"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.