business,&#8212;not once.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Dear me, but you must have had a good time!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I have. But I&#8217;ve often wished myself back on the
+&#8216;Kronprinz,&#8217;&#8212;haven&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113])</a></span>&#8220;No, I don&#8217;t think that I have. The person that I saw the most of on the
+&#8216;Kronprinz&#8217; has been with me ever since.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The American looked surprised, having supposed himself to be that very
+person. Rosina laughed at his face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I mean my maid,&#8221; she explained.</p>
+
+<p>Then he laughed too.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you ever smoke any more?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, dear, no. Don&#8217;t you remember how that one cigarette used me up?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You ought to have kept on,&#8212;you&#8217;d have liked them after a while.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps; but some one told me that they would make my fingers yellow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, pshaw, not if you hold them the right way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The smoke got in my eyes so too; oh, I didn&#8217;t seem to care anything
+about it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then they rose and joined the promenaders, who were beginning to grow a
+little fewer with the approach of the dinner hour.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And where have you been all this time?&#8221; the man asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In Paris buying clothes, and in Lucerne wearing them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re travelling with friends?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, most of the time. They went on to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> Constance to-day, and I am to
+join them there Thursday.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you haven&#8217;t anything else to do to-night, won&#8217;t you go with me to
+the Tonhalle and hear the music? It appears to be quite the thing to
+do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think that that would be lovely, and I&#8217;d like to very much, only we
+must be back at the hotel by ten or half-past, for I am really very
+tired.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s easily done; you know we can go whenever we want to. What time
+shall I call for you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll be ready after eight.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll come about quarter past, and we can stroll about first and see
+something of the night side of Zurich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The night side of everything here is so beautiful,&#8221; said Rosina; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>Then about half-past eight Monsieur l&#8217;Am&#233;ricain 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&#8217;s capacity for spontaneous
+enjoyment,&#8212;to be capable of joy without knowing the reason why, to be
+flooded with enthusiasm for one knows not what. It was our lady&#8217;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,&#8212;which in her life had
+generally proved to be sugar and to be almost as good as the
+liquid,&#8212;only requiring a spoon.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> others did, a table was found,
+and they sat down to ices and fairy cakes, amid the flowers and colored
+lights.</p>
+
+<p>It was about nine o&#8217;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 <em>gar&#231;on</em>, and German, French, or
+English, that voice was unmistakable. How, what, or why she knew not,
+but <em>he</em> was surely there behind her, and the instant after he passed
+close at her side.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now,&#8221; she said to herself, &#8220;he will look away very carefully for a
+while, and then he will look at us;&#8221; and with the thought her breath
+mounted tumultuously.</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;wide-awake American look,&#8221; and saw all that
+was to be seen within his range of vision, spoke:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You knew that man who just passed, didn&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She started, having forgotten the very existence of him who addressed
+her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, oh, yes,&#8221; she said confusedly; &#8220;I know him very well indeed,&#8221; 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> 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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119])</a></span>&#8220;I must tell you,&#8221; she cried hurriedly, &#8220;I know him very well&#8212;very,
+very well. I did not know that he was in Zurich, and he&#8212;he did not
+expect to see me here. I want to speak to him; I must speak to him&#8212;I
+must!&#8221; And then, without paying any attention to the other&#8217;s look of
+astonishment, she added with haste, &#8220;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&#8217;ll be able to do you a good turn too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Von Ibn, Von Ibn,&#8221; Rosina repeated impatiently. &#8220;Oh, I am so much
+obliged to you; he&#8212;he&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll go,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and he shall be here in five minutes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120])</a></span>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&#8212;</p>
+
+<p>Ah, the long minutes!</p>
+
+<p>Then a voice at her side said, almost harshly:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You wish to speak to me, madame!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She looked up and straight into his eyes; their blackness was so cool
+and hard that some women&#8217;s courage would have been daunted; but the
+courage of Rosina was a mighty one that rose with all opposing
+difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why are you not <em>en route</em> to Leipsic?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why are you not in Constance?&#8221; he retorted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sit down,&#8221; she said, &#8220;and I will tell you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not wish to take the place of your friend,&#8221; he answered, with a
+stab of sharpest contempt.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think that he will not return for a little.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> able to raise her eyes to his a second time,
+but fixed them instead upon her card, and began in a low tone:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Monsieur, I intended going&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t hear what you say,&#8221; he interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll have to sit down then; I can&#8217;t speak any louder; I&#8217;m afraid that
+I shall cry,&#8221; in spite of herself her voice trembled at the last words.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why should you cry?&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>She was biting her lip,&#8212;the under one,&#8212;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why should you cry?&#8221; he said again, after a minute; &#8220;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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She clasped her hands hard and fast together.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; she exclaimed, &#8220;I&#8212;I hardly know how to speak in the noise and the
+crowd! I feel quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> crazy! I don&#8217;t know what I am saying&#8212;&#8221; she stopped
+short.</p>
+
+<p>He leaned a little towards her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us walk outside a minute,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Monsieur will surely know that
+we are not far. In the air it is better,&#8212;yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But what will he think?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Mon Dieu</em>, let him think what he will! I also have had thinking this
+night. Let him think a little.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You thought I stayed here because of that man, didn&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Donnerwetter!</em>&#8221; he cried violently; &#8220;here he returns already again!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve just met some people that I haven&#8217;t seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> 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&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But Von Ibn spoke at once, coldly, but politely.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps madame will permit me to escort her to her hotel this evening.
+If she will do so, I shall be most happy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The American looked eagerly at Rosina.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am going very soon,&#8221; she said; &#8220;perhaps that will be best.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He appeared puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;d rather I stayed&#8212;&#8221; he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Von Ibn sharply, &#8220;it is better that you go!&#8221; then he added,
+in a somewhat milder tone, &#8220;it is very fine, the moonlight from the
+University.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>They walked on until something of their own tumult was stayed by the
+stillness, and then Von Ibn said quietly:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell me of what you were saying.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was saying that you thought that I had remained here because of that
+man, and yet it was really all an accident.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders slightly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you are quite free,&#8212;and he seems very nice, and is of your own
+country and all so agreeable.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was really too tired to go to Constance, but&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, madame, <em>je vous en prie</em>,&#8221; he interrupted, &#8220;no explanation is
+needful. It does not interest me, I assure you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I did not want to go to Constance until Thursday,&#8221; she went steadily
+on; &#8220;but I could not stay here because&#8212;because&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he interrupted, &#8220;all that I have understand,&#8212;I understand all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So,&#8221; she continued, &#8220;I packed to go, and meant to go, and then when you
+told me that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> you were leaving too, I thought that I might just as well
+adhere to my&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is &#8216;adhere&#8217;?&#8221; he broke in; &#8220;that word I have never known before.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It means&#8212;well&#8212;it means &#8216;stick to.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Glue paste?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She felt as if a clown had suddenly turned a somersault into the midst
+of the death scene of Hamlet!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not glue paste,&#8221; she explained carefully; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you repose by coming to the Tonhalle with a gentleman?&#8221; he asked in
+a tone of smothered sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I met him this afternoon as I was walking&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you only know him first this afternoon?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Monsieur!</em>&#8221; she cried in horror, &#8220;I came on the steamer with him from
+New York, and he went to college with my cousin!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn gave another shrug.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You tell everything very cleverly,&#8221; he remarked; &#8220;but, my dear madame,
+we have too many difficulties,&#8212;it is always that between us,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> and&#8212;what
+is your proverb?&#8212;no smoke without over a fire?&#8212;<em>Eh bien</em>, I begin to
+grow weary.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you believe what I have just told you?&#8221; she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said at last, &#8220;I do believe.&#8221; He held out his hand, &#8220;I do
+believe now, but I must tell you that truly if I had been of a
+&#8216;<em>temp&#233;rament jaloux</em>,&#8217; I would have been very angry this night.
+Yes,&#8212;of a surety.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She looked away, with an impulse to smile, and her heart was
+sufficiently eased of its burden to allow her to do so.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shall we go to the hotel now?&#8221; she asked after a moment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you have not given me your hand?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I like better to walk alone,&#8221; she said, freeing herself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are, perhaps, still angry?&#8221; he inquired anxiously.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>&#8220;No, but I can walk easier alone. And I want you to tell me now why you
+are not <em>en route</em> North, instead of staying here in Zurich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I have been North,&#8221; he said eagerly; &#8220;I have been this day to
+A&acirc;rburg.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To A&acirc;rburg!&#8212;Where is that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wait, I will make all plain to you,&#8221; he looked down upon her with the
+smile that always proclaimed a complete declaration of peace, &#8220;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,&#8212;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&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What did you see?&#8221; Rosina interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I see plainly that you think it is some lady&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I did not think any such a thing!&#8221; she cried hotly.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed and tossed his head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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 A&acirc;rburg and telegraph, and when the answer come
+that you are still here, I feel very strongly to return at once, and so
+I do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128])</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you must still go to Leipsic?&#8221; she asked presently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, after a little.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish you had gone when you started.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am sure that you, who always understand, know why.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;After a while will do,&#8221; he said easily, &#8220;when we are more tired of
+ourselves.&#8221; He paused. &#8220;Perhaps Thursday,&#8221; he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221; she exclaimed, in spite of herself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why &#8216;oh&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are so positive that we shall be <em>ennuy&#233;s</em> by Thursday.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he replied tranquilly, &#8220;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
+A&acirc;rburg.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And Leipsic?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, for that you were so charming to send<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina nodded, a sympathetic smile upon her lips.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But we must go back to the hotel now,&#8221; she said sadly; &#8220;it is nearly
+ten o&#8217;clock.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I may come to-morrow morning and we shall make a promenade
+together, <em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?&#8221; he said eagerly; &#8220;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,&#8212;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I ought to go on to my friends to-morrow,&#8221; she said, &#8220;you must know
+that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I will go there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To Constance?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, surely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, monsieur, that will not do at all!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why will it not do at all?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130])</a></span>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want you following me to Constance as you did to Zurich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I will not follow you; I will this time go on the same train with
+you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; she said, in despair at the wide space between his views and those
+of the world in general, &#8220;you cannot do that, it would not look well at
+all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who will it look unwell to?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t say &#8216;unwell,&#8217; say &#8216;not well.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not well; who will see it not well?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah,&#8221; she said, shaking her head, &#8220;there is no telling who would see
+only too well, and that is just the trouble.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn knit his black brows.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not understand that just,&#8221; he said, after a moment. And then he
+reflected further and added, &#8220;You are of an oddness so peculiar. Why
+must the world matter? I am my world&#8212;nothing matters to me. <em>Vous &#234;tes
+tortillante!</em> 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She looked off across the lake.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You ought to want to do what pleases me,&#8221; she suggested.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>&#8220;But I do not,&#8221; he said vigorously; &#8220;I want to do what pleases me, and
+you must want it too,&#8212;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&#8212;she does her own wish always,
+and is always unhappy; in Europe she does her husband&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I have no husband,&#8221; said Rosina insistently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It will be very good if you learn to obey, and then you can have one
+again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I never mean to marry again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never mean to marry once, <em>surtout pas une Americaine</em>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She felt hurt at this speech and made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I mean to come to Constance.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you do not bore me,&#8221; he said; and then after a long pause he added,
+&#8220;yet.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She was forced to feel that the &#8220;y&#8221; in &#8220;yet&#8221; had probably begun with a
+capital.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want to go to the hotel now,&#8221; she said, in a tired tone.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132])</a></span>&#8220;Let us go and get an ice or some coffee first; yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t keep saying &#8216;yes&#8217; that way,&#8221; she cried impatiently; &#8220;you know
+how it frets me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He took her arm gently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are indeed fatigued,&#8221; he said in a low tone, &#8220;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? <em>Dites-moi franchement</em>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she answered, with simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And why did you care?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t want you to think what I knew that you were thinking.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you care that I was unhappy?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I cared that you thought that I would lie.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was quite furious,&#8221; he meditated; &#8220;I came from the train so late and
+found that you were gone out. <em>Je ne me f&acirc;che jamais sans raison</em>,&#8212;but
+I had good reason to-night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; he said quickly, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed a little.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133])</a></span>&#8220;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,&#8221; she asked, with
+real curiosity, &#8220;if I had not, would you have spoken to me after a
+while?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Je ne sais pas</em>,&#8221; he replied with brevity; and then looking down at
+her with one of his irresistible smiles he added, &#8220;but I find it
+probable.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled in return, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do undertake to never be angry like that again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Again!&#8221; he said quickly and pointedly; &#8220;then I <em>may</em> come to
+Constance?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her mind was forced to take a sudden leap in order to rejoin his rapid
+deduction of effect from cause.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, no,&#8221; she cried hastily, &#8220;you must not think any more of Constance,
+you must go to Leipsic, just as you intended doing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you said&#8212;&#8221; he began.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I meant, in the future, if we should ever chance to meet by accident.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His brow darkened.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where?&#8221; he asked briefly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who can tell,&#8221; she answered cheerfully; &#8220;people are always meeting
+again. See how that man of the steamer met me again to-day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134])</a></span>&#8220;But you have hear of him since you come?&#8221; he demanded, a fresh shade of
+suspicion in his tone.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never! Never a word until he came out of the Promenade and spoke to me
+this afternoon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn thought about it frowningly for a little and then decided it was
+not worth his pains.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I would not care to meet again as he,&#8221; he declared carelessly; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you think he was not really invited to go to drive?&#8221; she asked,
+opening her eyes widely.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of a certainty not. But he could see he was not wanted by us. When he
+came near, you really looked to weep.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, <em>no</em>!&#8221; she cried, in great distress.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; it was just so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause while she pondered this new phase of herself, and
+after a while he went on:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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? <em>&#199;a&#8212;je ne
+le comprends pas!</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You do understand,&#8221; she said; &#8220;I know you do, and you know that I know
+that you do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135])</a></span>He looked at her for a few seconds and then asked:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How long are you in Constance?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And then where do you go?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Probably to Munich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;With always that Molly?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not know whether they will go there or not. I believe they are
+going to Bayreuth and then to Berlin.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He reflected for the space of half a block.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I should really go to Leipsic,&#8221; he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then why don&#8217;t you go?&#8221; she retorted, more in answer to his tone than
+to his speech.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I might perhaps go to Leipsic while you are in Constance,&#8212;<em>perhaps</em>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Heavy emphasis on the last &#8220;perhaps.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, do!&#8221; she pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you going to Bayreuth?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I don&#8217;t think so; they all come down to Munich right afterwards,
+you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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 &#8216;Parsifal&#8217; is only there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He paused, but she made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am going to Bayreuth,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and then I shall come to Munich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136])</a></span>He made the last statement with an echo of absolute determination, but
+she continued to keep silence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In Munich I shall see you once more?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where will you be?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She told him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I shall be in the &#8216;Vierjahreszeiten&#8217;; why do you not come there?&#8221;
+he added.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because I love the <em>pension</em> with my whole heart,&#8221; she declared
+fervently; &#8220;I was there for an entire winter before my marriage; it is
+like home to me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, pulled out his note-book and carefully wrote down the name
+and address; as he put it up again, he remarked:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That was droll, what you said to-night, that you would never marry
+again! Where do you get that idea?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;From being married once.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have it from never being married any, and I have it very strong. Have
+you it very strong?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Rosina decidedly, &#8220;very strong indeed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then when we know all is only nothing, why may I not come to
+Constance?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because you can&#8217;t,&#8221; she said flatly, &#8220;I don&#8217;t want you to come.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137])</a></span>&#8220;But I will be very good, and&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she said interrupting; &#8220;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&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So!&#8221; he said, in a low tone that almost shook with intense and angry
+feeling, &#8220;that is why I may not come! He goes, does he? <em>B&#234;te que je
+suis</em>, that I did not comprehend before!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina stared at him, motionless, for the space of perhaps ten seconds,
+and then an utter contempt filled her, and every other consideration
+fled.</p>
+
+<p>She ran up two or three steps, crossed the hall, and passed the
+<em>Portier</em> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ottillie,&#8221; she exclaimed, panting under the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> weight of many mixed
+feelings, &#8220;I want to leave for Constance by the first train that goes in
+the morning. I don&#8217;t care if it is at six o&#8217;clock, I&#8217;ll get up. Ring and
+find out about everything, and then see to the bill and all. I <em>must</em>
+go!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Ottillie stood there, and her clever fingers were already unfastening
+her mistress&#8217; hat-pins.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Madame may rest assured,&#8221; she said quietly, &#8220;all shall be as she
+desires.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Meanwhile below stairs Von Ibn had entered the caf&#233;, lit a cigarette and
+taken up one of the evening journals.</p>
+
+<p>He appeared to look over the pages of the latter with an interest that
+was intent and unfeigned.</p>
+
+<p>But was it so?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>Chapter Nine</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 8px;">
+<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="cap">I SHALL certainly not tell Molly one word about these latest
+developments,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, the freshness of a Suabian morning lay over valley and
+mountain. The country was beautiful with the charm of midsummer&#8217;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I shall not tell Molly one word,&#8221; she repeated mentally; &#8220;I can&#8217;t
+tell her part,&#8212;I won&#8217;t tell her all,&#8212;so I just shan&#8217;t tell her
+anything,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>The train came slowly in by the banks of the Bodensee, and halted at the
+Kaufhaus soon after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> eleven o&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let the maid take the boxes to the hotel,&#8221; she said, after having
+greeted the traveller, &#8220;and you and I will just have a nice drive before
+dinner, and a good long nap right afterwards.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Was he burned <em>on</em> this stone?&#8221; Molly called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> to the cabman in German;
+&#8220;now why does he laugh, do you suppose?&#8221; she asked in English of Rosina.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; the latter replied wearily, &#8220;you used the word for &#8216;fried,&#8217;
+instead of the word &#8216;burned,&#8217; but it doesn&#8217;t matter,&#8221; she added with a
+heavy sigh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wonder whether he was looking towards the woods or towards the town
+when they lighted him!&#8221; Molly pursued with real interest.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I would forget all about him, if I was you,&#8221; she said; &#8220;you will never
+get any satisfaction out of a man who is always going in for jealous
+rages like that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m glad that I did as I did,&#8221; she said, with an effort to speak in a
+tone of indifference<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> (the effort was a marked failure). &#8220;I&#8217;m sure that
+I want to forget him badly enough,&#8221; she added, and swallowed a choke.</p>
+
+<p>Molly put her hand upon hers and nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t let us talk about it any more,&#8221; said Rosina, feeling bitterly
+that Molly lightly demanded oblivion of her when all her inclinations
+were towards tears.</p>
+
+<p>They drove some distance in silence, and then Rosina said slowly:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you suppose that I shall ever see him again now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, if you want to. One always sees the men again that one wants to
+see again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you sure?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never knew it to fail.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How does that happen?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But Monsieur von Ibn is so <em>very</em> singular!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Every man is singular!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My husband wasn&#8217;t. And he wasn&#8217;t ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> the least bit jealous,&#8221; she
+stopped to sigh. &#8220;I like jealous men!&#8221; she added.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Molly, dryly, &#8220;so I observed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He never lost his temper either,&#8221; Rosina continued. &#8220;We never had
+anything to make up. And making up is so delicious. Oh, me!&#8221; she sighed,
+and her eyes filled with tears again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never mind,&#8221; said Molly, consolingly, &#8220;you&#8217;ll soon be making it up this
+time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you think,&#8221; said Rosina, slowly, &#8220;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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He isn&#8217;t that sort of a man, I fancy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But his behavior was so unpardonable!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but he doesn&#8217;t see that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then I don&#8217;t care if I never do meet him again,&#8221; Rosina exclaimed
+passionately, and the next instant she burst into tears. &#8220;He&#8217;s so
+interesting,&#8221; she sobbed; &#8220;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&#8217;s&#8212;all&#8212;all over!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly leaned over and kissed her, drew a comforting arm around her
+waist, and gave her an affectionate squeeze.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t take it so awfully to heart, my dear,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>&#8221; she whispered soothingly;
+&#8220;we all have troubles of one kind, if not of another. Here&#8217;s a long
+letter come by the morning post from my dear gray-caped lieutenant, and
+it&#8217;s just full of the worst sort of desperation over our mutual affairs.
+He knows that we can&#8217;t possibly marry without a certain amount of money,
+which we have neither of us got, and so there you are!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How much is it?&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s something awful in pounds, but in those Italian <em>lire</em>!&#8212;why,
+it&#8217;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!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Molly, don&#8217;t let him do that! We haven&#8217;t any Italians in America
+except organ-grinders and miners, and the Ambassador, of course!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I knew it wouldn&#8217;t do,&#8221; said the Irish girl. Then she shrugged her
+shoulders and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But then I never did intend to marry him, anyhow!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They drove back to the hotel, and Rosina&#8217;s eyes were fairly presentable
+when the <em>Portier</em> came out to receive them.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>&#8220;There is a letter just come for madame,&#8221; he said, as they entered the
+Kreuzgang; &#8220;it is in the office; I will bring it at once.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There!&#8221; Molly whispered, &#8220;do you see!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It was her bill, receipted, which Ottillie had let fall in the haste of
+their early departure!</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Madame la Princesse Russe having a migraine that afternoon, the two
+friends had the pleasure of a t&#234;te-&aacute;-t&#234;te 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.</p>
+
+<p>As the waiter was removing the salad, a shadow fell suddenly athwart the
+floor at their side, and Molly, looking quickly upward, beheld&#8212;the man!</p>
+
+<p>He was in evening dress, calm, cool, and smiling,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> and neither the
+surprised face of the one, nor the violent start of the other shook his
+composure in the least.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Vous allez bien, mesdames?</em>&#8221; he asked politely, and then, speaking to
+the waiter with authority:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Lay another place here,&#8221; he said, indicating the end of the small
+table, &#8220;for I shall dine with you, <em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?&#8221; he added, looking
+straight at Rosina.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When <em>did</em> you come?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By Schaffhausen, that <em>train-rapide</em> 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&#8212;also the heat.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Was it dusty?&#8221; she went on.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I believe you well that it was. And you,&#8221; he continued, turning to
+Rosina, who sat helplessly staring at her plate, and was very pale
+except for a crimson spot on either cheek, &#8220;had you a pleasant ride?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, she hadn&#8217;t,&#8221; said her faithful friend; &#8220;she arrived all used up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148])</a></span>&#8220;You were made too tired, and do not feel well?&#8221; he asked, addressing
+the scarlet cheeks again; &#8220;truly, you look much so. What has arrived in
+Zurich to make you like that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, now I may eat!&#8221; the gentleman exclaimed in a tone of deep
+satisfaction, and began at once.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must not be surprised over me,&#8221; he said to Molly, with a slight
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was not surprised,&#8221; she reassured him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because I have not eaten to-day before,&#8221; he explained.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Really?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, of a truthfulness. I am most <em>dr&ocirc;le</em> as that. I may never eat when
+I am much troubled.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Dear me, have you been troubled to-day?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149])</a></span>He looked at Rosina, whose face blazed yet deeper.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have said that I may not eat,&#8221; he repeated simply.</p>
+
+<p>Molly laid down her spoon and glanced out of the window again. Her
+feminine instinct divined what was to be.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And madame your friend, she is not ill, I hope?&#8221; he inquired politely,
+as the waiter removed his soup.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said the Irish girl, slowly, &#8220;or&#8212;that is,&#8212;yes, yes, she is.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you must go at once to her,&#8221; he cried, springing up to draw back
+her chair, &#8220;I am so sad for that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly rose to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sorry, too,&#8221; she said, nodding a smiling thanks; &#8220;but you see I&#8217;ve
+no choice.&#8221; And then she went coffee-less away to laugh alone
+above-stairs.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, when the fish was gone, he leaned somewhat forward and spoke
+very low.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>&#8220;<em>Oh, que j&#8217;&#233;tais malheureux hier le soir!</em>&#8221; he said in a tone that
+trembled with feeling; &#8220;you can figure to yourself nothing of what it
+was! And this morning&#8212;when I send and find that you are gone!&#8212;I must
+know then that you were very furious of me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She raised her eyes, but to the window, not to him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was,&#8221; she said briefly, but not the less tensely.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When you are run last night&#8212;on the stairs like that, you know!&#8212;it
+should have been amusing to see you run so fast; but I was not any
+amused whatever. But why did you run?&#8221; he questioned, interrupting
+himself; &#8220;did you think to leave me always then, there, forever? For an
+instant I had the idea to go after you, but the <em>Portier</em> was there, and
+I have thought, &#8216;What may he think?&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; she exclaimed, distressedly, &#8220;I altogether forgot him! What do you
+suppose he did think?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Rien du tout</em>,&#8221; he said easily; &#8220;he has think most probably that you
+have lost something from you&#8212;a pin or a button, you know. When a woman
+runs so, that is what every one knows.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do they?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151])</a></span>&#8220;<em>Nat&#252;rlich!</em> I always know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He finished his dinner in short order and then looked a smiling inquiry
+into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We shall go now on to the terrace for the coffee; yes?&#8221; 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&#8217;s night breath.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I will pardon you,&#8221; said Rosina gently. She too was looking
+thoughtfully out into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> twilight on the water. &#8220;Only don&#8217;t do so
+again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is that that I would ask,&#8221; he went on, looking always at the lake,
+never at her; &#8220;that is what I would beg of you. Let us promise
+sincerely&#8212;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is you who are so unreasonable,&#8221; she began.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; he interrupted quickly, &#8220;not unreasonable. <em>Jamais je ne me f&acirc;che
+sans raison!</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, you do too. Just think of last night, you were twice angry for
+nothing at all. It was terrible!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stared afar and seemed to reflect doubly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He was <em>b&#234;te</em>, that man,&#8221; he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He wasn&#8217;t either. He was very nice; I don&#8217;t know how I should have
+gotten along coming over if I had not had him on the steamer to amuse
+me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You could have done very well without him at Zurich,&#8221; said Von Ibn
+doggedly; &#8220;myself, I did not like him the first minute that I see him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When did you first see him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153])</a></span>&#8220;He was there at the table beside you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina laughed a little. He turned towards her and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then you will forgive me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, this one time more. But never, never again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He turned to the lake and consumed five minutes in assimilating her
+remark. Then his look came back to her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was awake so much last night that my eyes burn me; do they show it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She looked into his eyes, and they burned indeed&#8212;burned with a latent
+glow that forced her own to lower their lids.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do they look strangely to you?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she said in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is odd, because in all my life they have never look at any one as
+they look at you to-night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She drew herself together suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t talk foolishly,&#8221; she said distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That was no foolishness; it is true.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do all other men say to you that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not just that, but its equivalents. Men in general are not very
+original.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154])</a></span>He took out his cigarette case and contemplated its bas-relief of two
+silver nymphs for several seconds.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You may,&#8221; said his companion, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;May what?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;May smoke.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I am going to, anyway.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with an air of remonstrance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is not your parlor,&#8221; he reminded her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she said meekly; &#8220;I stand corrected.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He lit the cigarette and threw the match into a rose-bush.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think that I will go and find Molly,&#8221; she suggested presently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think that she would be able to leave madame by this time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But if she can leave her then she will come to us, and I do not want
+her; do you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I always want her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is absurd. Why do you want her? I never want another man when we
+speak together.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I am very fond of Molly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So am I most affectionate of my professor in Leipsic, but I never once
+have wished for him when I was with you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155])</a></span>&#8220;That&#8217;s different.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is that I have really to go away. This time I must. I go to-morrow
+morning without fail.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am so glad,&#8221; she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said, with a quick glance; &#8220;is it really so that my going
+makes you pleasure? Truly I only come in return for your kindness of
+last night&#8212;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am glad that you are going,&#8221; she said quietly, &#8220;and you know why. And
+I shall be glad when we meet again,&#8221; she added in a lighter tone.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You will write to me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am not a letter writer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you will send me a few lines sometimes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you going to write me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Si vous voulez de mes nouvelles.</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>&#8220;Yes, I do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I will tell you,&#8221; he said, tossing his cigarette into the lake; &#8220;I will
+send you a post-card, as I tell you before&#8212;you recall? yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Rosina, with decision, &#8220;I don&#8217;t want post-cards; you can
+write me in an envelope or not at all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have some very small paper,&#8221; he said at last, &#8220;I can use that; I use
+it to write my family on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She almost laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That will be all right,&#8221; she said, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can write on the back too,&#8221; he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shan&#8217;t have any more to say than will go easily on the front,
+though.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I shall see you next in August in Munich?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Esp&#233;rons!</em>&#8221; with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>He stood up suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us walk to the Garten,&#8221; he suggested; &#8220;it is good to walk after
+dinner a little.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She rose too, very willingly, and they went towards the bridge that
+connects the Insel with the mainland.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>&#8220;Did you love your husband?&#8221; he asked as they passed above the moat-like
+stream.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tremendously.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For long?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Until after we were married.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He halted short at that.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was too bad to stop just then.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina felt that there were safer places to pause than there on the
+railroad tracks, and went on to the other side.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was too bad to stop at all,&#8221; she said, when he came too.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Assur&#233;ment.</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We shall have to say our parting very soon,&#8221; the man said presently;
+&#8220;we have both travelled to-day, and I must go in a very early hour
+to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she replied, &#8220;I am much more weary to-night even than I was last
+night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If we are tired we might again have trouble,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>&#8221; suggested her companion
+wisely. Then he added quickly, &#8220;But, no, never again,&#8212;I have promise
+that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shall we not return to the hotel now?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But why will you go back so quick?&#8221; he asked in an injured tone; &#8220;do
+you want to be so soon alone?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought that you wanted to be.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want to sit down and not walk ever,&#8221; he said, pausing by an empty
+table in the open-air caf&#233;. &#8220;What made you stop?&#8221; he went on, looking at
+her, she having paused where he did, naturally.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I stopped because you did.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because I did! that has no sense.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then I&#8217;ll go on alone,&#8221; and she moved away.</p>
+
+<p>He rejoined her in three steps, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do you walk off like that?&#8221; he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because you said that there was no sense in my stopping.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her in great amusement.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Que vous &#234;tes tordante!</em> I asked you why you stopped loving your
+husband?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She stared.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, it&#8217;s ever so long since we were speaking of that. How funny you
+are!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159])</a></span>He turned her back towards the empty table.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us sit down here and talk, it may be the last time for long.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated, thinking of Molly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is so nice here,&#8221; he declared, persuasively; &#8220;only for a few minutes
+we stay.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Listen!&#8221; he exclaimed imperatively; &#8220;you go to learn something now. Pay
+much notice.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have hear that?&#8221; he whispered with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never,&#8221; she whispered in return.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You shall wait a little,&#8221; he murmured, resting his chin on his hand and
+turning his eyes on the lake again; &#8220;in a moment you shall hear.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160])</a></span>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,&#8212;E, F, F sharp, G; four notes, the pain, the
+prayer, the passion of which shrieked to the inmost mysteries of every
+hearing heart.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina started; her companion turned quickly towards her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is what you told me of at Lucerne that night on the steamer?&#8221; she
+asked, with no question in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you comprehend, do you think?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you play that on your violin?&#8221; she asked, when all was over.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There is no music that I may not play,&#8221; he replied, &#8220;unless I have
+never see it, or hear it, or divine it for myself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you play the piano also?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161])</a></span>&#8220;Only what I must. Sometimes I must, you know. Then I say to my hands,
+&#8216;You shall go here, you shall go there!&#8217; and they go, but very badly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She looked straight at him with a curious dawning in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wonder, shall we ever make any music together?&#8221; she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Much,&#8221; he said tritely.</p>
+
+<p>She was conscious of neither wonder nor resistance, as if the music had
+cast a spell over her self-mastery.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want to hear you play,&#8221; she said, with an echo of entreaty.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221; He interrupted himself
+to draw out his keys, and separating one from the rest held it up to
+her. &#8220;Let us hope that in Munich, perhaps.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>&#8220;You are glad that I go?&#8221; he asked suddenly as he picked up his spoon
+and plunged it into the saucer before him; &#8220;yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall be more glad when I know that you are really gone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But this time it is sure. This time it is really a true going.&#8221; He
+stopped and broke a piece of cake into tiny morsels, pushing them
+together into a neat little pile. &#8220;Why were you unhappy in your
+husband?&#8221; he asked slowly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He drank,&#8221; she replied.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps he was unhappy?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Beyond a doubt.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He took another bit of cake and crumbed that up as he had the first.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t do that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why shall I not?&#8221; with an air of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It isn&#8217;t right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I shall pay for it,&#8221; he said remonstrantly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s bad manners, anyhow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What does it matter if I like, and pay for it too?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, then, if you must know, it makes me horribly nervous!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you nervous?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163])</a></span>&#8220;Yes, when people waste cake like that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He sighed and stopped his play.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you ever love after?&#8221; he asked presently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, never! Good Heavens, once was enough!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Was your husband so very bad?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He wasn&#8217;t bad at all; he was only disagreeable.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps he made you nervous?&#8221; he queried.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps,&#8221; she answered dryly.</p>
+
+<p>There was a long, long pause. The band now played &#8220;<em>Doch Einer Schoner
+Zeit</em>,&#8221; and some peasants in the native costume sang the words.</p>
+
+<p>Finally he pushed his plate away and crossed his arms upon the table;
+his eyes were very earnest.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Once I loved,&#8221; he said; &#8220;I have speak of that to you before.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was no passion of a whole life, but for a boy, as I was then, it was
+much. I was quite young, and, <em>Gott</em>! how I <em>did</em> love! She was such a
+woman as says, &#8216;I will make this man absolutely mad;&#8217; and she did so.
+She made me crazy&#8212;<em>tout-&#224;-fait fou</em>; and then, when I could only
+breathe by her eyes, she showed me that she was uncaring!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, stared sightlessly out at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> black water beyond, and then
+turned towards her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it so in <em>your</em> mind towards me?&#8221; he asked, and in his voice and
+eyes was that heartrending pathos which once in a lifetime a man&#8217;s soul
+may come to share with childhood&#8217;s heavy sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>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,&#8212;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, monsieur,&#8221; she said, with a tone of deep appeal, &#8220;believe me, I
+have never done so cruel a thing as that in all my life!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you to all men as to me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hope so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That American in Zurich! when you met him again was it as to meet me
+again?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But he is no especial friend of mine.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And am I especial?&#8212;Am I?&#8212;Yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165])</a></span>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she said slowly, &#8220;I feel as if I had known you all my life.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he answered quickly, &#8220;just so I feel also.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He put up his hand and again brushed the loose lock of his wavy hair
+back from his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Vraiment</em>,&#8221; he exclaimed, &#8220;I begin to feel that it is impossible that
+I go to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, but you must,&#8221; she cried, much alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We are so happy; why can we not let this pleasure last?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You <em>must</em> go!&#8221; she reiterated with decision.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We understand so well,&#8221; he went on, without noticing her words; &#8220;you
+understand, I understand. I wish nothing of you, I require nothing of
+you, only the friendship&#8212;only these good hours that we know together,
+only the joy of our sympathy. Why can I not be where you are everywhere?
+<em>Warum nichts</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It isn&#8217;t possible!&#8221; she said firmly.</p>
+
+<p>He turned about in his seat and called for the reckoning. After it was
+paid they went together back towards the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have told me that you will never marry again,&#8221; he said presently,
+&#8220;and I have told you that I also intend never. But&#8212;&#8221; he stopped short.
+The hotel court was there before them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us walk once around the Kreuzgang,&#8221; he suggested, &#8220;and after that
+we will go in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She assented, and they followed the vivid outline of Constance&#8217;s history
+as portrayed in the large frescoes upon the inner wall of the vaulted
+passage.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not breathe here,&#8221; he said suddenly; &#8220;come into the garden with me
+once again. But for a moment? I beg&#8212;I pray!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They went out on to the terrace, passing through the Refectory, now
+thick with smoke and scintillating with beer-steins.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You say that you will never marry,&#8221; he said again, as they encircled
+the base of Huss&#8217; Tower, &#8220;and I tell you that I also have the idea to
+never marry. But&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He paused again, just by that bit of the old monastery wall which
+extends out towards the bathing-houses.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But if&#8212;<em>if</em>,&#8221; he emphasized the monosyllable with marked
+emphasis,&#8212;&#8220;<em>if</em> I asked you to marry me, what would you say?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina did not stop for an instant&#8217;s consideration.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I should say &#8216;no.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>He received the blow full in his face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not want another husband. I don&#8217;t like husbands. They are all
+alike.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t tell a thing about them beforehand; they always change, and
+are different after marriage from what they were before.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall never change,&#8221; he declared positively.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They all say that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I speak truth!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They all say that too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But with me it will arrive;&#8221; then he added, &#8220;with me it will arrive
+that I shall never change, because I shall <em>never</em> marry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His remark was such a complete surprise to her that she could hardly
+master her shock for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If that was the point that you were leading up to,&#8221; she said finally,
+&#8220;I&#8217;m certainly glad that I did not say &#8216;yes.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He surveyed her, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I particularly said &#8216;if,&#8217;&#8221; he reminded her; &#8220;I said, &#8216;<em>if</em> I asked
+you to marry me,&#8217; you know?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina felt a strong inclination to bring the evening to a close. She
+wanted to be alone and think.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We must go in,&#8221; she said.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168])</a></span>&#8220;I also feel it,&#8221; he answered.</p>
+
+<p>So they went in. The hall and staircase were quite deserted. He walked
+with her to the top of the first flight.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do we leave good-bye here?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she said smiling; &#8220;I think so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stood looking at her, and out of the depths of his nature various
+phantoms strove into shape.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is well that I go,&#8221; he said seriously; &#8220;after all, we are not
+children, you and I, and however we laugh it is always that, that we
+really are not children.&#8221; He put out his hand and took hers. &#8220;I shall be
+away, and the time will be long, and&#8212;&#8221; he paused abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes almost closed beneath the unbearable heat of his gaze.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Shall you remember me?&#8221; she asked, faintly this time.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, much.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then she opened her eyes and withdrew her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For how long?&#8221; she said as before.</p>
+
+<p>He was still staring down at her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who can say!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For three weeks? for four? for six?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Je ne sais pas</em>,&#8221; he said briefly; &#8220;if I think too much I must come
+back, and that will not be wisely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169])</a></span>&#8220;We must not stand here,&#8221; she said suddenly; &#8220;adieu, au revoir!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he replied sombrely, &#8220;we must part now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;</p>
+
+<p>He seized her hand and pressed it so strongly against his lips that his
+lips parted and she felt his teeth against her flesh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Je vous aime!</em>&#8221; he whispered, almost inaudibly. &#8220;Adieu!&#8221;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="back"><a href="#contents">Back to Contents</a></p>
+
+<div class="link"><a name="they" id="they">&nbsp;</a></div>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 392px;"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[171&ndash;172]</a></span>
+<img src="images/gs03.jpg" class="jpg" width="392" height="600" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;They stood together on the Maximilianbr&#252;cke&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span><a name="ii" id="ii"></a><span class="smcap">Part II</span><br />
+<br />
+THE BEATING OF THE WAVES</h2>
+
+<hr class="hr4" />
+
+<h2>Chapter Ten</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">IT was September in Munich. They stood together on the Maximilianbr&#252;cke,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s death at the hands of the merciless frost king.
+The Peace Monument was there, piercing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How old are you?&#8221; the man said suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina jerked her consciousness up out of the bed of the Isar.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No gentleman at home would ask a lady that,&#8221; she told him, thus showing
+great presence of mind.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and twisted his moustache.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I am not a gentleman at home,&#8221; he said pleasantly, &#8220;I am a
+gentleman travelling.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How old are you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have thirty-three years.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I haven&#8217;t,&#8221; she said with decision; &#8220;you might think that I was
+forty, but that is only because I have had so much experience.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her in a dubious, troubled way.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I did not think that you had forty: I did not get that just perhaps.
+You have not truthfully forty, have you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina laughed in unfeigned amusement.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175])</a></span>&#8220;So much experience?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You feel that you have had experience?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Experience as, <em>par exemple</em>, me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her and smiled, shaking his head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, madame, you say that, not at all knowing how much experience I have
+had.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There isn&#8217;t time,&#8221; she said, shaking <em>her</em> head now.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do I ever now ask you &#8216;may I&#8217;?&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You never did ask me &#8216;might you?&#8217;&#8221; she replied.</p>
+
+<p>He drew two or three satisfied puffs.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>&#8220;It is good to be so friends,&#8221; 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 <em>bonne humeur</em>. &#8220;And now for your experience?&#8221; he
+asked after a little. &#8220;It is that which I will to hear.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you ever go to a masked ball?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Mais, naturellement.</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, so did I.&#8221; She paused to note the effect.</p>
+
+<p>He threw a quick glance of undefined question at her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Masked?&#8221; he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, dear no! thickly veiled, and &#8217;way upstairs in a gallery.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Were you greatly amused &#8217;way upstairs in your gallery?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, really; there were ever so many men there that I knew.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did they come upstairs in the gallery?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No indeed, no one knew that I was there. But it interested me to see
+whom <em>I</em> knew&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Was I there?&#8221; he interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it wasn&#8217;t here! it was ever so long ago, while my husband was
+alive.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you see your husband?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177])</a></span>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she said flushing, &#8220;and he was just like all the other men. He
+wore no mask, and he did not care one bit who might recognize him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You had been better not gone,&#8221; said the man decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I think so; I lost all my love for my husband that night, and
+killed all my faith in mankind forever.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why did you be possessed to go?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I went because I did not want to be deceived in the way that many women
+are deceived.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know now all of everything, you think?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know more than most other women do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You would have known much more yet if you had worn a mask,&#8221; he told her
+very dryly.</p>
+
+<p>She did not reply, and after a few minutes he continued:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And now, when you know everything, and can no more be deceived, are you
+so most happy?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not know,&#8221; she said slowly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How have you lost your faith?&#8221; he inquired; &#8220;what in especial can no
+more deceive you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t believe in men,&#8221; she declared; &#8220;I don&#8217;t believe in anything
+that they say, nor in anything that they promise. And I don&#8217;t believe
+one bit in love!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178])</a></span>The man stopped by an empty bench.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We have walked so long,&#8221; he remarked parenthetically; and she sat down,
+parenthetically also, so to speak.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is sad,&#8221; he said, digging in the gravel with his cane, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think perhaps men really mean what they say when they say it,&#8221; she
+began; &#8220;but, oh dear, they can&#8217;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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He did perhaps kiss you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, he went and bought a monkey!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is a monkey?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you know what a monkey is?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If I know I will not trouble you to ask.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>C&#8217;est un singe,&#8212;affe</em>; now you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes; I was thinking of a monk, and of how one told me that you had
+them not with you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he scraped gravel for a long time, while her mind wandered through
+a vista of monks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> 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&#8212;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am an atheist,&#8221; said her companion, rising abruptly from his seat.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Apropos of what?&#8221; she asked, decidedly startled, but rising
+too,&#8212;&#8220;apropos of the monkey?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Comment?</em>&#8221; he said blankly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing, nothing!&#8221; quickly.</p>
+
+<p>They walked on slowly among the shadows which were beginning to gather
+beneath the trees; after a while he spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can you believe in God or not just as you please?&#8221; she asked
+wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am the master of myself,&#8221; he replied straitly; &#8220;if I say that I will
+pray to-night, I will pray. And you must say that you will believe,&#8221; he
+insisted; &#8220;you must again have a faith in men, and in their truth, and
+in honor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>&#8221; Then he paused lengthily. &#8220;And in love?&#8221; he continued; &#8220;say
+that you will again believe in love?&#8212;you will, will you not? yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know that I can do it, even if I want to,&#8221; she said musingly;
+&#8220;looking on at life is so terribly disheartening, especially with us in
+America, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; he said quickly, &#8220;but I do not want you to believe in love in
+America; I talk of here in Munich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I suppose you mean yourself?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said most emphatically,&#8212;&#8220;me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She could not help laughing a little.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You do really amuse me so much,&#8221; she apologized.</p>
+
+<p>A workman in a dirty blouse and a forlorn, green Tyrolese hat, the
+cock&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If any one that knew us should see you!&#8221; she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>He calmly gazed after the now distant workman.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I did not know him,&#8221; he said; &#8220;did you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then she was obliged to laugh again.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>&#8220;You are always so afraid of the world,&#8221; he continued, remonstrating;
+&#8220;what does it make if one do see me kiss your hand? kissing your hand is
+so little kissing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment and smiled whimsically.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&#8212;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,&#8212;the fear of a seeing, you know,&#8212;that we must
+then go in a cellar and bolt nine doors first, probably.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, but she did not.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When I go into a cellar with you,&#8221; she said coldly, &#8220;and allow nine
+doors bolted, you may kiss me, and I pledge you my word not to scream.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A dead silence followed her remark, and lasted until Von Ibn broke it,
+saying abstractedly:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;One does go underground to visit the breweries;&#8221; after which he
+meditated some while longer before adding, &#8220;but they never would bolt
+the doors, I think.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina felt any comment on these words to be unnecessary and continued
+upon the even tenor of her way. They were close by the Luitpoldbr&#252;cke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you lost something?&#8221; she asked, stopping also.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, but I asked you some question just now and you have never reply.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What was it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;About believing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I am going so soon,&#8221; she objected.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How soon?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In December.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is then all settled?&#8221; he inquired, with interest.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you can unsettle it?&#8221; he reminded her eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to unsettle it&#8212;I want to go.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her blankly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How have I offended you?&#8221; he asked after a while.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have not offended me,&#8221; she said, much surprised.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you say that you want to go?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is because I feel that I must go.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why must you go? why do you not stay here this winter?&#8212;or, hold! why
+do you not go to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> Dresden? Later I also must go to Dresden, and it would
+be so <em>gem&uuml;thlich</em>, in Dresden together.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It will be <em>gem&uuml;thlich</em> for me to get home, too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you wish much to go?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; I think that I do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do you think?&#8221; he asked, following her there.</p>
+
+<p>She turned her face towards him with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I cannot help feeling curious as to whether, when I shall really be
+again in America, I shall know a longing for&#8212;for the Isar, or not?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wonder, shall I ever be in America,&#8221; he said thoughtfully; &#8220;and if I
+ever should come there, where do you think would be for me the most
+interesting?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Chez moi</em>,&#8221; she laughed.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled in amusement at her quick answer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I shall never come to America,&#8221; he went on presently; &#8220;I do not
+think it is a healthy country. I have an uncle who did die of the yellow
+fever in Chili.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There is more of America than Chili; that&#8217;s in South America&#8212;quite
+another country from mine.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I know; your land is where the men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> had the war with the negroes
+before they make them all free. I study all that once and find it quite
+dull.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The war was between the Northern and Southern States of North
+America&#8212;&#8221; she began.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>&#199;a ne m&#8217;int&#233;resse du tout</em>,&#8221; he broke in; &#8220;let us walk on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where did he buy it?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where did he buy what? where did who buy what?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The monkey.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh! I don&#8217;t know, I&#8217;m sure.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then there was another long silence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To-morrow,&#8221; he announced, &#8220;I am going to the Tagernsee, and&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not,&#8221; she put in flatly.</p>
+
+<p>He turned his head and stared reprovingly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How you have say that! not in the way of good manners at all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she said, with an air of retort, &#8220;I am with you so much that I am
+beginning to forget all my good manners.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>&#8220;Am I so bad mannered?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, you are.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You interrupt, and you are frank to a degree that is always impolite,
+and sometimes really awful.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you,&#8221; he exclaimed eagerly, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina tried to look sorry, but found it safer, even in the twilight, to
+look the other way.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The truth is,&#8221; he went on vigorously, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How do you intend to begin to grow wise?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You will see.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The threat sounded dire, but they were now at the corner by the
+Maximiliansstrasse, and supper was too near for her to feel downcast.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hope that we are to have potato salad to-night,&#8221; she said cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>He continued to meditate moodily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, we are much too much together,&#8221; he announced at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; she replied, &#8220;if you go to the Tagernsee<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> to-morrow that will
+give us a little mutual rest.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I may miss the train,&#8221; he added thoughtfully; &#8220;if I do&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can take the next one,&#8221; she finished for him.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her witheringly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If I do miss the train, I will carry my violin to you and we will make
+some music in the evening.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina stopped, fairly paralyzed with joy.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, monsieur,&#8221; she cried, &#8220;will you really?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, that is what I will; <em>if</em> I miss the train.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They had entered beneath the long arcade, which was dark and altogether
+deserted except for one distant figure.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I almost want you to miss your train,&#8221; she said eagerly. &#8220;You do not
+know how very, very anxious I am to hear you play.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can miss it,&#8221; he said thoughtfully; &#8220;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 &#8216;Ostbahnhof&#8217; when I must go from the Starnberg, I
+shall surely miss the train, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her gravely and she burst out laughing at the picture he
+had drawn for her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> mind, because there is all of three or four miles
+between those two particular stations.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I don&#8217;t want you to miss the train,&#8221; she said presently. &#8220;You can
+play for me after you come back, I&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The man, who was well dressed and appeared to be a gentleman, recovered
+himself with surprising quickness, and laughed oddly, saying:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My Lord, what a welcome!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of his voice Rosina screamed afresh, this time in quite
+another tone, however, exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s my cousin Jack!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is your&#8212;some one you know?&#8221; stammered Von Ibn. &#8220;Then I must demand
+a thousand pardons.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not at all,&#8221; said Jack, taking his hand and shaking it heartily;
+&#8220;that&#8217;s all right! don&#8217;t say a word more. The trouble was that when I
+saw Rosina I forgot that she had gotten out of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> habit of being
+kissed. Of course I scared her awfully. Are you over it yet, dear?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina stood between the two men, and appeared completely stunned by her
+cousin&#8217;s arrival.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where did you drop from, anyhow?&#8221; she asked, finding her tongue at
+last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Came over to go back with you; left Paris last night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where will you stay? There isn&#8217;t an empty corner in the <em>pension</em>, one
+has to write ever so long ahead.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m going to stay at the Vierjahreszeiten, just beside you. I&#8217;m all
+right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Von Ibn suddenly, &#8220;you are very right; I stay there too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina thought despairingly, &#8220;They&#8217;ll see a lot of one another, and Jack
+will dislike him and he&#8217;ll hate Jack.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>By this time they were come to her door and paused there.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m going in with you,&#8221; the cousin said. &#8220;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&#8217;s even younger and prettier than when I
+last saw her&#8212;when you and I were kids there that winter, don&#8217;t you
+remember?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn was staring sombrely at Rosina and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> she was sure that Jack would
+notice it, and wished that he wouldn&#8217;t. Then he gave a little start and
+held out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall not come to-night,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and to-morrow I go to the
+Tagernsee; so it is &#8216;good-bye&#8217; here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She felt choked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good-bye,&#8221; she said, keenly aware of being watched, but striving to
+speak pleasantly notwithstanding. He shook her hand, raised his hat, and
+left them.</p>
+
+<p>Then her cousin swung the big <em>porte</em> 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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, are you going to marry him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She jumped at the suddenness of the question, and then, recovering
+herself quickly, answered coldly:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course not.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why of course not?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her neck took on a quite new poise&#8212;not new to the man behind her,
+however.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I asked you, &#8216;Why of course not&#8217;?&#8221; he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know how foolish such a question is.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It isn&#8217;t foolish. Yourself considered, it&#8217;s the most natural question
+in the world.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190])</a></span>&#8220;You never met me before when I was walking with a stranger, and then
+asked me such a thing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This man&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina stopped on the first landing to stare in tranceful astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Some one wrote!&#8221; she ejaculated faintly. &#8220;Who wrote?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never you mind who wrote. Whoever it was set uncle thinking, and I was
+posted off to look him up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When did you come over?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Landed in Hamburg the last of August.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where have you been ever since?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Been looking him up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina began to mount the second staircase; she appeared completely
+bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s very nice of uncle,&#8221; she said about the fourth step, &#8220;and of
+course I&#8217;m awfully obliged to whoever wrote home; but I&#8217;m not going to
+marry him, really.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jack whistled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; he said cheerily, as they attained the second landing, &#8220;I know
+all about him now, anyway;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> and if you ever do want to go ahead, you can
+be sure that he&#8217;s all right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I knew that he was all right,&#8221; she said quietly; &#8220;every one in Europe
+knows that he&#8217;s all right.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a first-class boxer, anyhow,&#8221; the cousin declared. &#8220;Lord, what a
+blow that was! And I did not mean to frighten you at all, either; I
+thought that you saw me coming.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&#8217;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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t be vexed at me,&#8221; he implored, &#8220;or I shall think that you are not
+glad that I came; and you are, aren&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, of course I am.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And after supper to-night we&#8217;ll go out and take a good old-fashioned
+tramp and talk a lot, won&#8217;t we?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They were now before the door of the <em>pension</em> and he was pressing the
+electric bell. She sighed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> a resigned sigh of utter submission, nodded
+acquiescently, and waited beside him.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;that green vase from whose stem hangs the
+flower-like body of a delicate porcelain nymph.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t smoke here, you know,&#8221; she cautioned him. &#8220;If you want to
+smoke you must go into the corridor.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to smoke,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I&#8217;ll look out of the window. I like
+to watch the people.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So she left him there and sought Ottillie.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>After supper that night they did go to walk; and if Rosina&#8217;s cousin came
+abroad with a mission he certainly went in for fulfilling it
+vigorously.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>&#8220;Who wrote you about him, anyhow?&#8221; 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&#8212;for the present at least.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t travel about all summer with the same man everlastingly at
+your heels, without other people&#8217;s seeing him as well as yourself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But some one person must have written. It can&#8217;t be that several people
+would bother to.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You won&#8217;t ever know who wrote, so don&#8217;t you fret.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They were crossing the Max-Joseph Platz diagonally, and a light flashing
+from a passing trolley seemed to suddenly illuminate her brain.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I bet I do know,&#8221; she cried.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I bet you don&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was a man; now wasn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, it was a man; but I won&#8217;t say a word more.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, triumphant in her woman&#8217;s intuition.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was that man at Zurich,&#8221; she exclaimed; &#8220;wasn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He turned into the Residenzstrasse and made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was, wasn&#8217;t it?&#8221; she insisted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shan&#8217;t tell.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194])</a></span>&#8220;You needn&#8217;t tell. I know that it was and you know that it was too, so
+I&#8217;m satisfied.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;just such a pace as will allow
+sufficient breath for ample conversation.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know you&#8217;ll marry again, Rosina, no matter what you may say; you
+know that, don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I don&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nonsense!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;m sure that I won&#8217;t for a long time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course you can&#8217;t until the two years are out, but they&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She elevated her eyebrows and made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve got so much money that naturally we couldn&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195])</a></span>&#8220;Monsieur von Ibn doesn&#8217;t mean to marry any more than I do,&#8221; she
+declared positively.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Doesn&#8217;t he? How do you know?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He told me so himself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ever so many times.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed and stopped to examine one of the posters of the
+&#8220;Elfscharfrichters,&#8221;&#8212;the one of the cadaverous lady all in black, with
+her hands outspread.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What interests you in him, anyhow?&#8221; he asked after a little.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t a woman enjoy being with a man without wanting to marry him? I
+like him because he&#8217;s so original.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s original all right,&#8221; Jack reflected; &#8220;that&#8217;s very, very true. He&#8217;s
+the first man who ever thought of knocking me down for kissing you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was because I screamed. Why didn&#8217;t you write that you were coming?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wanted to arrive unexpectedly and see for myself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, did you see?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, and felt too. He doesn&#8217;t intend that any one else shall kiss you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina whirled, her eyes sparkling with anger.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>&#8220;I&#8217;ll never forgive you if you say another thing like that,&#8221; she cried
+hotly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>They went towards the Caserne, and were in the Am&#233;liesstrasse 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do you think that you don&#8217;t want to get married again?&#8221; he said,
+courageously returning to the fight.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think anything about it. I know that I don&#8217;t want to get
+married again!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Von Ibn seems to be a mighty nice sort of a fellow. I&#8217;ve met ever so
+many people who told me lots about him. He&#8217;s got quite a property for
+these men over here, and he&#8217;ll have two jolly places and a title, too.
+And the family won&#8217;t kick over his marrying any one; they&#8217;ve been at him
+to get married for years and years. He&#8217;s the only son, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; she said dryly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you anything personal against him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197])</a></span>&#8220;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&#8217;ve had enough is a great
+thing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Has he bored you any yet?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jack regarded her sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d certainly marry him,&#8221; he said, with decision. &#8220;If he can say things
+like that offhand, only think what he&#8217;d be to live with day after day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina was silent for a moment, and then she gave a violent shiver.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; she exclaimed, in a voice that echoed like a low cry, &#8220;I don&#8217;t
+believe that I ever <em>can</em> marry again&#8212;it&#8217;s so <em>terrible</em>!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jack took her hand and drew it closely within his arm.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t say that,&#8221; he said earnestly. &#8220;Every one knows that you didn&#8217;t
+have a fair show first time. Your husband was&#8212;Well, you know what he
+was.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I should say that I did know what he was.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198])</a></span>&#8220;I always wondered if you just wanted to get your hands on a big
+establishment.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, what makes you say such things? You know that I was desperately in
+love with him&#8212;as much so as a girl can be.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you feel anything like it again now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, indeed; I feel that I may get tired of monsieur any day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They turned down towards the Ludwigsstrasse and Rosina appeared to be
+thinking deeply. At last she spoke, and her accents were firm as
+granite.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not believe that I ever <em>could</em> marry again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jack shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no string on you,&#8221; he declared lightly.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>The next morning, as the lady was stirring her whipped cream into her
+chocolate, Ottillie entered with a note:</p>
+
+<div class="block">
+<p>&#8220;<span class="smcap">Dear Rosina</span>,&#8212;Von Ibn and I are leaving for the Tagernsee by the early
+train. Think we&#8217;ll be gone four or five days.</p>
+
+<p class="center">&#8220;Always yours,</p>
+<p class="right">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Jack.</span>&#8221;</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>Chapter Eleven</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">IT was three o&#8217;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&#8217; 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.</p>
+
+<p>All of which but served to deepen the already deep melancholy and
+<em>ennui</em> 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>For they had not returned from the Tagernsee. On the contrary the
+expedition had stretched to other &#8220;sees,&#8221; to the Herrn-Chiemsee, to
+Salzburg, and now she held in her hand a hastily pencilled scrawl,
+brought by the two o&#8217;clock post, which said:</p>
+
+<div class="block">
+<p class="center">&#8220;Ho for Vienna. Always did want to see Buda-Pesth.</p>
+<p class="right">J.&#8221;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>And nothing more!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s so like a man,&#8221; she told herself without troubling to think just
+what she did mean by the words. &#8220;Oh, dear! oh, <em>dear</em>!&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>There came a light tap at the door and then it opened a very little.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, pardon me,&#8221; cried a sweet, sweet voice, &#8220;I think you are perhaps
+gone out!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have no bad news? no?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Rosina, forcing a smile; &#8220;I&#8217;m only very cross.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201])</a></span>&#8220;Cross? Why cross? You are but laughing at me. You are not really
+cross.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina was silent; her lip quivered slightly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; said Fra&uuml;lein quickly. &#8220;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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; Rosina said, &#8220;I shall be so very glad to have her come here, and
+Ottillie can bring us some tea after a while.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She dried her eyes openly in preparation for the visit to be.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are lonely to-day,&#8221; said Fra&uuml;lein sympathetically. &#8220;I am glad that
+your cousin did come.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Rosina, &#8220;but he went away so soon again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes immediately refilled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You love each other so very much in America,&#8221; said the German girl
+gently; she stood still for a minute and then smiled suddenly. &#8220;I will
+tell madame to come here,&#8221; she added, and left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina went back to the window and her unseeing contemplation of the
+outdoors. Presently some one knocked and she turned, crying:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Entrez!</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>The man was tall and dark, with brown eyes and a black moustache, and
+his eyes were oddly full of light and laughter.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Vous me voyez revenu!</em>&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where is Jack?&#8221; she asked; both spoke almost at once, and Von Ibn was
+conscious of sharing a divine sense of relief with her as he replied:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He is gone alone to Vienna!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not so near!&#8221; she exclaimed, a little frightened.</p>
+
+<p>He withdrew the chair two inches and fixed his eyes hungrily upon her
+face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Has it been long to you?&#8221; he asked, his tone one of breathless
+feeling.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>And then she realized to the full how very long it had been, and
+confessed the fact in one great in-drawn sigh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why did you go so far?&#8221; she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was one step beyond the another; I have no idea but of the Tagernsee
+when we leave.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve been gone weeks!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He leaned forward and seized her hand again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Was it so long?&#8221; he questioned softly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know that I only saw my cousin just that one evening!&#8221; she had the
+face to say complainingly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said sympathetically; &#8220;he is so nice, your cousin. I have
+learned to like him so very much; we have really great pleasure
+together. But,&#8221; he added, &#8220;I did not come back to talk of him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why did you come back?&#8221; she asked, freeing herself and pushing her
+chair away.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled upon her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You ask?&#8221; he said, in amusement; &#8220;shall I say that it was to see you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hope that you did not return on my account.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He paused, twisting his moustache; then started a little and said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I am returned wholly for business.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204])</a></span>Rosina received the cold douche with a composure bred of experience, and
+after a liberal interval he went on.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I wanted also to see you too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, you are seeing me, are you not?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but you do not smile as before your cousin is come. I want you to
+smile. Oh,&#8221; he exclaimed, suddenly interrupting himself, &#8220;have you ride
+horseback since I left?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes, almost every day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His face clouded slightly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who have you ride with?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;With my friends who are here, and twice with the lieutenant.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then his face clouded very heavily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is he interesting?&#8221; he asked; &#8220;yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was the Englischergarten that was wonderful,&#8221; she told him. &#8220;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&#8217; feet
+frightened them further away.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And the lieutenant?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And oh,&#8221; she continued, &#8220;you know that place where the woods open so
+widely, and you can see so far across,&#8212;<em>eh bien</em>, we saw one morning
+the deer standing in the edge of the forest just there, one would have
+said fifty miles from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> civilization, not at all as if they were in the
+midst of Munich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And the lieutenant?&#8221; he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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,&#8212;a quite new experience for me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But the lieutenant?&#8221; he exclaimed impatiently, &#8220;the lieutenant? what
+did he talk of? what did you speak together of?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina laughed, nodding merrily over his impatience.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We talked of the pheasants,&#8221; she said, &#8220;of the deer, of the fog. Are
+you satisfied?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders, his frown lifted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is quite one to me,&#8221; he said indifferently; &#8220;you know that I have
+said before that I am not of a <em>temp&#233;rament jaloux</em>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he got up and walked about the room, taking a cigar from his pocket
+and holding it unlighted in his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;May I smoke here?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t care if you do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He returned suddenly to his chair, laid the cigar on the table, and took
+her hand again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your cousin is so nice,&#8221; he told her, as if the recollection of Jack&#8217;s
+charms had necessitated his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> at once expressing his feelings towards
+Jack&#8217;s cousin.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When is he coming back?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In one week.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When does he sail? Do you know?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;On the nineteenth day, from Genoa.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She quite sprang from her seat.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not really!&#8221; she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, so he tell me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>The kingdom of the other chair advanced its border-line more than two
+inches, and she did not appear to notice the bold encroachment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What does it matter?&#8221; she asked herself bitterly; &#8220;in a few days I&#8217;m
+going, and then I shall never lay eyes on him again,&#8221; and the tears
+welled up thickly at the thought.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Qu&#8217;est-ce que vous avez?</em>&#8221; he said anxiously; &#8220;you must not cry when I
+am returned, you know!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At that she sobbed outright.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is not raining once more,&#8221; he said; &#8220;let us go out and walk far.
+That will do you quite well; I cannot bear that you weep.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He added the last words in a lower tone, and coming close behind her
+chair suddenly stooped.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why not?&#8221; he asked, looking after her unsmilingly. &#8220;It will do you no
+hurt and me much good.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m out of the habit,&#8221; she said shortly, recollecting Jack&#8217;s words on
+that famous night of his arrival.</p>
+
+<p>They were both on their feet, she by the window and he by the chair
+which she had just left.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Was your husband very <em>tendre</em>?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She felt the corners of her mouth give way under the stressful shock of
+this question. &#8220;I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> might say, &#8216;I never tried him to see,&#8217;&#8221; she thought,
+&#8220;but he <em>never</em> would understand,&#8221; and so there was an instant of
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do you smile?&#8221; he demanded, smiling himself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because we don&#8217;t call men &#8216;tender.&#8217; We call meat &#8216;tender&#8217; and men
+&#8216;affectionate.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I <em>am</em> tender,&#8221; he affirmed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you? Well, you are younger than my husband and perhaps that
+accounts for it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We go to walk? yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Certainly; if you will wait while I have some proper boots found for
+me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I will wait.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He came towards her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you had better go into the corridor and wait,&#8221; she exclaimed
+hastily. &#8220;I&#8217;ll come in a moment.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped short and smiled his irresistible smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are so madly queer. <em>Qu&#8217;est-ce que vous avez</em>? You scream always,
+and yet I have not done nothing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then without another word he left the room.</p>
+
+<p>When she was alone Rosina rang for her maid.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Ottillie brought her wraps and adjusted her hat.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will madame take supper here?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Je le pense, oui.</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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
+<em>femme-de-chambre</em> burning with impatience to return to her own
+continent.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina went to the salon and found her hero looking at a &#8220;Jugend&#8221; with a
+bored expression. When he saw her he sprang to his feet and sought his
+hat and umbrella forthwith.</p>
+
+<p>Then they went down the three flights of stairs to the street, and found
+it wet indeed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We cannot go on the Promenade,&#8221; he said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> after casting a comprehensive
+glance about and afar. &#8220;I think we will go by the Hofgarten and walk
+under the arcade there; there will it be dry, <em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, surely it will be dry there,&#8221; she acquiesced. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do your storms be so?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We haven&#8217;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&#8217;t appreciate your timid, modest little
+flies.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not like flies.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she laughed, &#8220;that is the whole story. You &#8216;do not like flies,&#8217;
+while we go crazy if there is one around, and have our houses screened
+from cellar to garret.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not find this subject very amusing,&#8221; he said; &#8220;let us speak of
+another thing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina glanced up at the prison-like fa&#231;ade which they were passing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I find the architecture of the Hoftheater terribly monotonous,&#8221; she
+said warmly. &#8220;Why do you not have a more diversified style of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> windows
+where so many must be in a straight row?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Munich is not my city,&#8221; he responded, shrugging his shoulder; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When I get among the Bavarian shades,&#8221; she said thoughtfully, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps he will be there as here, and not care to meet any one.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no,&#8221; she said hopefully; &#8220;he was crazy here, but he will be sane
+there and&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Mon Dieu</em>, madame, have a care!&#8221; he cried in a low tone, glancing
+apprehensively about.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221; she asked, alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>He lowered his voice to an almost inaudible pitch.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is that we do not discuss our kings in public as you are habited to
+do. <em>Voyons donc</em>,&#8221; he continued, &#8220;if I said, &#8216;<em>Oh, je trouve
+l&#8217;Empereur tr&#232;s-b&#234;te!</em>&#8217; (as I well might say, for I find him often b&#234;te
+enough); if I say that, I might find a <em>sergeant-de-ville</em> at my elbow,
+and myself in prison almost as the words were still in the air.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>Rosina looked thoroughly frightened.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And what would they do to you?&#8221; she asked, looking up at him with an
+expression which brought a strange answering look into his own eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That would depend on how <em>b&#234;te</em> I had found the emperor,&#8221; he declared,
+laughing; &#8220;but, madame, do not be so troubled, because no one has heard
+this time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;do&#8221; 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 fa&ccedil;ade of the Hof formed the background to
+all&#8212;a background of stone and marble, of serried ranks of windows
+marshalled to order by lofty portals and balconies.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why are women always like that?&#8221; he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> asked, when they had paced in
+silence to the other end and turned to return.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Like what?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He threw a quick glance of exasperation at her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When I say a question, it is always with another question that you
+reply!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; she said, &#8220;we were talking of the emperor, and now you say &#8216;why
+are women always like that?&#8217; and I ask &#8216;like what?&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked more exasperated than before.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have all finished with the emperor,&#8221; he said, as if outraged by her
+want of comprehension as to his meaning. &#8220;Is it likely that I will wish
+to talk of the emperor when on the nineteenth you sail from Genoa?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I ask you why are women like that,&#8212;like that, that they never will
+like to be kissed?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina halted in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is it now?&#8221; he asked, turning because he missed her. &#8220;Have I not
+yet made myself plain?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214])</a></span>&#8220;The idea&#8212;after all this while&#8212;of your going back to that subject!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have not go back to it,&#8221; he said coolly; &#8220;I have thought of no other
+thing while you were booting yourself or now. Why do women say &#8216;No&#8217;?
+Why do you say &#8216;No&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let me see,&#8221; she said thoughtfully. &#8220;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&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked in a despair so complete as to be almost ludicrous.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, say slower,&#8221; he pleaded, earnestly. &#8220;It is so very important to
+well understand.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It isn&#8217;t worth repeating slower,&#8221; she said, with a smile. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>&#8220;I have never interest myself in a kodak any,&#8221; and appeared to regard
+the subject as finished.</p>
+
+<p>They came back up the arcade, and, the sidewalks being now fairly dry,
+went out under the stairway at the corner, into the Galleriestrasse.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you like this country?&#8221; he asked presently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bavaria? Immensely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I mean, do you like the Continent&#8212;Europe?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What do think about it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think Europa showed great good taste in getting down from the bull
+just where she did.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then you like this land?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I love it! It hurts me whenever I hear my countrymen malign it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> Bavarian sky blessing
+all the pleasure, and the tame doves of Munich under the feet of each
+and every one.</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn stopped to watch the brilliant scene; Rosina stood beside him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What ill can one say of us?&#8221; he asked, after a while. &#8220;How can a place
+be better than this?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>I</em> never said that any place could be better than this,&#8221; she
+asseverated; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn frowned.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You amuse yourself much with queer words to-day,&#8221; he said
+discontentedly. &#8220;I wish I have stayed with Jack. I was much pleasured
+with him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you said that you had to return because of some business,&#8221; she
+reminded him.</p>
+
+<p>He raised his eyebrows, and they went on again. After a little she
+turned her eyes up to his and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t say that you wish you were with Jack. I am so glad that you are
+here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He returned the smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have no wish to be with your cousin,&#8221; he said amicably; &#8220;I find you
+much more agreeable.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217])</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I find it <em>b&#234;te</em> to have a dog like that,&#8221; he said, looking disgustedly
+over his shoulder at the heroine of the episode, as she placidly
+continued on her way. &#8220;It was <em>grand merci</em> that I am not fallen, then.
+What was about my feet I could not fancy, and also,&#8221;&#8212;he began to
+laugh,&#8212;&#8220;and also it was droll, for I might not kick the dog.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina laughed too.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But in America,&#8221; he went on, suddenly recurring to their earlier topic,
+&#8220;have you no art?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes; but nothing to compare with our sanitary arrangements. Our
+president&#8217;s bath-tub is cut out of one solid block of marble,&#8221; she added
+proudly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is not so wonderful.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Isn&#8217;t it? The head-lines in the papers led me to think that it was. But
+I&#8217;ll tell you what I think is a disgrace to America,&#8221; she went on with
+energy, &#8220;and that is that the American artists who come to study abroad
+must pay duty on their own pictures when they take them back.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is that really so?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, that is really so. And it is very unjust,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> for the musician and
+surgeon and scientist can bring all the results of their study in duty
+free.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They have them within their heads.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; but they have them just the same.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Everything costs a great deal with you, <em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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 <em>marks</em>
+an hour.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>C&#8217;est assez cher!</em>&#8221; he said, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>C&#8217;est un peu trop!</em>&#8221; she rejoined warmly. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I could not live there, I think,&#8221; he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m afraid not,&#8221; said she sadly. &#8220;You don&#8217;t play golf or drink, and men
+of leisure have almost no other careers open to them with us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have my music.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you could never enjoy that there,&#8221; she cried, shivering
+involuntarily. &#8220;Every one talks during music, and some cough, and
+gentlemen clear their throats&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And does no one hiss them?&#8221; he interrupted, wide-eyed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>&#8220;Hiss them? Never! The idea!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped and lit a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But one can travel?&#8221; he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, surely there is plenty of room for that,&#8221; she said dryly; &#8220;but you
+don&#8217;t see many ruined castles or historic battlefields <em>en route</em>. And
+the dust, <em>oh, la, la</em>! And the steam coils under your seat&#8212;and the
+air&#8212;and the ventilation&#8212;and the nights&#8212;and the days.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You would better stay here,&#8221; he remarked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, <em>I</em> think so,&#8221; she responded frankly; &#8220;it&#8217;s so jolly getting your
+gloves cleaned for two cents a pair; but if we don&#8217;t change the subject
+I shall cry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is the University there,&#8221; he told her, pointing to their left;
+&#8220;shall we go there?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What for?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To look upon it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, I&#8217;ve seen it dozens of times.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He took his cigarette out of his mouth, examined it carefully, and
+replaced it between his lips.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But one washes here,&#8221; he said presently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;One&#8212;washes&#8212;&#8221; 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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course one washes here. But in America<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> it is all made so
+convenient, and is regarded as less of an event.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is no event to me to wash,&#8221; he said indignantly; &#8220;I find no
+excitement in washing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never said you did; I was comparing quite another class of society
+with their equals in the other country.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But to shave,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;that I find terrible.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s no worse than having a <em>coiffure</em> to make.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I have no <em>coiffure</em> to make.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No; but I have.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He threw his cigarette into the street.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is not so bad as shaving.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It takes longer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; but shaving you may cut yourself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina laughed; he heard her and turned suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do you laugh?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What amuses you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221])</a></span>&#8220;Do you see my cravat?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She was wondering if they had not better be returning towards home.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know that you have one on,&#8221; she said; &#8220;I can&#8217;t say that I notice
+anything especial about it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I will show you something very curious about it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re not going to take it off, are you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I will show you how I tie it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know how to tie that kind myself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not as I tie it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see how you ever do it,&#8221; she exclaimed when the job was
+complete and he took the umbrella again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I will teach you some day,&#8221; he said readily. &#8220;I have myself invented
+four cravats,&#8221; he added with pride.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will you teach me all the four?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; I have thought, if I shall ever be poor, to go to Paris and have a
+cab and drive about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> from house to house each morning and tie cravats
+<em>pour les messieurs</em>. You can see how many would pay for that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; but when you arrived and they were not ready,&#8212;were still in bed,
+you know,&#8212;what would you do then?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He reflected, and then shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I would put on the collar, tie the cravat, and leave monsieur to sleep
+again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina&#8217;s marital past presented her mind with a lively picture of one of
+the cravat-tier&#8217;s clients struggling to bring his shirt into proper
+connection with the <em>chef d&#8217;&#339;uvre</em>, when he should arise to attire
+himself for the day. She laughed outright. Then she grew sober and said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We ought to go back; it must be after five.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He took out his watch.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, it is not.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, it is; it was after four when we left the <em>pension</em>. I know it&#8217;s
+after five now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is not after five,&#8221; he declared calmly; &#8220;it is not after five
+because it is after six.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed again; he looked at her, smiling brightly himself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is good together, <em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?&#8221; 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> shadow on his face.
+&#8220;We are again those same children,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;children that the same
+toy amuses both. What pleasures you always makes joy for me also.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think,&#8221;&#8212;he said, his fingers closing about her arm,&#8212;&#8220;I think that
+we might be always very happy together.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She looked up quickly, and then down yet more quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why do you speak that way when you know that I am going so soon?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us turn here,&#8221; he said eagerly; &#8220;by here it will be quiet. Do walk
+so,&#8221; he added pleadingly, as she hesitated, &#8220;we have not long to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+together. <em>Il faut me g&acirc;ter un peu.</em> There is but a week left for us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She started.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A week! If we sail the nineteenth we need not leave here until the
+fourteenth surely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But your cousin will leave on the eighth.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to go.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But they want me to, and I must.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was another long silence, and then he said:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225])</a></span>&#8220;You would not stay for me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, no,&#8221; she cried, forcibly, &#8220;I will not&#8212;I cannot. I <em>never</em> want
+another husband.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated one step in his gait and then went on as before.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not say that all would be as you wished,&#8221; he said slowly, with
+pauses between, &#8220;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.&#8221; He stopped and
+his voice changed strangely. &#8220;I must try with all my strength,&#8221; he
+continued, drawing each breath as if in great pain; &#8220;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&#8212;fret&#8212;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> so that I
+have come to expect to never marry. My music must be first, and how can
+I risk&#8212;&#8221; he stopped his speech and his steps. She tried to move on but
+he held her still. &#8220;But,&#8221; he said, very low but with an accent the
+intensity of which cut into her very heart, &#8220;but now I know that better
+work would be if you were there; I should have greater force; I
+should&#8212;I&#8212;if you loved&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It will be wet,&#8221; he said, in reply to the resistance in her arm; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She felt blindly, miserably wretched.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to be married again,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>The park was dusk with night&#8217;s downfall and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> heavily misted by the day&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>At the first forking of their way, Rosina said timidly:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We must not go too far; it is so lonely, I am afraid.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you frightened?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she said, wrapt in a sort of awe at the wonder of her own
+sensations, &#8220;I have the utmost faith in you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He loosed her instantly, and walked a little way off for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I felt that you wished not,&#8221; he said, bitterly, &#8220;and so I held myself
+back. <em>Mon Dieu</em>, how good I am to you,&#8212;how cruel to myself,&#8212;and no
+thanks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228])</a></span>Her heart was wrung.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, let us go back and go home,&#8221; she cried; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And for you?&#8221; he asked, returning to her side.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I said &#8216;for you,&#8217;&#8221; she answered gently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then not at all for you too?&#8221;&#8212;he laid his hand insistently upon her
+arm,&#8212;&#8220;not at all for you too?&#8221; he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>She was silent.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was there in Lucerne,&#8221; he went on presently; &#8220;I knew it at
+first&#8212;the first time I see you; and when I found that it was you who
+had sent for me&#8212;I&#8212;I dared to hope that you too felt something, even
+then, even so at the very first. Have you never known that feeling?&#8221;&#8212;he
+exclaimed, his breath rising passionately, &#8220;has such storm never swept
+within you?&#8212;and you have no other life for a while but its longing,&#8212;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?&#8212;<em>Je ne peux rien faire!</em>&#8212;To the world I am
+dead.&#8212;There is perhaps no future for me because I have learned to love
+and have not learned to be loved.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229])</a></span>His voice broke utterly; he loosed her arm, walked apart once more, and
+was once more silent.</p>
+
+<p>Then her agitation suddenly found voice and to her own intense horror
+she heard herself laughing&#8212;laughing a loud hysterical laughter, that
+resounded hideously and was beyond her own control.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are amused,&#8221; he exclaimed, and his mood took on a justifiable tone
+of outraged anger; &#8220;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,&#8221; he continued,
+impetuously, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her laughter continued spasmodically in spite of her struggles to check
+it. But between the paroxysms she gasped:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never tried&#8212;to make you love me. I never wanted you to come where I
+did&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But now that I am all yours,&#8221; he interrupted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> &#8220;now that nothing is
+left for me, but you&#8212;&#8221; He paused. &#8220;What will I do now?&#8221; he added,
+asking the question with a simplicity at once boyish and heartrending.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You weep,&#8221; he cried.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she whispered faintly, &#8220;no.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You weep,&#8221; he repeated slowly, and gathered her warmly and closely
+within his arms.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is it necessary that we suffer?&#8221; he asked her softly. &#8220;Let us
+cease struggling, let us be only happy,&#8221; and then he bent his head so
+that his cheek touched hers, and waited for the words of her answer.
+&#8220;Your heart is very near mine,&#8221; he whispered to her silence, &#8220;let it
+stay near mine, let it rest mine.&#8221; Still she was silent. &#8220;<em>N&#8217;est-ce
+pas?</em>&#8221; he asked, pressing her closer yet.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> borne upon him, that
+instead of being in love she had fainted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Qu&#8217;est-ce que vous avez?</em>&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She should be laid on her back and have water thrown upon her face,&#8221; he
+murmured to himself in French, and then he felt his boots sinking deeply
+into the mud, and recognized the impracticability<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> of that means of
+resuscitation at this particular moment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why did I ever pray that I might hold her in my arms?&#8221; he thought in
+German. &#8220;<em>Mein Gott</em>, what shall I do?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must not faint once more,&#8221; he cried, anxiously; &#8220;you cannot, you
+know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Something like physical despair swept over him as he felt her tremble
+and sway again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What can I do?&#8221; he cried, shaking her very hard indeed, &#8220;we are far
+from all. I cannot leave you to get a carriage, I cannot take you&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t care what you do,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s salvation or destruction. He
+riveted his eyes anxiously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> in the direction from whence the echo of a
+horse&#8217;s feet splashing through the mud was now drawing nearer each
+second.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If it prove the Prinz Regent himself,&#8221; he said decidedly, &#8220;he must take
+us in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;cabmen never do&#8212;but took the address,
+mounted to his seat, and put his horse to a rounder trot in the
+direction of the city.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What did make you like that?&#8221; he asked, as the wheels dashed the
+mud-spatters up against the windows; &#8220;was it that I distress you, yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>Then he kissed her hands.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Forgive me,&#8221; he said, contritely, &#8220;I have not meant it so. There in the
+trees, when you were unconscious, I did not kiss you, I did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> touch
+even your hair,&#8212;not thirty men in all Germany had been so good as that.
+You see what I try to be for you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He was leaning over her, the blood seemed to be boiling up into her
+ears. She put up her hand:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you speak so,&#8221; she said, &#8220;I shall faint again; I get dizzy when you
+talk to me in that way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But if I kiss you only once,&#8221; he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No&#8212;no&#8212;no,&#8221; she reiterated, and raised her hand and pushed his lips
+away with it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>En effet vous n&#8217;&#234;tes pas du tout gentille</em>,&#8221; he cried, in violent
+anger, for his moods knew no shading in their transposition from one to
+another; &#8220;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&#8212;oh, <em>mon Dieu</em>!&#8221;
+he exclaimed sharply, interrupting himself, &#8220;my umbrella!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you lost it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have I lost it? Naturally I have let it fall to upraise you, and now I
+have leave it there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I will give you another,&#8221; she said pacifically.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Another,&#8221; he commented scornfully; &#8220;do you think that I have no other?&#8221;
+Then his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> weathercock cast of mind whirled again: &#8220;I do not want an
+umbrella,&#8221; he said more forcefully, &#8220;I want a kiss.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought that you were distressed over losing it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not at all; I have already very many others. But a kiss from you I have
+never yet.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I do love you!&#8221; he cried in a fresh storm of feeling. &#8220;You <em>must</em>
+love me, because my much <em>must</em> make of you a little.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If I obeyed myself,&#8221; he said hoarsely, &#8220;how I would hold you and kiss
+you. <em>Je vous embrasserais tellement!</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;strangely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> enough&#8212;not him, but herself. She was
+conscious of a sympathy for him in place of any fear for herself.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You answer not,&#8221; he said, insistently; &#8220;you must say me some word.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, what can I say?&#8221; she cried helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Say that you love me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I do not.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he loosed her hand and ground his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Decidedly you are queer,&#8221; he said bitterly; &#8220;it is there in your eyes
+and you will to deny it. You are senseless,&#8212;<em>vous n&#8217;avez pas de
+c&#339;ur!</em> I am always a fool to go on as I go.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She turned her eyes upon him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Je ne suis pas pour vous</em>,&#8221; she said gently and very, very sadly;
+&#8220;<em>mais je ne suis pour personne non plus</em>,&#8221; she added, and there was a
+tone in her voice that he had never heard before. His temper faded
+instantly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You think of me with kindness, always,&#8212;<em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?&#8221; he said,
+returning her look.</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes rested steadily upon each other for a little space. Then he
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>&#8220;You do love me,&#8221; and started to seize her in his arms forgetful of
+lights, streets, passers-by, and all other good reasons for
+self-restraint.</p>
+
+<p>But just then the cab stopped before the door of No. 6, the cabman
+descended.</p>
+
+<p>There was no further question as to <em>les convenances</em>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>Chapter Twelve</h2>
+
+
+<p class="right">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Buda-Pesth.</span></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 8px;">
+<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="cap"><span class="smcap">DEAR ROSINA</span>,&#8212;If you&#8217;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&#8217;ll get back about the twelfth and we&#8217;ll plan to
+skip then as fast as we can. Keep on writing Poste Restante, Buda, and
+I&#8217;ll have them forward. Don&#8217;t try to fool me any by being too sick to
+sail. I&#8217;ve got to go the nineteenth and you must too.</p>
+
+<p class="center">&#8220;Lovingly,</p>
+<p class="right">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Jack.</span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> empty, and
+none of its vistas worth contemplating. Her heart ached dully&#8212;it was
+forever aching dully these days, and she&#8212;</p>
+
+<p>There was a tap at the door. Europe has no open-door policy, be it
+known; all doors are always shut. Even those of <em>pension</em> salons.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Vous allez bien ce soir?</em>&#8221; he asked pleasantly, standing before her
+chair and looking down into her face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I am almost well, thank you; but why are you not gone to the
+concert?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to his violin with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is a concert that I bring to you who may not go out,&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you are making a tremendous sacrifice for me, monsieur.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stood before her, twisting his moustache.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is that I am regretful for the other night,&#8221; he said briefly, &#8220;for
+that I am glad to give the concert up and make you some pleasure. The
+other night&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t,&#8221; she pleaded uncomfortably; &#8220;never mind all that. Let it all
+go.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240])</a></span>&#8220;But I would ask your pardon. <em>J&#8217;&#233;tais tout-&agrave;-fait fou!</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stared through her and beyond her for several seconds, and then came
+back to himself with a start.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then I do play,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> 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&#8212;with a sorrowful sense of her own remoteness at the
+minute&#8212;that this man was some one who, in spite of all their hours of
+intercourse, she had never met before.</p>
+
+<p>He loosened the bow from its buttons and rose slowly to his feet. His
+eyes sought hers, and he said dreamily:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What shall I play?&#8221; even while his fingers were forming dumb notes, and
+the uplifted bow quivered in the air as if impatient.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; she said, acutely conscious of her inferiority,&#8212;of the ten
+thousand leagues of difference between his grandeur and her
+commonplace,&#8212;&#8220;play what you will.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+knit his brows and then he bowed his head above the instrument and said
+briefly:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Listen!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And she listened.</p>
+
+<p>And the unvoiceable wonder of his magic!</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;Souvenir&#8221;
+of Vieuxtemps, drifting across the rose-laden air and carrying her back
+to the minutes when&#8212;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> 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&#8212;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <em>this</em> was the secret of their
+sympathy,&#8212;if <em>this</em> was the basis of his mastery.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She did not speak and he did not speak,&#8212;neither knew for how long that
+period of silence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> endured. But after a while he lowered the instrument
+and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You like, yes?&#8221; he said with a faint smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can you ask?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He laid his hand upon a vase that sat upon the table and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All this is not good, you know,&#8221; he said, as if communing with himself
+alone; &#8220;here is no room for the music to spread. All these,&#8221; he pointed
+to another ornament, &#8220;are so very, very bad. But some day, perhaps,&#8221; he
+added, with another smile, &#8220;you will hear me in a good place.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he raised the violin to position once more.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Choose what you will have,&#8221; he told her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, forget that I am here,&#8221; she pleaded, speaking with a startled
+hushedness, as if no claim of conventional politeness might dare intrude
+itself upon that bewildering hour, &#8220;do not remember that I am
+here,&#8212;play as you would if you were quite alone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is very well,&#8221; he said, with a recurrence to his unseeing stare
+and dreamy tone, &#8220;because for me you really are not here. Nothing is
+here;&#8212;the violin is not here;&#8212;I am myself not here;&#8212;only the music
+exists. And if I talk,&#8221; he added slowly, &#8220;the inspiration may leave
+me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245])</a></span>He went beside the piano and turned his back towards her, and then his
+prayer made itself real and his love found words....</p>
+
+<p>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....</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can you understand now,&#8221; he asked, taking a chair by her side,&#8212;&#8220;can
+you understand now how it would be for me if I lost my power to create
+music?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she said, very humbly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think that nothing so bad could arrive,&#8221; he went on, pulling his
+moustache and looking at her as he spoke, &#8220;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 <em>could</em> arrive, that a trouble might
+kill my power, you can know how bad it would be for me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She sat there, gazing always at her new conception of him. The tears
+which she had shed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am going now,&#8221; he said presently, rising. &#8220;I have done no work since
+in June, but I feel it within me to write what I have played to-night.&#8221;
+He went over and took up the violin case and then he laid it down again
+and came back to her side.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall kiss you,&#8221; he said, not in any tone of either doubt or
+entreaty, rather with an imperativeness that was final. &#8220;In the music
+that I go to write to-night I want to put your eyes and also your kiss.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He put his arms about her and raised her to his bosom.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Regardez-moi!</em>&#8221; he commanded, and she lifted her eyes into his.</p>
+
+<p>Their lips met, and the kiss endured.</p>
+
+<p>Then he replaced her gently upon the sofa, took up the violin and went
+out.</p>
+
+<p>Later that night she reproached herself bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I ought to have a chaperone,&#8221; she told her pillow in strict confidence.</p>
+
+<p>But the kiss had a place now in her life, and the place, like the kiss
+itself, endured.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>Von Ibn, in his room at the hotel, paused over his manuscript score,
+laid down his pen and closed his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Elle sera &agrave; moi!</em>&#8221; he murmured, and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>For him also the kiss was enduring.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>Chapter Thirteen</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">JACK was expected on the morrow, and on the day after the start for
+Genoa was to be made.</p>
+
+<p>Under these cheerful circumstances Von Ibn came to call at the pension,
+and Amelia tapped at Rosina&#8217;s door to announce to the &#8220;<em>gn&#228;dige Frau</em>&#8221;
+that &#8220;<em>der Herr von Ibn ist im Salon</em>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina was dressed for dinner and when her visitor saw her gown with its
+long trailing skirt his face fell.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We go to walk, yes?&#8221; he said, in a doubtful tone. She looked from the
+window out upon the rainy view.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s too wet,&#8221; she said hopelessly; but the hopelessness was
+hypocritical, because she had resolved to never walk alone with him
+again.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t be off like that with him again for anything,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why may we not walk?&#8221; he asked, looking up as if she had spoken aloud.
+&#8220;I will be <em>tr&#232;s raisonable</em>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It isn&#8217;t that,&#8221; she replied, annoyed to feel herself blushing; &#8220;it is
+that it is so wet. I should ruin a skirt.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+Nevertheless when she smiled and said, &#8220;Shall I disturb you?&#8221; they
+resented her question as a sarcasm unworthy of Genoa&#8217;s proximity. Von
+Ibn stood up and said, &#8220;Certainly not,&#8221; with a politeness which did
+credit to his bringing up, but Rosina as she threaded her needle took a
+vow to remember to <em>never</em>, in all time to come, pause for an instant
+even in a room where two people were talking together.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now we <em>must</em> go out,&#8221; he exclaimed, hurriedly, &#8220;we may not talk here
+with her. She speaks French as well as we, and German much better than
+you;&#8221; he referred to the cosmopolitan custom of altering one&#8217;s tongue to
+disagree with an (unwelcome) third party.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina was already huddling her work together in hot haste.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she said, &#8220;I have a short skirt that I can wear.&#8221; She rose and
+went towards the door. &#8220;I won&#8217;t be five minutes,&#8221; she said, turning the
+knob.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You can walk well, yes?&#8221; he said, as they turned in the direction of
+the Isar.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In this skirt,&#8221; she laughed, glancing down at her costume whose
+original foundations had been laid for golf, &#8220;in this skirt I am equal
+to anything!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But if you slip?&#8221; he supposed, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How much is an inch?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Twice the width of the rubber on my boots.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, but earnestly,&#8221; he said, &#8220;is it a <em>centim&#232;tre</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Two <em>centim&#232;tres</em> and a half make one inch.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are droll, you English and Americans,&#8221; he said, &#8220;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> 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,&#8212;what did he say to me?
+&#8216;A mark is a quarter, is it not?&#8217; that is what he asked. &#8216;<em>Mon Dieu</em>,&#8217;
+I said, &#8216;if you cut it in four pieces it is four quarters, and if you
+leave it whole it is whole,&#8217; then he looked to find me <em>b&#234;te</em>, and I was
+very sure that he was, and we spoke no more.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He meant a quarter of a dollar,&#8221; she explained.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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
+<em>b&#234;te</em> 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There is where we met Jack; you remember?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn looked quickly about.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, it was here,&#8221; he said, and then he shuddered slightly. &#8220;It was
+very well to laugh after, but that might have been so bad. I was angry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+and I struck a fearful blow then; I have often think of it when we were
+travelling together.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She grew thoughtful also, and her imagination found food among some
+miserable possibilities which might have been.</p>
+
+<p>So they came to the river banks and the Maximilianbr&uuml;cke, and paused by
+its rail.</p>
+
+<p>The air was grand, fresh and moist, reminiscent of summer&#8217;s breath while
+also prophetic of winter&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>It was beautiful and wonderful to see, and they stood still and feasted
+their eyes for some long minutes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Isar,&#8221; Rosina cried softly, holding her hand out towards the
+singing waters below, &#8220;when shall I see you again?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254])</a></span>&#8220;You will return some day,&#8221; her companion said hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who can tell?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But always you must come over some bridge to return to-night.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do not be of a bad humor,&#8221; he entreated. &#8220;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. <em>Vous
+comprenez?</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it being bad-humored to be sad?&#8221; she asked; &#8220;and why can&#8217;t I be
+decided if I want to be?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because,&#8221; he said, wisely, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina felt that this sentence called for study before reply, and so
+walked on without speaking.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is that not so?&#8221; he asked, as they went down by the little stone stair.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never change.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, now you know well that you do not speak the truth,&#8212;you are so very
+changeable. This afternoon, <em>par exemple</em>, when I first come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> to ask you
+to go out, you say you cannot of any possibility make it, and then, very
+suddenly, we go.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I recollected that I might wear this skirt.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And there was that lady, also,&#8221; he said thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, she was there, too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But always you did change.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t call it being changeable when one has a good reason for so
+doing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped short; and she, after going a few steps further, discovered
+herself to be unaccompanied and stopped also.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is the matter?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Suddenly, I think.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t you walk and think at the same time?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, and came up with her again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If I make you a good reason&#8212;&#8221; he began, and then hesitated and was
+silent.</p>
+
+<p>They followed the muddy path almost to the Luitpoldbr&uuml;cke before he
+continued his phrase.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If one can change for a good reason, and if I make you a good reason,
+then will you change about me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She drew a quick little breath.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256])</a></span>&#8220;I can&#8217;t change in that way,&#8221; she said; &#8220;you know that I do not want to
+marry again: marriage is too awful an undertaking. Don&#8217;t you see that
+even now it does not make you always happy to be around me&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am never around you,&#8221; he exclaimed indignantly. &#8220;I never have hardly
+touch you. I have been with you not as a man, but as an angel. <em>Je me
+comporte comme un ange&#8212;comme un ange&#8212;c&#8217;est moi qui vous le dit!</em> I
+have given you one kiss such as a small baby might give its mother, and
+that is all;&#8212;and then you say that I am always around you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He ceased speaking, and looked straitly and darkly before him. She
+wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I tell you,&#8221; he continued violently after a short interval, &#8220;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. <em>Vous avez toujours peur de moi.</em> 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&#8212;the night when I lose my umbrella? <em>Mon
+Dieu</em>, you are very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span> <em>dr&ocirc;le</em>, if you have known many men and do not
+appreciate me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped as if choked.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Try not to stamp so much as you walk,&#8221; she asked him very gently; &#8220;you
+keep splashing me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is splash?&#8221; he demanded gloomily; &#8220;something that annoys your
+ears?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, something that spoils my boots.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not care if I spoil those boots; I find them most ugly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps; but I could not be here but for them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He walked on with somewhat less vigor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us talk about us,&#8221; he suggested, presently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;With reference to what?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, no,&#8221; she said unwillingly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; why not?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You always come back to that same subject; your mind appears to follow
+a circuit, like a squirrel in a ring.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258])</a></span>&#8220;&#8216;Wheel,&#8217; you mean.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, &#8216;wheel,&#8217; then.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What squirrel? We never have talked of a squirrel before.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina&#8217;s laugh rang out among the willows.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Decid&#233;ment vous n&#8217;&#234;tes pas du tout poli</em>,&#8221; he cried angrily. &#8220;You say
+I am like a squirrel; I ask what squirrel, and you begin to laugh.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never said that you were like a squirrel,&#8221; she exclaimed, greatly
+shocked; &#8220;how can you think that I would say such a thing?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You did,&#8221; he declared bitterly. &#8220;You said I was like a squirrel in his
+wheel, because I tell you so often that I love you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, monsieur, you <em>know</em> that I never meant it in that way; how can you
+think for an instant that I could have&#8212;have said that&#8212;that&#8212;&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>&#8220;Say that you understand,&#8221; she said anxiously, as a break in the trees
+revealed a long stretch of river; &#8220;you <em>must</em> say something, because I
+want to know how far it is to the next bridge.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped and stared ahead.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There are no more bridges,&#8221; he proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No more bridges,&#8221; she cried.</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Must we go the whole way back along this same muddy path?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, surely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She turned.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then let us go back now. There is no fun walking any further this way
+after the sunset is over.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is it for the sunset alone that you walk?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What shall I say?&#8221; she asked, looking up at him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Say that you walk for me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And then what follows?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I follow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They laughed together.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am so good to you,&#8221; he declared; &#8220;even when you laugh at me I am
+never angry. I am truly so very good.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He appeared so well content with himself that they went the whole
+distance to the Peace Monument before she disturbed his placid
+introspection.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do not let us go home,&#8221; he proposed suddenly, when her turning to cross
+the Luitpoldbr&uuml;cke recalled him to himself; &#8220;let us go somewhere and
+dine alone together. It is perhaps the last time; Jack returns
+to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, let us,&#8221; she agreed delightedly; but then her voice altered
+suddenly for the worse. &#8220;No, it&#8217;s impossible,&#8221; she said sadly, &#8220;I can&#8217;t
+go to a caf&#233; and dine in this short skirt.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why can you not?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t you see why?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He walked off some ways to the side and gazed critically at her skirt.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said, rejoining her, &#8220;I can see why.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They were halfway across the bridge; he laid his hand on her arm and
+stopped her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Je vous ferai un propos</em>,&#8221; he said eagerly; &#8220;we will take a car going
+to the Ostbahnhof, and then we will leave it at a quiet place and seek a
+quiet caf&#233; and dine there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; she said; &#8220;but you must telephone to the <em>pension</em>, or they
+won&#8217;t know what has become of me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>&#8220;I can say that we are gone to the theatre,&#8221; he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They won&#8217;t believe that because of this skirt.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I will say we are gone too far and must send for a cab, and will eat
+while we wait.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think that whatever you say will sound like a lie, so it doesn&#8217;t
+really matter.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then I will say that we do not return until after the supper, and
+nothing else.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where will you telephone from?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;From the caf&#233;. Where would I telephone from?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina looked vaguely around in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We are only three or four blocks from the <em>pension</em> now, are we not?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He glanced about.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It will be droll if we meet some one you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she said coldly; &#8220;it will be very funny&#8212;like Mrs. Jones to-day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am quite vexed when she came in,&#8221; he said seriously; &#8220;why do people
+come in like that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll be just as thoughtless when we&#8217;re her age,&#8221; Rosina said
+charitably. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262])</a></span>&#8220;Getting betrothed is very simple,&#8221; said Von Ibn, &#8220;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 <em>de trop</em>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She was obliged to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;very full.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let it go by,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We will walk on and another comes in a
+moment.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They let it pass, and wandered on towards the rushing river.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You see why it was so foolish to be sad,&#8221; he remarked, as they
+approached the bridge; &#8220;here is the second time that you have seen the
+Isar since you weep good-bye forever this afternoon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t weep,&#8221; she said indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you not? I thought that you did.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You were often there?&#8221; he asked; &#8220;yes?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263])</a></span>&#8220;Yes, very often.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;With who?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She smiled a little in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We used to come in the evenings,&#8221; she said; &#8220;every one used to come.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Another car approached&#8212;again crowded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us walk,&#8221; she suggested; &#8220;all the cars will be crowded for the next
+hour.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Will your feet go further?&#8221; he inquired anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I think so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to leave the Maximilianeum,&#8221; she exclaimed, reft with an
+intense admiration for the grandeur of what was before her; &#8220;I don&#8217;t
+want to leave the Bavarian moon; oh, I don&#8217;t want to leave Munich; not a
+bit.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And me?&#8221; said her companion, taking her arm, &#8220;do you want to not leave
+me also?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to leave you either,&#8221; she declared. &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to leave
+anything, and I must leave everything. Oh,&#8221; she exclaimed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> suddenly and
+viciously, &#8220;I wish I might know who it was that wrote home to Uncle
+John.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you have thought to know?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I&#8217;m almost sure that it was that man in Zurich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He was not so bad, that Zuricher man,&#8221; he said, reflectively. &#8220;Did I
+ever say to you that I did go to the Gare with him when he went to
+Lucerne?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, you never told me that. What did you go to the station with him
+for?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did you really think that perhaps he <em>was</em> going to Constance?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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. <em>Vous
+comprenez?</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She was obliged to smile audibly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was very funny the way that you came into the Insel <em>salle-&agrave;-manger</em>
+that night. I never was more surprised in my life.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I like to come to you that way,&#8221; he went on. &#8220;When you are so your face
+becomes glad and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> I believe that you have been really lonely for me
+and&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We can eat there,&#8221; he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>She stopped, astonished.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can we?&#8221; she asked. &#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t think so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But surely yes,&#8221; he affirmed; &#8220;it is a caf&#233;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He flung the door open as he spoke and stood back to let her pass
+inside.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is a little smoky,&#8221; he continued, as the door fell to, &#8220;but&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A little!&#8221; she interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But what does that do to you? and there is another lady, so it is very
+right for you to be here too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She doesn&#8217;t look like a lady to me,&#8221; said Rosina, dodging under a
+billiard-cue, for in this particular caf&#233; the centre of the room is
+occupied by the billiard-tables; &#8220;she looks decidedly otherwise.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn glanced carelessly at the person alluded to.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is always a woman,&#8221; he remarked; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> then he led the way around to
+a vacant corner where there was somewhat less confusion than elsewhere.
+&#8220;Here you may sit down,&#8221; he commanded, and laid aside his own hat and
+overcoat.</p>
+
+<p>She obeyed him, contemplating her surroundings with interest as she
+began to unbutton her gloves.</p>
+
+<p>For the place was, to her eyes, unique of its kind, her lot having been
+cast hitherto in quite another class of caf&#233;s. 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Eh bien!</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never was in a place like this before.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You may very likely never be in such a one again,&#8221; he told her
+seriously; &#8220;so you must be as happy as you can while you&#8217;re here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That reason for having a good time hadn&#8217;t occurred to me,&#8221; she
+answered, giving him back his smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then think to occur it now,&#8221; he rejoined.</p>
+
+<p>The waitress had by this time gotten rid of her ten mugs and came to
+them, beginning proceedings by spreading the m&#233;nu down on the table and
+running her pencil through item after item.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You had better order before everything is gone,&#8221; Rosina suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I must think the same,&#8221; he replied, and took up the m&#233;nu.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Haben Sie bouillon?</em>&#8221; he demanded immediately.</p>
+
+<p>The waitress signified that bouillon was not to be.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How shall I do?&#8221; he asked, looking blank. &#8220;In all my life I have never
+eat without a bouillon before?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268])</a></span>Rosina and the waitress felt their mutual helplessness in this
+difficulty, and the proceedings in hand came to a standstill natural
+under the circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t they make you some?&#8221; the American brain suggested.</p>
+
+<p>He turned the idea over in his mind once or twice and then:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; he said; &#8220;it is not worth. It will be better that we eat now, and
+later, when I am in town, I will get a bouillon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The other lady is getting kissed,&#8221; Rosina said. The publicity of a
+certain grade of continental love-making is always both interesting and
+amazing to the Anglo-Saxon temperament.</p>
+
+<p>He looked behind him without at all disturbing what was in progress
+there. After a minute&#8217;s quiet stare he turned back in his seat and
+shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You see how simple it is when the woman is still,&#8221; he said pointedly.
+&#8220;There is no fainting there; he loses no seventeen-mark umbrella from
+Baden-Baden.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She ignored the gist of this remark, and began<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> to unhook the collar of
+her jacket. Then she decided to take it off altogether.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You find it too warm?&#8221; he said, rising to assist her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I certainly do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is curious for you and I to be in such a place, <em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Very curious.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But it is an experience, like eating in the woods.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think that it is at all like eating in the woods; I think that
+nothing could be more different.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We are so alone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now you understand what I mean.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, now I understand what you mean. And it is really a little like the
+woods, too,&#8221; she added. &#8220;Those iron acorns and leaves are the branches,
+and the stuffed eagles are the birds.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the oak-branches and the eagles for some time, and then he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us talk.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What are we doing now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We are waiting for what is to be to eat.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought that that in itself was always sufficient entertainment for a
+man.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270])</a></span>&#8220;I like better to talk. I have not much time more to talk with you,
+<em>vous savez</em>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We will talk,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Watch!&#8221; she exclaimed. &#8220;He&#8217;s going to make an awfully difficult shot.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn looked towards the player with very little interest depicted on
+his countenance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, he missed,&#8221; she exclaimed disgustedly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But of course. How could a man like that do such a <em>mass&#233;</em>? You are so
+hopeful ever. You say, &#8216;See him make so difficult a play,&#8217; when only
+looking upon the man&#8217;s face tells that he himself is sure that he is
+about to fail.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll give you a riddle,&#8221; she went on, receiving his expostulation with
+a smile. &#8220;But perhaps you don&#8217;t know what a riddle is?&#8221; she added
+questioningly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I do know what a riddle is; it is what you do not know and must
+tell.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, that is it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And your riddle is?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why am I like a dragon?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Like a&#8212;&#8221; he faltered.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Dragon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is a dragon?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271])</a></span>&#8220;It&#8217;s a horrible monster. Don&#8217;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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I know the picture. But that creature is blue.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; she said hopelessly, &#8220;it&#8217;s no use trying to tell you riddles, you
+don&#8217;t understand.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I do,&#8221; he cried eagerly. &#8220;I understand perfectly and I assure you
+that I like very much. Dragon is &#8216;<em>drachen</em>,&#8217; <em>n&#8217;est ce pas</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you are as one?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I ask <em>why</em> am I like one?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked particularly blank.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are perhaps hungry?&#8221; he hazarded.</p>
+
+<p>She began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, it&#8217;s because I&#8217;m breathing smoke.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do dragons breathe smoke? It is a salamander you are believing in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In pictures dragons always breathe smoke and fire.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But there is no fire here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There must be somewhere, because there is so much smoke.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He was unmoved and ruminative.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do not find your riddle very clever,&#8221; he said at last.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>Rosina buried the poor, weak, little scintillation at once and stamped
+on its grave in hot haste.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think that our dinner is coming,&#8221; she announced presently, turning
+her veil above her brows, &#8220;and I am so hungry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I find your hunger a much better answer of that riddle than to be
+breathing smoke,&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of course you do, because that is the answer that you thought of.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The waitress began to arrange the dishes upon the table and when all was
+in order he prepared to serve them both.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I often start to say most clever things,&#8221; he said, as he carved the
+fish, &#8220;but before I can speak you have always say something else.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She took the plate that he passed her, and picked up her fork at once.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then when you are silent for a quarter of an hour or so it would really
+pay me to keep still and wait; wouldn&#8217;t it?&#8221; she inquired.</p>
+
+<p>He took a mouthful and deliberated.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think so,&#8221; he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> she could not refrain from stealing one
+amused glance in his direction.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You laugh,&#8221; he said, returning the smile in kind.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am sure that it is going to be something very brilliant this time,&#8221;
+she told him.</p>
+
+<p>He stared for a minute; and then he understood and laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I only eat then,&#8221; he exclaimed, &#8220;<em>mais, Dieu! quels enfants nous sommes
+ensemble</em>. 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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I enjoy you,&#8221; she answered; &#8220;most men are stupid or horrid.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When?&#8221; he asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When one is much with them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with some alarm.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But are many men much with you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina laughed merrily over the trouble in his face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You would have been unbearable if you had been of a jealous
+disposition,&#8221; she said, nodding.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he replied gravely, &#8220;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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274])</a></span>&#8220;Why I have hosts of friends,&#8221; she declared, &#8220;and, on account of the way
+that the world is made, half of them are obliged to be men.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you said that they were all stupid or horrible,&#8221; he reminded her
+carefully.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I said that most of them were.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He thought a moment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish that there had been a bouillon here,&#8221; he said then.</p>
+
+<p>She began to put on her gloves, thinking that the hour of departure was
+close at hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>J&#8217;ai envie de f&ucirc;mer une cigarette</em>,&#8221; he said suddenly, &#8220;<em>&ccedil;a ne vous
+fait rien d&#8217;attender un peu</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t care,&#8221; she answered, and laid her gloves down again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Am I ever horrible to you?&#8221; he asked, taking a match from the white
+china pyramid that ornamented the centre of the table.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t say &#8216;horrible;&#8217; I said &#8216;horrid.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is there a difference?&#8221; he lit his cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, indeed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He crossed his arms upon the table, and smiled at her through his own
+personal quota of smoke.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell me the difference. Why are we horrid?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because you so often are. Men never understand.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Au contraire</em>,&#8221; he said quietly, &#8220;men always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> understand. It is the
+woman who will not believe it, and it is cruel to say her the truth. A
+woman is always <em>gen&#233;e</em>, she will sob in a man&#8217;s arms and still declare
+that &#8216;No.&#8217; Why is it necessary for her to be so? That I cannot
+understand.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She felt her face getting warm.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You do not like what I have say?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Because it is true?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It isn&#8217;t true.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;An American would not say that to you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Certainly not.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you like better the American way of covering up all truth?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276])</a></span>&#8220;It is politer, I think.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have been horrible, <em>n&#8217;est-ce pas</em>?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She felt very uncomfortable indeed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do let us go now,&#8221; she said in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>He struck his water-glass with a knife, and their waitress, who was near
+by, looked around.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>&#8217;Zahlen!</em>&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I would have put it on if you had waited,&#8221; he said in a tone of
+remonstrance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am used to getting into it,&#8221; she assured him.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We will go out now,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do not be vexed with me,&#8221; he said softly; &#8220;even a little vexing of you
+makes me great pain.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>Then he pressed her arm closely.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is not long that we have now to talk. I beg you talk to me; do not
+be so sad.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not sad.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then talk.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She gathered up her energy with a mighty effort.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What shall we talk about?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Anything. Have you a letter to-day?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;From who? From Jack?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, from the Marquis de W&#8212;&mdash;.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His fingers came together over her arm in a vice-like grip.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have never heard of him,&#8221; he cried; &#8220;where have you know him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In Paris. And then I met him on the train&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn&#8217;s eyes grew large with fright.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you must not meet men on trains,&#8221; he said; &#8220;that is not at all
+proper for you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He took charge of me from Paris to Lucerne,&#8221; she said soothingly; &#8220;he
+is really very delightful&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I did not see him at Lucerne,&#8221; he interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, he was gone when you came.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How old is he?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278])</a></span>&#8220;He is seventy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>His heat subsided suddenly, and there was a pause during which she felt
+circulation returning slowly to her arm.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you have a letter from him to-day?&#8221; he asked, after a while.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have a letter from him almost every day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked down at her with an air of genuine astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What can a man of seventy say in a letter almost every day?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He can say a great deal. He wants me to marry him!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed aloud, and then exclaimed gayly:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What a great lady you will be! and how nice you will look in your
+mourning!&#8221; and then he threw his cigarette away and laughed afresh.</p>
+
+<p>His laughter was so infectious that she laughed also.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He writes me how happy I would be with him,&#8221; she continued merrily;
+&#8220;and he is very positive about it, too. How can he think that I would
+really wish to marry him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279])</a></span>She ignored this speech in its entirety.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To think,&#8221; she pursued, &#8220;that one cannot travel in a daughterly way
+with a gentleman of seventy without&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he interrupted, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She assented with a thoughtful nod.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t answer all his letters,&#8221; she said; &#8220;I burn them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Poor marquis!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Does a widow always know?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, dear me; yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then why did you not save the poor marquis his pain?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&#8212;&mdash;&#8217;s,
+when he said adieu he would kiss my hands in the most adorable Louis
+XIV. kind of a way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And all the while it was in his heart a plot to marry you. You see!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280])</a></span>&#8220;Men are so queer,&#8221; she reflected; &#8220;I cannot see why that old gentleman
+should have wanted to marry me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can,&#8221; said Von Ibn, dryly; &#8220;I can see quite well.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I <em>cannot</em> believe that in forty-eight hours I shall be gone!&#8221; she
+exclaimed suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do not go,&#8221; he said, tightening his hold upon her arm again; &#8220;stay with
+me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I must go,&#8221; she declared. &#8220;I couldn&#8217;t stay with you, anyway,&#8221; she
+added, in a tone of unintended mournfulness.</p>
+
+<p>His mood altered, and the light of a street lamp showed that every tinge
+of gayety had fled his face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have no will of your own,&#8221; he said with acerbity; &#8220;that Jack has it
+all. I find you so very weak.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We shall return over the Ludwigsbr&uuml;cke,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>&#8221; he said, and they went down
+the incline in silence.</p>
+
+<p>She thought vaguely, &#8220;I am here now, and <em>he</em> is here! How will it be
+when I am gone and we are separated forever?&#8221; But her brain refused to
+comprehend&#8212;only her heart felt the warmth of his touch upon her sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Let us stop here,&#8221; he proposed, pausing by the bridge rail, and she
+stayed her steps in obedience.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly nine o&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>The man took out his <em>&#233;tui</em> and lit another cigarette, sinking his
+sombre gaze meanwhile deep into the stream below. His companion leaned
+upon the stone parapet.</p>
+
+<p>And then he sighed most heavily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is the autumn,&#8221; he said; &#8220;all the summer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> is over. <em>Tout est fini!</em>&#8221;
+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. &#8220;How little
+I know last May of what this summer brings,&#8221; he continued; &#8220;I have
+believe that all summers were to come alike to me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was an anguish underlying his words which set her heart to aching
+intolerably.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; she gasped helplessly, &#8220;let us walk on! Let us go home! I cannot
+bear to hear all that again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She turned to go, but he caught her hand in his.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I must speak,&#8221; he said forcefully, though in the lowest possible tones;
+&#8220;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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He held her hand so tightly that it was impossible for her to withdraw
+it. She looked up in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> his face, and the moon showed each the unfeigned
+feeling of the other.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t know about marriage,&#8221; she told him with white lips and
+laboring breath. &#8220;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.&#8221; She stopped and put her hand to her
+bosom. &#8220;Only death can help!&#8221; she cried, in a voice as if a physical
+torture had its grip upon her; &#8220;and it is so awful when death alone can
+help!&#8221; She looked at the ground and then up at him. &#8220;Oh,&#8221; she sighed
+miserably, &#8220;how can I dare to go where I may come to that pass again?
+Don&#8217;t ask that of me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Down from the Gasteig came a cab, an empty cab, and he looked up and
+hailed it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We will ride home,&#8221; he said, coming back to her; &#8220;I am bereft of
+strength.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284])</a></span>The cab halted and he put her inside.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;6 Maximiliansstrasse,&#8221; he called to the driver, and got in himself and
+banged the door behind him.</p>
+
+<p>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 <em>en route</em>.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;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&#8212;for a little while.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go by the door,&#8221; he said in muffled tones, &#8220;I must pay the cab.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She crossed the width of the sidewalk and stood by the great <em>porte</em>,
+waiting.</p>
+
+<p>When the cabman was disposed of he came to her side, and felt in his
+pocket for the keys.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> Then he took his gloves off and felt again; as he
+felt he stared steadily across the street.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the round key,&#8221; she said, when he finally produced them. &#8220;Have you
+any tapers? I&#8217;m afraid that the hall will be dark.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Because of that vast key system which is part of the intricacy of the
+very good housekeeping of Frau G&#8212;&mdash;, 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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>With the closing of the door they were left in a darkness thorough and
+complete.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina&#8217;s voice: &#8220;You said you had wax tapers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn&#8217;s voice: &#8220;No, I have not say so.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina&#8217;s accents of distress: &#8220;Haven&#8217;t you any tapers?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286])</a></span>Von Ibn&#8217;s voice, dully: &#8220;Yes, I have, but I have not say so before.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina, entreatingly: &#8220;Then do please light one.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Dead silence.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Stop! wait for me to come also.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think,&#8221; he said, when he was beside her, &#8220;that it is better that I go
+to-morrow very early, and that we meet no more.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you had loved me,&#8221; he said, &#8220;here&#8212;now&#8212;I should have kissed you,
+and all would have been for us as of the skies above.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287])</a></span>&#8220;Oh, look out!&#8221; she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>He was close above her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are afraid of me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, it is the wax; you are letting it drip on us both.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It should stop upon the box,&#8221; he said shortly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is an awful place,&#8221; he said irritably, feeling blindly for what
+was lost. &#8220;That I am on my knees to a match-box this night,&#8221; he added
+savagely.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is impossible,&#8221; he said vaguely, hurriedly; &#8220;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. <em>Faut &#234;tre raisonable.</em> Let
+us go out of the door and go to the Caf&#233; Luitpold and there speak.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288])</a></span>The Caf&#233; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t go to the Caf&#233; Luitpold at ten o&#8217;clock at night in a golf
+skirt,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are crying!&#8221; she exclaimed in awe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hope not,&#8221; he said; &#8220;I hope not, but I am near it. If I do weep, will
+you then despise me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she said faintly; &#8220;no&#8212;I&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; he whispered, &#8220;say you love me if it be but so little! <em>Dites que
+vous m&#8217;aimez!</em> 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&#8212;only a little love&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You detest me, then?&#8221; he said through his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is my hat,&#8221; she cried, freeing herself; &#8220;you drove the longest pin
+straight into my head.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is most badly on,&#8221; he told her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know it,&#8221; she replied, starting swiftly upward.</p>
+
+<p>At the curve he stopped short and shut his eyes; she stopped too, three
+steps farther on.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you ill?&#8221; she asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>He opened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am most unhappy,&#8221; he replied, and went on again.</p>
+
+<p>So they came to the top at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Here we are,&#8221; she said, halting before the door; &#8220;give me the keys,
+they work intricately.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290])</a></span>He handed them to her in silence; she took them in her hand and tried to
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you really go to-morrow,&#8221; she said, as she put one into the lock, &#8220;I
+hope&#8212;&#8221; her lips trembled traitorously and she could not go on.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Dites</em>,&#8221; he whispered, coming nearer, &#8220;you do care a little, a very&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He dropped the matches a second time.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>That</em> was never an accident,&#8221; she cried, below her breath.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was not my intention,&#8221; he declared; then he added, &#8220;you have only to
+go in, I can very well find my way out in the dark.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But the door refused to open; instead, the key turned around and around
+in the lock.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do believe,&#8221; she said at last, in a curiously inexplicable tone,
+&#8220;that we have come up the wrong stairs!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A sort of atmosphere of blankness saturated the gloom.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is there another stair?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; it goes from the other passage. It&#8217;s the staircase to No. 5. I
+think&#8212;indeed I&#8217;m sure&#8212;that we have come up the stairs of No. 6 with
+the keys of No. 5.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have never know that there was another stair,&#8221; he declared. &#8220;If you
+had say that before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> I&#8212;&#8221; then a fresh thought led him to interrupt
+himself. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The &#8220;American Bar&#8221; 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 &#8220;American Bar&#8221; except its name,
+which naturally leads American women to avoid it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to go anywhere,&#8221; said Rosina, drawing the keys into her
+hand; &#8220;it is no use. We are both all used up. I want to get home. And I
+couldn&#8217;t go anywhere if I wanted to in this skirt.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is always that skirt,&#8221; he cried angrily; &#8220;that my heart breaks
+to-night is nothing,&#8212;only ever I must hear of your skirt.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, where <em>are</em> the matches?&#8221; she said nervously; &#8220;we must find them
+somehow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221; she gasped sharply; &#8220;we shall wake every one in the building
+before we get through.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is very terrible&#8212;this night,&#8221; he said quietly, and as he spoke he
+found the match-box<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We <em>cannot</em> separate like this,&#8221; he said, laying his hand upon her arm;
+&#8220;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. <em>Dites &#8216;oui&#8217;</em>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Hofbrauhaus is, as its name indicates, the caf&#233;, or rather
+<em>brasserie</em>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I can&#8217;t go,&#8221; she said, almost crying in her distress and agitation.
+&#8220;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!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293])</a></span>She unlocked the large <em>porte</em> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was the <em>porte</em> of No. 5 to unlock and the taper to relight,
+and three more staircases to mount.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall go to-morrow morning,&#8221; he said quietly and hopelessly, as they
+went a second time upon their upward way. &#8220;I shall put all the force of
+my will to it that I go. It is better so. <em>Pourquoi vous vexer avec mon
+ardent d&#233;sir pour vous?</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her heart contracted with a spasm of pain, but she made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To meet again will be but more to suffer,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;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. <em>Toute ma jeunesse est prise!</em>
+I feel myself become old and most desolate. I am content that it is
+good-bye here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to her that her turn had come to falter, and fail to move, and
+close her eyes in misery. If&#8212;if&#8212;only&#8212;</p>
+
+<p>But they went on slowly until the top landing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span> was just above their
+heads. Both knew that the top landing must bring the termination of all.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is for the first and the last time,&#8221; he said hoarsely, and then he
+kissed her furiously, passionately,&#8212;twice, thrice, and once again.
+&#8220;<em>C&#8217;est comme &ccedil;a, l&#8217;amour!</em>&#8221; he whispered; &#8220;and because you know nothing
+of it, you let it go from you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he put his hand to his throat as if strangling, and, opening the
+door, stepped aside.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Good-bye,&#8221; he murmured, as she passed within. &#8220;<em>Bon voyage!</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The door closed between them.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>She went to her room and found Ottillie asleep upon the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Then he was gone!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>This time there would be no return.</p>
+
+<p>The moisture of his lips was yet upon her own, and he was gone forever.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>She crossed the room and fell upon her knees beside the bed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296&ndash;298]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="back"><a href="#contents">Back to Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span><a name="iii" id="iii"></a><span class="smcap">Part III</span><br />
+<br />
+THE BREAKING OF THE BARRIERS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr class="hr4" />
+
+<h2>Chapter Fourteen</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">IT was very early, very dark, very cheerless, that most miserable hour
+of six o&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;clock in the morning? Rosina&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>There was a tap at the door and Jack came in. He was tanned with his
+recent trip and had a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span> 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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must hurry up, my dear; the cab will be at the door in five
+minutes, and we don&#8217;t want to miss that train, you know.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m quite ready,&#8221; she said helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is all this stuff going?&#8221; he asked, looking about; &#8220;you can&#8217;t mean to
+carry all this with us to Genoa, surely.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s in those two boxes?&#8221; Jack continued.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Clothes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why didn&#8217;t you put them in a trunk?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You told me to send all my trunks <em>frachtgut</em> two weeks ago. I had to
+keep out some to wear, naturally.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He drew a martyr&#8217;s breath.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You do beat all! I don&#8217;t know how we&#8217;re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> ever going to get all this
+stuff along with us. There isn&#8217;t anything more, is there, Ottillie?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Oh, mais non, monsieur!</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All right. You better have them take all this down; the cab must be
+there by this time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina stood up.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I must say good-bye to Fraulein H&#233;l&#232;ne and her mamma,&#8221; she said sadly,
+going to the door.</p>
+
+<p>The good-bye was a trying one, and its tears were harshly interrupted by
+a voice in the hall:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come on, Rosina, we&#8217;re going to miss that train for a fact if you don&#8217;t
+hurry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go, my dear child,&#8221; said Frau G&#8212;&mdash;; &#8220;do not weep so. Many think that
+they are going forever, but they all always return.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina choked, and went.</p>
+
+<p>Jack rattled her down the stairs&#8212;those sob-provoking stairs&#8212;at a
+tremendous rate, and when they went out of the <em>porte</em> their eyes were
+greeted by a cab that looked like a furniture van, so overloaded was its
+capacity.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;George, but it&#8217;s full!&#8221; Jack cried in dismay. &#8220;Well, there&#8217;s no time to
+get another; we must just pile in some way and let it go at that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They piled in some way and it went at that.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The train leaves at 7.20,&#8221; Jack remarked as they passed the post-office
+clock, &#8220;we shall just make it easy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Zurich!&#8221; Jack called out, &#8220;and hurry!&#8221; he added. &#8220;We really are making
+pretty close connection,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;it&#8217;s 7.05 now. But then there is
+only one trunk to check.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m glad that that&#8217;s yours,&#8221; Rosina said, thinking of her hand luggage
+and his comments thereon.</p>
+
+<p>He whistled blithely.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, we&#8217;ll get there all straight,&#8221; he said hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Wo fahren Sie hin?</em>&#8221; asked the porter who operated the hand-truck, as
+he went leisurely after their haste.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Zurich,&#8221; said Jack, &#8220;and <em>wir haben sehr wenig</em> time to spare; you want
+to look lively.&#8221; Then he rushed to the ticket gate to send Rosina and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>
+her maid aboard while the trunk was being weighed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Wo fahren Sie hin?</em>&#8221; asked the man at the gate.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Zurich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Train goes at 7.45.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It doesn&#8217;t either,&#8221; said Jack, who understood German fluently, &#8220;it goes
+at 7.20.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I vow,&#8221; said Jack blankly, &#8220;if that man at Schenker&#8217;s isn&#8217;t the
+worst fraud I ever ran up against. Say, cousin, we&#8217;ve got over half an
+hour to check my trunk in.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head as if she didn&#8217;t care.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll go and see to it now,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and then I&#8217;ll come back here and
+try to get on to the train.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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, &#8220;It is for the first and last time!&#8221; and what came next.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span> stretched himself at full length upon the longest
+seat, and was asleep within five minutes.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina took the window corner opposite him and contemplated his callous
+slumber with a burning bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And he must see how unhappy I am, too,&#8221; she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8212;all&#8212;all.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Leaving for home,&#8221; she reflected. &#8220;I&#8217;m not <em>leaving</em> at all; I&#8217;m simply
+being wrenched away! Talk about turning one&#8217;s face towards America! I&#8217;m
+not turning my face; I&#8217;m having my neck wrung in that direction!&#8221; and
+the tears rolled heavily down her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>About ten o&#8217;clock Jack opened his eyes and yawned vigorously twice or
+thrice. Then he got up on his elbow.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You <em>are</em> a pretty sight!&#8221; he said, after a lengthy contemplation of
+her woe; &#8220;you look like&#8212;like&#8212;well, you look pretty bad, and you
+haven&#8217;t a soul to blame for it all but yourself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;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&#8217;t marry him. If he was some worthless scoundrel that
+couldn&#8217;t be thought of, you know very well that all we might try to say
+or do wouldn&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you heard from him?&#8221; she asked coldly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s no crime.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who said it was? So far from being a crime, it ought to have been
+another bond of congeniality between you two.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>&#8220;Do you know where he went?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If he was a man at home he&#8217;d take to drink and go to the devil, but
+being a fellow over here I suppose that he&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She choked and said no more.</p>
+
+<p>The train guard came through soon after and put the usual question:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Wo fahren Sie hin?</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Zurich,&#8221; said Jack, as he produced their tickets; &#8220;about what time do
+we get there?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you going straight through?&#8221; the guard inquired as he punched a
+page in each little book and restored the library to their rightful
+possessor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then why did you not take the express?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jack fairly bounded in his seat.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The express!&#8221; he ejaculated. &#8220;Great Scott, do you mean to say that we
+are not on it!!!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no,&#8221; said the guard, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could bear deeper testimony to the state of Rosina&#8217;s crushed
+sensibilities than the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To think that that other train must have been right there within a
+hundred feet of us!&#8221; cried her cousin.</p>
+
+<p>She did not turn an eyelash.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By George, Rosina, I don&#8217;t believe I ever was as mad as this in all my
+life before!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t mind anything,&#8221; she said sadly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You ought to mind getting to Zurich at eight o&#8217;clock instead of
+half-past two; there&#8217;s quite a little difference.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t mind,&#8221; she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I do,&#8221; said Jack. After a pause of stormy thought he unclenched
+his fist and said, &#8220;I bet I get even for this some day, but just at
+present I think that I&#8217;ll go to sleep again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Which he did forthwith.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span> 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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Wo fahren Sie hin?</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Zurich,&#8221; Jack answered, hauling out his tickets.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Fahren Sie mit Bahn oder fahren Sie mit Schiff?</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jack looked nonplussed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Which are the tickets for?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Either.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He turned to where Rosina waited, her eyes gazing in the direction of
+Constance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Rosina,&#8221; he called out, &#8220;do you want to <em>fahr</em> from here on <em>mit</em>
+the <em>Bahn</em> or the <em>Schiff</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t care,&#8221; she replied.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the difference, anyhow?&#8221; he asked the man.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;With the boat you do not connect with the train on the other shore,&#8221; he
+was told.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t, eh? Well, I&#8217;m very anxious to make that train upon the other
+shore, so I think we&#8217;ll <em>fahr</em> right along <em>mit</em> the <em>Bahn</em>. Come on!&#8221;
+he called again to his cousin, &#8220;we must get aboard.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309])</a></span>They went slowly along the platform to the train gate.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They call Lindau the German Venice,&#8221; he said, as they waited to pass
+the gate, &#8220;but I don&#8217;t think that it looks very Venetian; do you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She choked, because Venice began with V, and felt herself quite unable
+to frame an answer to his question.</p>
+
+<p>As every one but themselves seemed to have elected for the &#8220;Schiff,&#8221;
+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:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do ask him if we must change again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do we change again?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Wo fahren Sie hin?</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Zurich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must change in Bregenz.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We must change in Bregenz,&#8221; Jack called out.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span> spattered with red and yellow.
+And off to the north Constance was lying. Ah, Constance&#8212;the
+Stadtgarten&#8212;Huss&#8217; Tower&#8212;the &#8220;Souvenir&#8221; of Vieuxtemps!</p>
+
+<p>Rosina wept afresh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Ottillie,&#8221; she sobbed, forlornly, &#8220;<em>que je suis malheureuse
+aujourd&#8217;hui</em>!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What strange country have we run up against, I&#8217;d like to know!&#8221; Jack
+asked in amazement; and then the black cocks&#8217; plumes in the <em>casquette</em>
+of the <em>douanier</em> revealed the information that he craved.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How does Austria get to the Bodensee?&#8221; Rosina begged to know, having
+seen the cocks&#8217; plumes as quickly as he had.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; replied Jack, not at all pleased at the discovery as to
+where they were. &#8220;It does seem as if every country in Europe has a
+finger in this lake, though; or, if they haven&#8217;t, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span> keep a
+custom-house open on it just as a side line to their regular business.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I bet they make it plain whether its <em>kronen</em> or <em>gulden</em>,&#8221; said
+Rosina&#8217;s cousin as he threw his valise on top of the porter&#8217;s small
+mountain; &#8220;if I&#8217;d known that I was to come in connection with that vile
+money system again I&#8217;d have <em>schiffed</em> it across the lake or walked
+around the northern shore before I&#8217;d ever have come this route.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>The object uppermost of all was a Russian leather writing-tablet. The
+official leapt upon that at once.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;On this you must pay thirty <em>centimes</em>,&#8221; he declared, grabbing it up.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Warum?</em>&#8221; said Jack. He found &#8220;<em>warum</em>&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You cannot pretend that it is an article of wearing apparel for
+madame,&#8221; said the officer archly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never said that it was an article of wearing apparel for any one,&#8221;
+Jack retorted hotly; &#8220;I asked why I had to pay thirty <em>centimes</em> on it.
+It isn&#8217;t new and it isn&#8217;t dutiable, and I know that, and you know it
+too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is it, anyhow?&#8221; asked the man.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s to write on.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why does not madame write on paper, like everybody else?&#8221; inquired the
+witty fellow.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s your six cents,&#8221; said Jack, in great disgust; &#8220;I reckon you
+take <em>pfennigs</em>, don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes,&#8221; said the Austrian, &#8220;we take everything.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; replied the American, &#8220;so I observed in Vienna.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313])</a></span>Then he turned away and the porter loaded up again.</p>
+
+<p>They went out on the platform and were told that the train had just
+gone.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Wo fahren Sie hin?</em>&#8221; asked the guard, taking pity on their
+consternation at being left high and dry so unexpectedly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Zurich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, then that wasn&#8217;t your train anyway; that train went to Rorshack.
+You take the Zurichbahn at half-past three.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was three-quarters of an hour to wait.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you suppose that there is anything worth seeing in Bregenz?&#8221; the man
+of the party suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to see it if there is,&#8221; his cousin replied.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I do want to see it, even if there isn&#8217;t,&#8221; he answered; &#8220;you and
+Ottillie can go into the waiting-room and I&#8217;ll be back in half an hour.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;Warte-Saal,&#8221; and every nail
+that was driven into the new Gare of Bregenz pierced her aching heart
+and echoed in her aching head.</p>
+
+<p>After the lapse of half an hour Jack turned up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span> again, having thoroughly
+exhausted Bregenz and purchased a new cane most ingeniously carved with
+bears&#8217; heads and paws interlaced.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;clock at the earliest.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s an awful shame the way this world is put on,&#8221; he said, yawning and
+walking up and down; &#8220;it would be Paradise to Von Ibn to have the right
+to cart you and your bags around, and it&#8217;s h&#8212;l for me, and I&#8217;ve got it
+to do notwithstanding.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never sent for you to take me home,&#8221; Rosina said in an outraged tone.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I wasn&#8217;t blaming you,&#8221; he declared amicably.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; she said coldly, &#8220;I thought that you were.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do we change again?&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>&#8220;<em>Wo fahren Sie hin?</em>&#8221; he asked, with a beaming smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Zurich,&#8221; Jack sung out, with renewed vigor.</p>
+
+<p>The guard opened the door leading into the next compartment, and then,
+when his exit was assured, he told them:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Must in St. Margarethen change,&#8221; and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He knows the time for disappearing, evidently,&#8221; Jack said; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina felt a deep satisfaction that none of his heat could be charged
+up to her; <em>she</em> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Wo fahren Sie hin?</em>&#8221; he cried, breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316])</a></span>&#8220;Zurich, d&#8212;&mdash; you!&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Must be very quick; no time to lose,&#8221; said the man and hurried away.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Jack was too saturated with sleep to be able to try any more. He went
+through to the smoker&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a terrible thing to have been married,&#8221; she thought bitterly.
+&#8220;Before you&#8217;ve been married you&#8217;re so ready to be married to any one,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>
+and after you&#8217;ve been married you don&#8217;t dare marry any one.&#8221; Then she
+took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. &#8220;Oh, dear,&#8221; she sobbed,
+&#8220;it doesn&#8217;t seem as if I could possibly be more wretched with him than I
+am without him!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They reached Zurich in the neighborhood of nine o&#8217;clock. The end of a
+trip always brings a certain sense of relief to the head of the party,
+and Jack&#8217;s spirits rose prodigiously as he got them all into a cab.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll get something to eat that&#8217;s good,&#8221; he declared gayly, &#8220;and then
+to-morrow, after a first-class night&#8217;s sleep, we&#8217;ll go over the
+Gotthard, and be in Milan Monday. And then, ho for Genoa, Gibraltar, and
+joy everlasting!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He seized Rosina&#8217;s hand and gave it a hard squeeze.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Cheer up, you poor dear!&#8221; he cried; &#8220;you&#8217;ll come out all right in the
+end,&#8212;now you see!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She pressed her lips tightly together and did not trust herself to say
+one word in reply.</p>
+
+<p>She felt that she was beginning to really hate her cousin.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>Chapter Fifteen</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">THEY stood at the summit of that double flight of marble steps which run
+up the right-hand side of the Milan Cathedral&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Jack,&#8221; she cried, &#8220;I never shall get down from here alive! What did
+you ever bring me up for?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I brought you up to talk,&#8221; said her cousin. &#8220;Come over here, and sit
+down on the ridge-pole beside me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<div class="link"><a name="want" id="want">&nbsp;</a></div>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 391px;">
+<img src="images/gs04.jpg" class="jpg" width="391" height="600" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;&#8216;I want you to pay a lot of attention to what I am
+going to say, Rosina&#8217;&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>&#8220;Well,&#8221; 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, &#8220;I want you to pay a lot of attention to what I&#8217;m going to
+say, Rosina, for I&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She turned her sad eyes towards him; she was looking pale and tired, but
+not cross or impatient.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go on,&#8221; she said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s just this: it&#8217;s four days now since we left Munich, and I can see
+that your spirits aren&#8217;t picking up any; instead, you seem more utterly
+done up every day. So I&#8217;ve made up my mind to give you one more chance.
+It&#8217;s this way: you know we&#8217;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&#8212;unless it&#8217;s me,&#8221; he added parenthetically; &#8220;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&#8217;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span> 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.&#8221; Jack paused and jarred his cigarette
+ash off with his finger-tip. &#8220;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,&#8212;well, when that letter was
+written in Zurich&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah,&#8221; she cried sharply, &#8220;then it <em>was</em> from Zurich!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, it was from Zurich,&#8221; he replied indifferently; &#8220;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&#8217;s sending me over to&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I hadn&#8217;t known him but three days then,&#8221; she interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That wasn&#8217;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&#8217;ve told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span> you
+before: if you want to marry him, you can; if you don&#8217;t want to marry
+him, you needn&#8217;t; but for Heaven&#8217;s sake why do you persist in refusing
+him if it uses you up so awfully?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her mouth quivered and her eyes filled slowly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you been flirting?&#8221; he asked, with a very real kindness veiled in
+his voice, &#8220;or do you really love him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her wet eyes to his.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; she said, with simple sincerity; and after a minute she
+added, &#8220;But I can&#8217;t make up my mind to marry just for the sake of
+finding out.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jack whistled softly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So that&#8217;s it!&#8221; he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then the best thing to do is just what we&#8217;re doing; I know that you
+wanted to stay and see more of him, but, feeling as you do, that
+wouldn&#8217;t have been right to him or to yourself either. It seems tough on
+you, but you&#8217;ll get over it in a few months, and if it comes to a
+funeral for Von Ibn&#8212;why, it isn&#8217;t our funeral, anyway!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stood up as he spoke, and smiled and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span> held out his hand to her. She
+rose, feeling as if some fearful ultimatum had been proclaimed above her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s sort of hard, you know,&#8221; Jack said, as he assisted her carefully
+down the steep steps; &#8220;it&#8217;s <em>awful</em> 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&#8217;t marry a man who wants you and whom you want.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I married just such a man once upon a time,&#8221; she replied sadly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Jack; &#8220;but I didn&#8217;t like that man, and I do like Von Ibn.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She drew a quick breath.</p>
+
+<p>From the cathedral they returned directly to the hotel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Chapter Sixteen</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">IT was Genoa.</p>
+
+<p>The end of all was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina recollected the careless, callous manner with which in earlier,
+happier days she had spoken of this fated spot.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Are you going home by the Southern Route?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, we sail from Genoa;&#8221; or, &#8220;Do you leave at Naples?&#8221; &#8220;Oh, no, it&#8217;s
+Monte Carlo this time, so we shall get off at Genoa.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Genoa!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It is always astonishing how the port from which we sail partakes of our
+sailing sentiments. It&#8217;s a &#8220;jolly good place&#8221; or a &#8220;dull old hole,&#8221; 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&#8217;t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span> the place that counts when the anchor goes down or up,
+it&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The following morning Rosina saw her cousin leave for the inevitable
+visit to Fratelli&#8217;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>For with the conversation upon the ridge-pole of the Milan Cathedral
+life had seemed to close for her. The finality of Jack&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>She hung there against the cold iron and knew no tears, because her
+wretchedness had outstripped their solace.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span>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&#8212;some special word whose burden nor sleep nor
+wake will lighten.</p>
+
+<p>There, at her feet, the Isar rushed, and through the myriad murmur of
+its rapids his voice came back to her. &#8220;<em>Tout est fini</em>,&#8212;all is
+finished!&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He felt perhaps as I feel now,&#8221; she thought, pressing her hand against
+her bosom; &#8220;I didn&#8217;t know then&#8212;I didn&#8217;t know!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She turned to walk along the cliff.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If I was sure,&#8221; she told herself, &#8220;I think that I would&#8212;&#8221; but there
+she paused, shuddered violently, and left the phrase unfinished.</p>
+
+<p>At luncheon Jack was uncommonly cheerful. He asked her if she didn&#8217;t
+want to go to Nice and spend one of the two days before their departure.
+She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But why don&#8217;t you go?&#8221; she said; &#8220;you could just as well as not.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know but that I will,&#8221; he replied; &#8220;only I hate to leave you
+here alone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I&#8217;ll do very well,&#8221; she assured him, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I declare,&#8221; he said suddenly, &#8220;it seems wasteful somehow for you to
+dress like that just to sit here alone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her mouth curved a little.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is that a night-dress?&#8221; he inquired curiously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, cousin, it&#8217;s a tea-gown.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He stood still beside her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They told me a funny thing at the steamship office this morning,&#8221; he
+said, after a while; &#8220;the man says that there&#8217;s never a steamer sails
+but that some one who has made their last payment down is obliged for
+some reason to stay behind.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do they give them back their money?&#8221; she asked, trying to appear
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; and they always fill the room either at Naples or Gibraltar.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328])</a></span>And still he stood there.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why don&#8217;t you sit down?&#8221; she asked at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where&#8217;s Ottillie?&#8221; he said, without seeming to notice her question.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve sent her out to do some errands. Why, do you want anything done?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No;&#8221; he leaned over and kissed her cheek. &#8220;I do love you, Rosina,&#8221; he
+added, half joking, half serious; &#8220;I wonder what sort of a show I&#8217;d have
+had if I&#8217;d tried&#8212;ever?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She shrank from him with a quick breath.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Jack, I beg of you, don&#8217;t tease me these days.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He straightened up and laughed, taking out his watch.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s quarter after four,&#8221; he said, reflecting. &#8220;The mail must be in;
+I&#8217;ll see if there are any letters,&#8221; and he went out.</p>
+
+<p>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....</p>
+
+<p>Quick steps in the hall broke in upon her day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What has happened?&#8221; she asked hastily and anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>He went to the window and looked out, so that his back was turned
+towards her and his face concealed from her view.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve just heard from Von Ibn,&#8221; he said briefly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is that letter from him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No; he&#8217;s not writing any letters these days.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh&#8212;&#8221; she began, and then stopped.</p>
+
+<p>He kept his back towards her, and then, after a short pause:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s going all to pieces,&#8221; he said in a low tone, very slowly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh&#8212;&#8221; she exclaimed again, and again stopped.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I reckon he&#8217;s pretty badly off; he&#8217;s got beyond himself. He&#8217;s&#8212;well,
+he&#8217;s&#8212;. Rosina, the long and short of it is, he&#8217;s gone crazy!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She rose slowly out of her seat, her face deadly white, her finger-nails
+turned cruelly into her palms.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jack!&#8221; she stammered; &#8220;Jack!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He continued to look from the window.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I knew he&#8217;d take it awfully hard,&#8221; he said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span> in a voice that sounded
+strained, &#8220;but I didn&#8217;t think he&#8217;d give up so completely; he&#8217;s&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then she screamed, reaching forth and touching his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re not breaking it to me that he&#8217;s dead! You&#8217;re not telling me that
+he&#8217;s dead!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He turned from the window at that, and was shocked at her face and the
+way that her hands were twisting.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know he&#8217;s dead!&#8221; she screamed again, and he sprang forward and caught
+her in his arms as she sank down there at his knees.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He is <em>not</em> dead!&#8221; he told her forcefully; &#8220;honestly, he is <em>not</em> dead!
+But he&#8217;s in a bad way, and with it all just as it is, I don&#8217;t know what
+to do about you. If you don&#8217;t care, why, as I said before, it&#8217;s not our
+funeral; but if you do care, I&#8212;well, I&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Jack, can I go to him? I must go to him! Can&#8217;t you take me to him?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She writhed in his arms as if she also was become a maniac.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you really want to go to him? Do you know what that means? It means
+no more backing out, now or never.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know, I understand, I&#8217;m willing! Only hurry! only telegraph that I
+will come! only&#8212;&#8221; she began to choke.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you,&#8221; said he, putting her into the big chair again; &#8220;you
+shall go to him. Stay there a minute and I&#8217;ll get my railway guides and
+look it up right away. Collect yourself, be a good girl!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He went out, and she folded her hands and prayed wildly:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;God, let him live! God, take me to him!&#8221; over and over again.</p>
+
+<p>And then her impatience stretched the seconds into minutes, and she
+sought her cousin&#8217;s room, which was just across the hall from the suite
+given to herself.</p>
+
+<p>She flung the door open without knocking and entered precipitately,
+expecting to find Jack and the railway guides. But Jack was not there.</p>
+
+<p>There <em>was</em> 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, &#8220;She&#8217;ll be in here in less than sixty seconds. I&#8217;m
+going to the steamship office,&#8221; and then the man had been left to wait,
+and his was not a patient disposition....</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332])</a></span>At the sound of the opening door the man looked up. She was there,
+staring as if petrified, by the door.</p>
+
+<p>He made one bound. She was within his arms.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Alors tu m&#8217;aimes!</em>&#8221; he cried, and something mutual swallowed her reply
+and the consciousness of both for one long heaven-rifting minute.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Alors tu m&#8217;aimes?</em>&#8221; he said again, with a great quivering breath; &#8220;<em>tu
+m&#8217;aimes, n&#8217;est-ce pas?</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;With my whole heart and soul and life,&#8221; she confessed.</p>
+
+<p>And then he kissed her hastily, hungrily, murmuring:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Ma cherie!</em> my angel, mine, mine!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span> her heart and her life out into its bottomless depths
+forevermore.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Attends!</em>&#8221; he said, after a minute, loosing her suddenly to the end
+that he might turn the key in Jack&#8217;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 <em>fauteuils</em> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Mon Dieu, que je suis heureux!</em>&#8221; he said, smiling down into her eyes;
+&#8220;<em>alors tu m&#8217;aimes vraiment</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jack told me that you were terribly ill,&#8221; she said, her eyes resting
+upon his face with a sort of overwhelming content.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you have care?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought that I should lose my mind!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Ma cherie!</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you really look as if you had been ill?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not ill, but most <em>malheureux</em>. It has not been easy always to wait and
+believe that you shall love me yet.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you always did believe it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled his irresistible smile of eyes and lip.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your cousin has said to me in Tagernsee, &#8216;She will certainly marry you
+because she declares<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span> that she will not, and she always does do exactly
+<em>le contraire</em>;&#8217; but, <em>Mon Dieu</em>, how could I trust to that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina laughed ringingly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Dear Jack! I wish that I had known myself as well as he knows me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He has been very good to me,&#8221; said Von Ibn, leaning above her and
+breaking his sentences in a manner that was perhaps only natural, all
+things considered; &#8220;he has kept me from&#8212;the real madness. But for him I
+was quite willing to shoot myself. It has never been anything so
+terrible for me as&#8212;when you enter the door of the <em>pension</em> that night
+and shut it between us.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She lifted up her hand and closed his big eyes with its soft touch.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I loved you in Lucerne,&#8221; she declared to his blindness, &#8220;that first
+moment when I saw you walking on the Quai. I did not know why, but I
+felt that I <em>must</em> know you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He snatched her hand away and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Voil&agrave;!</em>&#8221; he exclaimed; &#8220;what have I say to you that time in Munich,
+that the women are always <em>g&#234;n&#233;es</em>! You love in Lucerne, and insist not
+for all the summer after.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then they laughed together.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Would you have liked me to have told you there on the Quai? would you
+have believed it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335])</a></span>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said gravely; &#8220;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, &#8216;<em>Voil&agrave; la jolie Am&#233;ricaine encore une fois!</em>&#8217; You see!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She wondered how she had ever for a moment thought that his eyes were
+melancholy, they appeared so big and bright and joyous now.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When did you come?&#8221; she remembered to ask after a long time.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am come yesterday morning.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Before we did?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes; because I have very much here to do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In Genoa?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; and Jack and I have been out all this morning also.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I never knew!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked a little uneasy and rose to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There is something very serious that I must say,&#8221; he said, standing
+before her.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up in a little anxiety; a crowd of ordinary, every-day
+thoughts suddenly swarmed into her mind.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do not be <em>g&#234;n&#233;e</em>!&#8221; he implored parenthetically; &#8220;what I have to say is
+so most important.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am not <em>g&#234;n&#233;e</em>,&#8221; she assured him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then why do you not come and stand by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span> me?&#8221; he asked. &#8220;If you love me
+and will not show it, I am to be very unhappy always.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina laughed; but she stood up and went close to him at once.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do love you,&#8221; she said, &#8220;and I am not at all afraid to show it. You
+see!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He took her face between his hands and gazed down fondly upon her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Love is good, is it not?&#8221; he said. &#8220;There is a great joy to me to hold
+you so, and reflect upon those stairs at Munich.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He paused&#8212;perhaps in consideration of the Munichian stairs&#8212;for a
+moment, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I will remember,&#8221; she said, not at all frightened.</p>
+
+<p>He took her two hands tightly within his own.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I must now say that very serious thing.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I shall not run away.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, but you may be surprised and unarrange yourself before I can hold
+you to stop.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go on,&#8221; she begged.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is this: Jack and I have been out all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span> this morning, because all
+must be very ready; I&#8212;&#8221; he stopped.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are going with us?&#8221; she exclaimed joyously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No; I&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are not going before we do?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>Then he drew her very closely and tenderly to him and kissed her eyes
+and forehead.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is that I am to be married to-morrow,&#8221; he told her softly, and held
+her tightly as the shock of his words ran quivering through her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I!&#8221; she gasped, after two or three paralyzed seconds.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Naturally you are to be married also.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She stared mutely up into the reassurance of his smile.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jack and I find that best,&#8221; he said. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She felt completely overcome.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>To-morrow!</em>&#8221; she said, at last.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said placidly; &#8220;I am much hasted to be again in the north, and
+we have arranged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span> with the consuls&#8212;your consul and my consul&#8212;for
+to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But my steamer passage!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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 <em>centim&#233;tre</em>
+more than the berth.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For me there is no comfort under two <em>m&#233;tres</em>,&#8221; he declared vigorously.</p>
+
+<p>Just then the owner of the room tried the door.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is my room,&#8221; he called through the crack.</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other, and she ran lightly to the door, unlocked it
+and let her cousin enter.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You fearful liar!&#8221; she exclaimed, as he put his arm about her, and held
+out the spare hand to her lover. &#8220;Oh, Jack, you awful, <em>awful</em> liar,
+what shall I say to you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Say to him that you are most happy,&#8221; her lover suggested.</p>
+
+<p>Jack was beaming.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never said a word that wasn&#8217;t true,&#8221; he declared.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span> &#8220;You asked me if
+the letter was from him, and I said that he wasn&#8217;t writing any letters
+these days, and then I said that he was going crazy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And that was most true,&#8221; the other man broke in; &#8220;I have no manner to
+think left in my head these later nights.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn crossed to the chimney-piece and picked up a cigarette and a
+match. He was smiling to himself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She consents to be married to-morrow,&#8221; he said, facing about.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Rosina airily; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You are a brave fellow,&#8221; Jack said to his friend; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn lit his cigarette and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She will obey me,&#8221; he said easily; &#8220;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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span>&#8220;Oh, Rosina!&#8221; said Jack, and in his tone resounded a succession of many
+feelings each more indescribable than its predecessor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is not needful that you kiss her,&#8221; the lover went on, coming back
+across the room; &#8220;I wish that you would not, that does me no pleasure to
+watch.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t care anything about kissing her,&#8221; the cousin replied; &#8220;Rosina&#8217;s
+novelty in kisses was over for me before I was five years old. Don&#8217;t you
+remember&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Some one rapped at the door.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Entrez!</em>&#8221; they cried in chorus.</p>
+
+<p>It was a <em>gar&ccedil;on</em> with a card.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Madame La Francesca,&#8217;&#8221; said Rosina, reading. &#8220;Who is Madame La
+Francesca?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The two men exchanged glances.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where is the lady?&#8221; Jack asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She is gone at once to madame&#8217;s room,&#8221; the boy replied.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;d better go and see who&#8217;s in your room,&#8221; Jack suggested; &#8220;and you,&#8221;
+he added, turning to her <em>fianc&#233;</em>, &#8220;you must come with me and attend to
+what yet remains to be done.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina hesitated, her hand upon the door-knob.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I will come at once,&#8221; she told the boy, who was waiting, and then she
+looked towards the man by the chimney-piece.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span>&#8220;Never mind me,&#8221; said her cousin kindly; &#8220;I&#8217;ll look out of the window,
+if you wish.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn threw his cigarette into the grate.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You need not look from the window,&#8221; he said, laughing; &#8220;you may look
+straight to us, and see two most happy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He put his hand on either side of her smile and took the smile to
+himself. Then she went out.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t tell you,&#8221; the American said warmly, &#8220;how glad I am for you
+both. I do honestly think that she&#8217;ll make you very happy. And I hope
+and pray that you&#8217;ll be good to her.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall be good to her,&#8221; said his friend seriously; &#8220;I know her well.
+She is very &#8216;<em>tendre</em>&#8217; 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Maybe not,&#8221; said Jack carelessly; &#8220;but we make a lot of money all the
+same.&#8221; He picked up his ulster with the deer-horn buttons. &#8220;You&#8217;re
+coming, aren&#8217;t you?&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>The other man sought an eminently correct overcoat and silk hat in the
+adjoining room.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Nat&uuml;rlich</em>,&#8221; he said, &#8220;you know that I am of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span> at any rate an equal
+interest with you in what is to be to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jack laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps if you knew your lady as well as I do&#8212;&#8221; he began, and then he
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So there walks the end of all,&#8221; he said to himself. &#8220;Who would have
+thought it of Rosina! Poor girl, she is about over; in fact, I&#8217;m afraid
+that, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, &#8216;Rosina&#8217; has already
+ceased to exist&#8212;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!&#8221; He paused and chuckled. &#8220;I&#8217;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&#8217;ll perceive that
+that man&#8217;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&#8217;re happy they owe it all to me; and
+if they&#8217;re miserable, they have no one but themselves to blame.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343])</a></span>Von Ibn had paused at the foot of the stairs and now looked up, smiling,
+into his friend&#8217;s eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am this day so greatly rejoiced,&#8221; he said earnestly, &#8220;what life is to
+have for me, and for her, after this! You may not divine it, I think.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Jack looked into the warm and shining light of his uplifted face.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I hope you&#8217;ll both be just everlastingly happy,&#8221; he said sincerely.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But that is certain,&#8221; the lover said, in a tone of deep feeling. &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I say,&#8221; Jack remonstrated; &#8220;I certainly worked some too!&#8221;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span>Chapter Seventeen</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">WHEN Rosina opened her door it was Molly who stood there; a gorgeous
+Molly, put forth by all that was uppermost in the K&#228;rntnerstrasse of
+that year.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, where ever did you come from?&#8221; she cried.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;From Vienna,&#8221; said Molly; &#8220;from Vienna by way of Botzen and Venice.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And Madame la Princesse?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve left her and qualified as a chaperone on my own hook.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re with Madame&#8212;Madame&#8212;&#8221; Rosina looked down at the
+<em>carte-de-visite</em> which she held in her fingers still.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not with her; I&#8217;m <em>her</em>!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Madame La Francesca.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Molly, you&#8217;re not&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I am.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not <em>married</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Irish girl, or rather the Italian lady, nodded.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span>&#8220;Why, Molly, however did you do it? you said he was too poor.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He was too poor.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And how&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly was pulling off her gloves and laughing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My dear, this is another.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina sank abruptly on the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis a fact. I never told you a thing about him, but he&#8217;s as
+handsome&#8212;wait!&#8221; She put her hand to her collar. &#8220;No getting them
+tangled any more,&#8221; she said, smiling, as she felt for her chain. &#8220;I wear
+only one now, but I wear that one night and day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina could do little else than gasp and stare.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But who is he?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s the lieutenant&#8217;s colonel. He called on me to&#8212;Well, I do believe
+I&#8217;ve left that locket on the washstand after all!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Haven&#8217;t you got it on?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, I haven&#8217;t. And I meant to wear it forever.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never mind, go on about the colonel.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I do hope he won&#8217;t find the locket, that&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But do go on about how you came to&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t come to any one; he came to me, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span> beg me to give up the
+lieutenant, who was taking to absinthe. My dear, you should just see the
+man! (Oh, if I <em>only</em> had my locket!) All Italy can&#8217;t show such another!
+I gave up the lieutenant that day and married the colonel just as fast
+as was possible. That&#8217;s why I haven&#8217;t written you this last month.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Is he rich?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, not in pounds; but he&#8217;s a millionaire in these Italian <em>lire</em>. We
+shall live like princes,&#8212;Italian princes, <em>bien entendu</em>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But when were you married?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Day before yesterday; to-day&#8217;s the first time I&#8217;ve taken off the
+locket.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And where?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In Venice. Oh, &#8217;twas like heaven, being paddled to church.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And now you&#8217;re&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Signora La Francesca.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I declare!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina leaned back, staring helplessly. Finally she said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And how did you happen to come here?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To your wedding. I hurried my own a little on that account.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Molly</em>, then you knew about me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly swept down upon the sofa and folded her friend in her arms.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Knew about you! Why, my dear, I knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span> about you in Zurich. How could I
+help it? How could any one help it?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, Molly, was it as bad as that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Worse,&#8221; said the signora briefly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you never could have known that I would marry him in Genoa then?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no; of course I didn&#8217;t know about Genoa, I only knew you were bound
+to marry him somewhere.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When did you know about Genoa?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Last week. Your cousin wrote me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina&#8217;s face was a study, but finally she began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Molly, I have been tricked and deceived at every turn by those two men.
+Just listen while I tell you all about it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly listened and was told all about it, from the Isar to the
+Mediterranean, the roof of Milan&#8217;s cathedral included.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You wouldn&#8217;t believe it, would you?&#8221; the heroine of all concluded when
+she paused, altogether out of breath.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I would. Because really I never saw two people so tremendously in
+love before.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you thought I&#8212;cared for him when we were there in Zurich?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t think; I could see it with my eyes shut.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348])</a></span>&#8220;Really?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure! and as to him&#8212;&#8221; the signora shrugged her shoulders expressively.</p>
+
+<p>Rosina threw her arms around her and kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I am so delightfully glad to be so happy, and for you to be so
+happy at the same time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I like to be happy myself,&#8221; Molly confessed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You <em>are</em> happy, aren&#8217;t you? You do like being married, don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Pleasantest two days of my life,&#8221; declared the bride, with apparent
+sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Do you think your husband is as good-looking as monsieur?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Molly started violently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>As good-looking!</em> Why, my dear, didn&#8217;t I tell you that he was the&#8212;Oh,
+if I <em>only</em> had my locket!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Never mind,&#8221; Rosina said soothingly; &#8220;you can think he&#8217;s handsomest, if
+you like, I don&#8217;t mind. At any rate, he isn&#8217;t a great musician.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Molly proudly; &#8220;but he&#8217;s a colonel, and a colonel ranks a
+genius anywhere, any day, in Europe.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; said the <em>fianc&#233;e</em> amicably; &#8220;but, dear, didn&#8217;t you think
+that it was awful in Jack to tell me that he&#8217;d gone crazy, and frighten
+me half to death?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349])</a></span>&#8220;It must have been a terrible blow when you found that he hadn&#8217;t cared
+enough to go crazy, after all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Molly!</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And however are you going to exist with the <em>&#8216;temp&#233;rament jaloux</em>&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I never minded that a bit. Every time he is angry he is <em>so</em> adorable
+afterwards. We shall have such lovely makings-up. Oh, I expect to just
+revel in his rages!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Madame La Francesca&#8217;s dimples danced afresh.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I,&#8221; she said, &#8220;I was raised with a hot-headed Irish father and four
+hot-headed Irish brothers, and I&#8217;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, &#8216;<em>Doux comme un agneau.</em>&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I thought it was &#8216;<em>Doux comme un mouton</em>,&#8217;&#8221; said Rosina cruelly, even
+while she was conscious of a real and genuine pity for her friend, under
+the circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, it&#8217;s &#8216;<em>agneau</em>,&#8217;&#8221; the other replied placidly, and then she rose
+and shook out her stunning blue grenadine self. &#8220;I must go. I&#8217;ve been
+away a long time.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t get a bit tired of him, do you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well, I haven&#8217;t yet.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Isn&#8217;t it curious? I used to be so bored if I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span> 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But you know now?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I know now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I shall see you to-night,&#8221; Molly said, adjusting her hat before the
+pier-glass; &#8220;your cousin is going to give an especially magnificent
+dinner to just we five.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t know that he was going to give a dinner,&#8221; Rosina exclaimed,
+starting up affrightedly. &#8220;Why, all my trunks are down on the steamer!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They aren&#8217;t now,&#8221; said Molly, &#8220;they&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina put two bewildered hands to her head.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nobody tells me <em>anything</em>!&#8221; she wailed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Molly mockingly; &#8220;you&#8217;re so set on having your own way that
+it really seems wiser not to.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then they threw their arms about one another, kissed, laughed, kissed
+again, and parted.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span>Chapter Eighteen</h2>
+
+
+<p class="cap">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,&#8212;letters, postals and papers galore;
+the &#8220;Munchener Jugend,&#8221; the &#8220;Town Topics,&#8221; a &#8220;Punch,&#8221; a &#8220;Paris-Herald,&#8221;
+the &#8220;Fliegender-Bl&#228;tter,&#8221; three &#8220;Figaros,&#8221; and two &#8220;Petit-Journaux.&#8221;
+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 &#8220;Le Souvenir&#8221; 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span>
+always positive in the painstaking of perfection as to its art.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, no,&#8221; her husband cried quickly, &#8220;it is no need. I have quite
+finish,&#8221; and he threw what remained of the cigar to the flames as he
+spoke. &#8220;What have you think of?&#8221; he asked, as she laid her head back on
+the chair-arm; &#8220;was it of a pleasant thing?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I was thinking,&#8221; she said slowly, &#8220;of that man in Zurich, and wondering
+when and where he would learn of our marriage.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who of Zurich?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353])</a></span>&#8220;Surely you haven&#8217;t forgotten that man in Zurich that I went to the
+Tonhalle with.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes,&#8221; he exclaimed quickly; &#8220;the one I did go to the Gare with.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, the one who wrote Uncle John about you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Did he write about me? What has that Zuricher man to say of me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She rose to her feet and stood beside the fire, staring down into its
+leaping blades of light and flame.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You know what he said as well as I do,&#8212;just everything that he could
+to make trouble for you and me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then her wrath began to rise, as it always did when her mind recurred to
+this particular subject.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&#8217;t he stick to his own
+business and let us alone? It is maddening to think of. I shall never
+forgive him&#8212;never!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What trouble has he make?&#8221; he asked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span> gently; &#8220;why may you never forgive
+him? Come to me, here upon my knee, and tell me of that.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He made all the trouble that he possibly could,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, so,&#8221; said the latter; and then after a little he added, &#8220;But
+because he writes, your cousin is caused to arrive, and of that arriving
+we are become married. I see no trouble in that. <em>Au contraire</em>, 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it was he,&#8221; she said confidently; &#8220;Jack told me as much himself. I
+asked him if the letter was from Zurich, and he said &#8216;Yes.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Von Ibn flung his head far back against the chair cushions and laughed
+heartily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, <em>mon Dieu</em>!&#8221; he exclaimed, &#8220;I must ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span> amuse myself of a woman; a
+woman does always know!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, it <em>couldn&#8217;t</em> have been any one else,&#8221; she said positively; &#8220;you
+know <em>that</em>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He caught her face quickly between his hands and kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It could very well be myself,&#8221; he exclaimed, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>You!</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes; quite with ease. <em>Pourquoi pas?</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>You!</em>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then he laughed afresh in the face of her most complete bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Tu es tordante!</em>&#8221; he said, and then he crushed her suddenly up in his
+arms. &#8220;It was I that wrote; it was like this.&#8212;You shall hear.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It <em>wasn&#8217;t you</em>!&#8221; she said incredulously; &#8220;not <em>really</em>?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, it was very really I. <em>&Eacute;coutez donc</em>, you shall know all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He raised her hands in his, palm to palm, the fingers interwoven, and
+looked into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was because I am quite decided to marry you,&#8221; he began.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span>&#8220;There, in Zurich!&#8221; she interrupted with a gasp.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, not in Zurich.&#8212;Naturally in Lucerne; here that first day, out
+there where the Quai lies so still in to-night&#8217;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She was drawn to lay her two arms about his neck and to listen
+breathlessly to his recital.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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, <em>voil&agrave; ce qui est difficile</em>. It
+was for that that I go to the Gare with that man of Zurich,&#8212;ah, he has
+surely serve us well, that Zuricher man,&#8212;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 &#8216;Yes.&#8217;&#8221; He stopped and his voice sank. &#8220;I could not be
+sure that you would say &#8216;Yes&#8217; ever,&#8221; he continued softly; &#8220;but in your
+eyes, even at first, I have thought to find a hope.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go on,&#8221; she whispered, touching his lips very lightly with her own.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357])</a></span>&#8220;I am cabled to Leipsic that your cousin will arrive at H&acirc;vre, and we
+meet there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Rosina&#8217;s head flew upward suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You met Jack!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I never knew a thing about any of it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<em>Ah, ma ch&#233;rie, pour l&#8217;instant on n&#8217;avait pas besoin de toi</em>,&#8221; he
+reminded her, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go on!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jack is very sure that all goes well at the end, and I am full of hope
+when&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But if you knew him, why did you strike him that night in front of the
+Regierung?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And you went off with him the very next day; why didn&#8217;t you let him go
+alone?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358])</a></span>&#8220;He has say you were better left. <em>Mon Dieu</em>, 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, &#8216;Wait and you shall see that
+she sails never from Genoa.&#8217; But I was most unhappy. And my work, my
+work that should have gone so greatly out to the world this summer!
+<em>Perdu</em>&#8212;lost&#8212;lost!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She laid her cheek softly against his.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But that music is not really gone,&#8221; she whispered; &#8220;it will find a
+voice again, a better voice, because&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She kissed him fondly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, of a surety,&#8221; he said, returning the kiss twofold; &#8220;do not think
+that I repent me of one second lost in your winning. <em>Mon Dieu</em>, 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?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she declared fervently; &#8220;I forgive him for ever and always. I
+even,&#8221; she smiled into his eyes,&#8212;&#8220;I even feel obliged to him for the
+trouble that he took. But,&#8221; she added, &#8220;I truly never expected to learn
+in the end that ours was simply a &#8216;<em>mariage des convenances</em>&#8217; after
+all!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'>(<a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359])</a></span>&#8220;It was as the marriage of a queen,&#8221; he laughed, taking her hand within
+his own and raising it reverently to his lips; &#8220;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 &#8216;Yes.&#8217;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center"><em>A New Romance by the Author of &#8220;The Shadow of the Czar&#8221;</em></p>
+
+<h2>THE VIKING&#8217;S SKULL</h2>
+
+<p class="center">By JOHN R. CARLING, author of &#8220;The Shadow of the Czar,&#8221; etc.<br />
+Illustrated. 12mo. $1.50</p>
+
+<p>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,&#8212;a
+Viking of the Ninth Century,&#8212;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&#8217;s remarkable and successful novel, &#8220;The
+Shadow of the Czar.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="center"><em>A Story of Modern Quebec by Miss Ray</em></p>
+
+<h2>BY THE GOOD SAINTE ANNE</h2>
+
+<p class="center">By ANNA CHAPIN RAY, author of &#8220;The Dominant Strain,&#8221; etc.<br />
+With frontispiece. 12mo. $1.25</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="center"><em>A Stirring Tale of the Plains</em></p>
+
+<h2>THE RAINBOW CHASERS</h2>
+
+<p class="center">By JOHN H. WHITSON<br />
+Author of &#8220;Barbara, A Woman of the West,&#8221; etc.<br />
+Illustrated.    12mo.    $1.50</p>
+
+<p>Full of the atmosphere of the West, with a cowboy, land speculator, and
+lover for its hero, Mr. Whitson&#8217;s new novel, without being in the least
+a copy, has many of the attractions of Mr. Wister&#8217;s hero, &#8220;The
+Virginian.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Rainbow Chasers&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>The characters of the story are vigorous men, men with red blood in
+their veins, men of action who build up new communities.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="center"><em>By the Author of &#8220;A Prince of Sinners&#8221;</em></p>
+
+<h2>ANNA THE ADVENTURESS</h2>
+
+<p class="center">By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM, author of<br />
+&#8220;A Prince of Sinners,&#8221; etc.   Illustrated.   12mo.   $1.50</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Oppenheim&#8217;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 &#8220;got herself
+talked about&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="center"><em>The Story of a Man&#8217;s Triumph over the Flesh</em></p>
+
+<h2>THE WOOD-CARVER OF &#8217;LYMPUS</h2>
+
+<p class="center">By MARY E. WALLER, author of &#8220;A Daughter of the<br />
+Rich,&#8221; etc.   Illustrated.   12mo.   $1.50</p>
+
+<p>The hero of Miss Waller&#8217;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&#8217;s salvation. The scenes
+are laid in the Green Mountains of Vermont.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="center"><em>A New Novel of Present-Day Virginia Life</em></p>
+
+<h2>WHERE THE TIDE COMES IN</h2>
+
+<p class="center">By LUCY MEACHAM THRUSTON, author of &#8220;Mistress<br />
+Brent,&#8221; &#8220;A Girl of Virginia,&#8221; etc.<br />    Illustrated.
+12mo.   $1.50</p>
+
+<p>In her new story Mrs. Thruston portrays a heroine as charming as her
+delightful &#8220;Girl of Virginia.&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="center"><em>A Tale of Norway in the Tenth Century</em></p>
+
+<h2>THE NORTH STAR</h2>
+
+<p class="center">By M. E. HENRY-RUFFIN.   Illustrated.   12mo.   $1.50</p>
+
+<p>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
+frame for stirring incident and rapid action.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="center"><em>By the Author of &#8220;The God of Things&#8221;</em></p>
+
+<h2>THE EFFENDI</h2>
+
+<p class="center">By FLORENCE BROOKS WHITEHOUSE.   With<br />
+illustrations.   12mo.   $1.50</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The author of this stirring story has been highly praised for
+characterization and imagination, and for her knowledge of the Nile
+country.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="center"><em>Some New Stories by Sienkiewicz</em></p>
+
+<h2>LIFE AND DEATH</h2>
+
+<p class="center">AND OTHER LEGENDS AND STORIES. By HENRYK
+SIENKIEWICZ,<br /> author of &#8220;<em>Quo Vadis</em>,&#8221; etc.   Translated from the original
+Polish by<br /> <span class="smcap">Jeremiah Curtin</span>.   Illustrated. 16mo.    $1.00.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p class="center">
+LITTLE, BROWN, &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span><br />
+BOSTON, MASS.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="block">
+<p class="center"><strong>Transcriber&#8217;s Note:</strong></p>
+
+<p class="center">Accents are as they appear in the original book.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Woman's Will, by Anne Warner
+
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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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
+frame for stirring incident and rapid action.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+_By the Author of "The God of Things"_
+
+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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