Maurice Guest by Henry Handel Richardson (page 6)

Johanna, had a way, when it came to the point, not of asking advice or of faithfully discussing a question, but of emphatically giving her opinion, or of stating what she considered to be the facts of the case.

From an odd mixture of experience and self-distrust, Johanna had, however, acquired a certain faith in her mother’s opinions–these blind, instinctive hits and guesses, which often proved right where Johanna’s carefully drawn conclusions failed. Here, once more, her mother’s idea had broken in upon her like a flash of light, even though she could not immediately bring herself to accept it. Maurice and Ephie! She could not reconcile the one with the other. Yet what if the child were fretting? What if he did not care? A pang shot through her at the thought that any outsider should have the power to make Ephie suffer. Oh, she would make him care!–she would talk to him as he had never been talked to in his life before.

The sisters’ rooms were connected by a door; and, gradually, in spite of her preoccupation, Johanna could not but become aware how brokenly Ephie was practising. Coaxing, encouragement, and sometimes even severity, were all, it is true, necessary to pilot Ephie through the two hours that were her daily task; but as idle as to-day, she had never been. What could she be doing? Johanna listened intently, but not a sound came from the room; and impelled by a curiosity to observe her sister in a new light, she rose and opened the door.

Ephie was standing with her back to it, staring out of the window, and supporting herself on the table by her violin, which she held by the neck. At Johanna’s entrance, she started, grew very red, and hastily raised the instrument to her shoulder.

“What are you doing, Ephie? You are wasting a great deal of time,” said Johanna in the tone of mild reproof that came natural to her, in speaking to her little sister. “Is anything the matter to-day? If you don’t practice better than this, you won’t have the ETUDE ready by Friday, and Herr Becker will make you take it again–for the third time.”

“He can if he likes. I guess I don’t care,” said Ephie nonchantly, and, seizing the opportunity offered for a break, she sat down, and laid bow and fiddle on the table.

“Have you remembered everything he pointed out to you at your last lesson?” asked Johanna, going over to the music-stand, and peering at the pages with her shortsighted eyes. “Let me see–what was it now? Something about this double-stopping here, and the fingering in this position.”

Ephie laughed. “Old Joan, what do you know about it?”

“Not much, dear, I admit,” said Johanna pleasantly. “But try and master it, like a good girl. So you can get rid of it, and go on to something else.”

Ephie sat back, clasped her hands behind her head, and gave a long sigh. “Yes, to the next one,” she said. “Oh, if you only knew how sick I am of them, Joan! The next won’t be a bit better than this. They are all alike–a whole book of them.”

Johanna looked down at the little figure with the plump, white arms, and discontented expression; and she tried to find in the childish face something she had previously not seen there.

“Are you tired of studying, Ephie?” she asked. “Would you like to leave off and go away?”

“Go away from Leipzig? Where to?” Ephie did not unclasp her hands, but her eyes grew vigilant.

“Oh, there are plenty of other places, child. Dresden–or Weimar–or Stuttgart–where you could take lessons just as well. Or if you are tired of studying altogether, there is no need for you to go on with it. We can return home, any day. Sometimes, I think it would be better if we did. You have not been yourself lately, dear. I don’t think you are very well.”

“I not myself?–not well? What rubbish you talk, Joan! I am quite well, and wish you wouldn’t tease me. I guess you want to go away yourself. You are tired of being here. But nothing shall induce me to go. I love old Leipzig. And I still have heaps to learn before I leave off studying.–I don’t even know whether I shall be ready by spring. It all depends. And now, Joan, go away.” She took up her violin and put it on her shoulder. “Now it’s you who are wasting time. How can I practise when you stand there talking?”

Johanna was silent. But after this, she did not venture to mention Maurice’s name; and she had turned to leave the room when she remembered her meeting with Mrs. Tully.

“I would rather you did not go to tea, Ephie,” she ended, and then regretted having said it.

“That’s another of your silly prejudices, Joan. I want to know why you feel so about Mrs. Tully. I think she’s lovely. Not that I’d have gone anyway. I promised Maurice to go for a walk with him at five. I know what her ‘few friends’ means, too–just Boehmer, and she asks me along so people will think he comes to see me, and not her. He sits there, and twirls his moustache, and makes eyes at her, and she makes them back. I’m only for show. No, I shouldn’t have gone. I can’t bear Boehmer. He’s such a goat.”

“You didn’t think that as long as he came to see us,” expostulated Johanna.

“No, of course not. But so he only comes to see her, I do.–And sometimes, Joan, why it’s just embarrassing. The last afternoon, why, he had a headache or something, and she made him lie on the sofa, with a rug over him, so she could bathe his head with eau-de-cologne. I guess she’s going to marry him. And I’m not the only one. The other day I heard Frau Walter and Frau von Baerle talking in the dining-room after dinner, and they said the little English widow was very HEIRATSLUSTIG.”

“Ephie, I don’t like to hear you repeat such foolish gossip,” said Johanna in real distress. “And if you can understand and remember a word like that, you might really take more pains with your German. It is not impossible for you to learn, you see.”

“Joan the preacher, and Joan the teacher, and Joan the wise old bird,” sang Ephie, and laughed. “I think Mrs. Tully is real kind. She’s going to show me a new way to do my hair. This style is quite out in London, she says.”

“Don’t let her touch your hair. It couldn’t be better than it is,” said Johanna quickly. But Ephie turned her head this way and that, and considered herself in the looking-glass.

Now that she knew Maurice was expected that afternoon, Johanna awaited his arrival with impatience. Meanwhile, she believed she was not wrong in thinking Ephie unusually excited. At dinner, where, as always, the elderly boarders made a great fuss over her, her laughter was so loud as to grate on Johanna’s ear; but afterwards, in their own sitting-room, a trifle sufficed to put her out of temper. A new hat had been sent home, a hat which Johanna had not yet seen. Now that it had come, Ephie was not sure whether she liked it or not; and all the cries of admiration her mother and Mrs. Tully uttered, when she put it on, were necessary to reassure her. Johanna was silent, and this unspoken disapproval irritated Ephie.

“Why don’t you say something, Joan?” she cried crossly. “I suppose you think it’s homely?”

“Frankly, I don’t care for it much, dear. To my mind, it’s overtrimmed.”

This was so precisely Ephie’s own feeling that she was more annoyed than ever; she taunted Johanna with old-fashioned, countrified tastes; and, in spite of her mother’s comforting assurances, retired in a pet to her own room.

That afternoon, as they sat together at tea, Mrs. Cayhill, who for some time had considered Ephie fondly, said: “I can’t understand you thinking she isn’t well, Joan. I never saw her look better.”

Ephie went crimson. “Now what has Joan been saying about me?” she asked angrily.

Johanna had left the table, and was reading on the sofa.

“I only said what I repeated to yourself, Ephie. That I didn’t think you were looking well.”

“Just fancy,” said Mrs. Cayhill, laughing good-humouredly, “she was saying we ought to leave Leipzig and go to some strange place. Even back home to America. You don’t want to go away, darling, do you?”

“No, really, Joan is too bad,” cried Ephie, with a voice in which tears and exasperation struggled for the mastery. “She always has some new fad in her head. She can’t leave us alone–never! Let her go away, so she wants to. I won’t. I’m happy here. I love being here. Even if you both go away, I shall stop.”

She got up from the table, and went to a window, where she stood biting her lips, and paying small attention to her mother’s elaborate protests that she, too, had no intention of being moved.

Johanna did not raise her eyes from her book. She could have wept: not only at the spirit of rebellious dislike, which was beginning to show more and more clearly in everything Ephie said. But was no one but herself awake to the change that was taking place in the child, day by day? She would write to her father, without delay, and make him insist on their returning to America.

From the moment Maurice entered the room, she did not take her eyes off him; and, under her scrutiny, the young man soon grew nervous. He sat and fidgeted, and found nothing to say.

Ephie was wayward: she did not think she wanted to go out; it looked like rain. Johanna refrained from interfering; but Maurice was most persistent: he begged Ephie not to disappoint him, and, when this failed, said angrily that she had no business to bring him there for such capricious whims. This treatment cowed Ephie; and she went at once to put on her hat and jacket.

“He wants to speak to her; and she knows it; and is trying to avoid it,” said Johanna to herself; and her heart beat fast for both of them. But she was alone with Maurice; she must not lose the chance of sounding him a little.

“Where do you think of going for a walk?” she asked, and her voice had an odd tone to her ears.

“Where? Oh, to the ROSENTAL–or the SCHEIBENHOLZ–or along the river. Anywhere. I don’t know.”

She coughed. “Have you noticed anything strange about Ephie lately? She is not herself. I’m afraid she is not well.”

He had noticed nothing. But he did not face Johanna; and he held the photograph he was looking at upside down.

She leaned out of the window to watch them walk along the street. At this moment, she was fully convinced of the correctness of her mother’s assumption; and by the thought of what might take place within the next hour, she was much disturbed. During the rest of the afternoon, she found it impossible to settle to anything; and she wandered from one room to another, unable even to read. But it struck six, seven, eight o’clock; it was supper-time; and still Ephie had not come home. Mrs. Cayhill grew anxious, too, and Johanna strained her eyes, watching the dark street. At nine and at ten, she was pacing the room, and at eleven, after a messenger had been sent to Maurice’s lodging and had found no one there she buttoned on her rain-cloak, to accompany one of the servants to the police-station.

“Why did I let her go?–Oh, why did I let her go!”

IV.

Maurice and Ephie walked along the LESSINGSTRASSE without speaking–it was a dull, mild day, threatening to rain, as it had rained the whole of the preceding night. But Ephie was not accustomed to be silent; she found the stillness disconcerting, and before they had gone far, shot a furtive look at her companion. She did not intend him to see it; but he did, and turned to her. He cleared his throat, and seemed about to speak, then changed his mind. Something in his face, as she observed it more nearly, made Ephie change colour and give an awkward laugh.

“I asked you before how you liked my hat,” she said, with another attempt at the airiness which, to-day, she could not command. “And you didn’t say. I guess you haven’t looked at it. You’re in such a hurry.”

Maurice turned his head; but he did not see the hat. Instead, he mentally answered a question Louise had put to him the day before, and which he had then not known how to meet. Yes, Ephie was pretty, radiantly pretty, with the fresh, unsullied charm of a flower just blown.

“Joan was so stupid about it,” she went on at random; her face still wore its uncertain smile. “She said it was overtrimmed, and top-heavy, and didn’t become me. As if she ever wore anything that suited her! But Joan is an old maid. She hasn’t a scrap of taste. And as for you, Maurice, why I just don’t believe you know one hat from another. Men are so stupid.”

Again they went forward in silence.

“You are tiresome to-day,” she said at length, and looked at him with a touch of defiance, as a schoolgirl looks at the master with whom she ventures to remonstrate.

“Yes, I’m a dull companion.”

“Knowing it doesn’t make it any better.”

But she was not really cross; all other feelings were swallowed up by the uneasiness she felt at his manner of treating her.

“Where are we going?” she suddenly demanded of him, with a little quick upward note in her voice. “This is not the way to the SCHEIBENHOLZ.”

“No.” He had been waiting for the question. “Ephie,”–he cleared his throat anew. “I am taking you to see a friend–of mine.”

“Is that what you brought me out for? Then you didn’t want to speak to me, as you said? Then we’re not going for a walk?”

“Afterwards, perhaps. It’s like this. Some one I know has been very ill. Now that she is getting better, she needs rousing and cheering up, and that kind of thing; and I said I would bring you to call on her. She knows you by sight–and would like to know you personally,” he added, with a lame effort at explanation.

“Is that so?” said Ephie with sudden indifference; and her heart, which had begun to thump at the mention of a friend, quieted down at once. In fancy, she saw an elderly lady with shawls and a footstool, who had been attracted by her fresh young face; the same thing had happened to her before.

Now, however, that she knew the object of their walk, she was greatly relieved, as if a near danger had been averted; but she had not taken many steps forward before she was telling herself that another hope was gone. The only thing to do was to take the matter into her own hands; it was now or never; and simply a question of courage.

“Maurice, say, do many people go away from here in the fall?–leave the Con., I would say?” she asked abruptly. “I mean is this a time more people leave than in spring?”

Maurice started; he had been lost in his own thoughts, which all centred round this meeting he had weakly agreed to arrange. Again and again he had tried to imagine how it would fall out. But he did not know Louise well enough to foresee how she would act; and the nearer the time came, the stronger grew his presentiment of trouble. His chief remaining hope was that there would be no open speaking, that Schilsky’s name would not be mentioned; and plump into the midst of this hope fell Ephie’s question. He turned on her; she coloured furiously, and walked into a pool of water; and, at this moment, everything was as clear to Maurice as though she had said: “Where is be? Why has he gone?”

“Why do you ask?” he queried with unconscious sharpness. “No, Easter is the general time for leaving. But people who play in the PRUFUNGEN then, sometimes stay for the summer term. Why do you ask?”

“Gracious, Maurice, how tiresome you are! Must one always say why? I only wanted to know. I missed people I used to see about, that’s all.”

“Yes, a number have not come back.”

He was so occupied with what they were saying that he, in his turn, stepped into a puddle, splashing the water up over her shoe. Ephie was extremely annoyed.

“Look!–look what you’ve done!” she cried, showing him her spikey little shoe. “Why don’t you look where you’re going? How clumsy you are!” and, in a sudden burst of illhumour: “I don’t know why you’re bringing me here. It’s a horrid part of the city anyway. I didn’t have any desire to come. I guess I’ll turn back and go home.”

“We’re almost there now.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to go.”

“But you shall, all the same. What’s the matter with you to-day that you don’t know your own mind for two minutes together?”

“You didn’t inquire if I wanted to come. You’re just horrid, Maurice.”

“And you’re a capricious child.”

He quickened his pace, afraid she might still escape him; and Ephie had hard work to keep up with him. As she trotted along, a few steps behind, there arose in her a strong feeling of resentment against Maurice, which was all the stronger because she suspected that she was on the brink of hearing her worst suspicions confirmed. But she could not afford to yield to the feeling, when the last chance she had of getting definite information was passing from her. Knitting both hands firmly inside her muff, she asked, with an earnestness which, to one who knew, was fatally tale-telling: “Did anyone you were acquainted with leave, Maurice?”

“Yes,” said the young man at her side, with brusque determination. He remained untouched by the tone of appeal in which Ephie put the question; for he himself suffered under her continued hedging. “Yes,” he said, “some one did, and that was a man called Schilsky–a tall, red-haired fellow, a violinist. But he has only just gone. He came back after the vacation to settle his affairs, and say good-bye to his friends. Is there anything else you want to know?”

He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. After all, Ephie was such a child. He could not see her face, which was hidden by the brim of the big hat, but there was something pathetic in the line of her chin, and the droop of her arms and shoulders. She seemed to shrink under his words–to grow smaller. As he stood aside to let her pass before him, through the house-door in the BRUDERSTRASSE, he had a quick revulsion of feeling. Instead of being rough and cruel to her, he should have tried to win her confidence with brotherly kindness. But he had had room in his mind for nothing but the meeting with Louise, and now there was no more time; they were going up the stairs. All he could do was to say gently: “I ought to tell you, Ephie, that the person we are going to see has been very, very ill–and needs treating with the utmost consideration. I rely on your tact and good-feeling.”

But Ephie did not reply; the colour had left her face, and for once, the short upper-lip closed firmly on the lower one. For some minutes amazed anger with Maurice was all she felt. Then, however, came the knowledge of what his words meant: he knew–Maurice knew; he had seen through her fictions; he would tell on her; there would be dreadful scenes with Joan; there would be reproaches and recriminations; she would be locked up, or taken away. As for what lay beyond, his assertion that Schilsky had been there–had been and gone, without a word to her–that was a sickening possibility, which, at present, her mind could not grasp. She grew dizzy under these blows that rained down on her, one after the other. And meanwhile, she had to keep up appearances, to go on as though nothing had happened, when it seemed impossible even to drag herself to the top of the winding flight of stairs. She held her head down; there was a peculiar clicking in her throat, which she could not master; she felt at every step as if she would have to burst out crying.

At the glass of the door, and at the wizened old face that appeared behind it, she looked with unseeing eyes; and she followed Maurice mechanically along the passage to a door at the end.

In his agitation the young man forgot to knock; and as they entered, a figure sprang up from the sofa-corner, and made a few impulsive steps towards them.

Maurice went over to Louise and took her hand.

“I’ve brought her,” he said in a low tone, and with a kind of appeal in voice and eyes, which he was not himself aware of. Louise answered the look, and went on looking at him, as if she were fearful of letting her eyes stray. Both turned at an exclamation from Ephie. She was still standing where Maurice had left her, close beside the door; but her face was flaming, and her right hand fumbled with the doorhandle.

“Ephie!” said Maurice warningly. He was afraid she would turn the handle, and, going over to her, took her by the arm.

“Say, Maurice, I’m going home,” she said under her breath. “I can’t stop here. Oh, why did you bring me?”

“Ssh!–be a good girl, Ephie,” he replied as though speaking to a child. “Come with me.”

An inborn politeness struggled with Ephie’s dread. “I can’t. I don’t know her name,” she whispered. But she let him draw her forward to where Louise was standing; and she held out her hand.

“Miss–?” she said in a small voice, and waited for the name to be filled in.

Louise had watched them whispering, with a stony fare, but, at Ephie’s gesture, life came into it. Her eyes opened wide; and drawing back from the girl’s outstretched hand, yet without seeming to see it, she turned with a hasty movement, and went over to the window, where she stood with her back to them.

This was the last straw; Ephie dropped on a chair, and hiding her face in her hands, burst into the tears she had hitherto restrained. Her previous trouble was increased a hundredfold. For she had recognised Louise at once; she felt that she was in a trap; and the person who had entrapped her was Maurice. Holding a tiny lace handkerchief to her eyes, she sobbed as though her heart would break.

“Don’t cry, dear, don’t cry,” said the young man. “It’s all right.” But his thoughts were with Louise. He was apprehensive of what she might do next.

As if in answer to his fear, she crossed the room.

“Ask her to take her hands down. I want to see her face.”

Maurice bent over Ephie, and touched her shoulder.

“Ephie, dear, do you hear? Look up, like a good girl, and speak to Miss Dufrayer.”

But Ephie shook off his hand.

Over her bowed head, their eyes met; and the look Louise gave the young man was cold and questioning. He shrugged his shoulders: he could do nothing; and retreating behind the writing-table, he left the two girls to themselves.

“Stand up, please,” said Louise in an unfriendly voice; and as Ephie did not obey, she made a movement to take her by the wrists.

“No, no!–don’t touch me,” cried Ephie, and rose in spite of herself. “What right have you to speak to me like this?”

She could say no more, for, with a quick, unforeseen movement, Louise took the young girl’s face in both hands, and turned it up. And after her first instinctive effort to draw back, Ephie kept still, like a fascinated rabbit, her eyes fixed on the dark face that looked down at her.

Seconds passed into minutes; and the minutes seemed hours. Maurice watched, on the alert to intervene, if necessary.

At the entrance of her visitors, Louise had been unable to see distinctly, so stupefied was she by the thought that the person on whom her thoughts had run, with a kind of madness, for more than forty-eight hours, was actually in the room beside her–it was just as though a nightmare phantom had taken bodily form. And then, too, though she had spent each of these hours in picturing to herself what this girl would be like, the reality was so opposed to her imagining that, at first, she could not reconcile the differences.

Now she forced herself to see every line of the face. Nothing escaped her. She saw how loosened tendrils of hair on neck and forehead became little curls; saw the finely marked brows, and the dark blue veins at the temples; the pink and white colouring of the cheeks; the small nose, modelled as if in wax; the fascinating baby mouth, with its short upper-lip. Like most dark, sallow women, whose own brief freshness is past, the elder girl passionately admired such may-blossom beauty, as something belonging to a different race from herself. And this was not all: as she continued to look into Ephie’s face, she ceased to be herself; she became the man whose tastes she knew better than her own; she saw with his eyes, felt with his senses. She pictured Ephie’s face, arch and smiling, lifted to his; and she understood and excused his weakness. He had not been able to help what had happened: this was the prettiness that drew him in, the kind he had invariably turned to look back at, in the street–something fair and round, adorably small and young, something to be petted and protected, that clung, and was childishly subordinate. For her dark sallowness, for her wilful mastery, he had only had a passing fancy. She was not his type, and she knew it. But to have known it vaguely, when it did not matter, and to know it at a moment like the present, were two different things.

In a burst of despair she let her arms fall to her sides; but her insatiable eyes gazed on; and Ephie, though she was now free, did not stir, but remained standing, with her face raised, in a silly fascination. And the eyes, having taken in the curves of cheeks and chin, and the soft white throat, passed to the rounded, drooping shoulders, to the plumpness of the girlish figure, embracing the whole body in their devouring gaze. Ephie went hot and cold beneath them; she felt as if her clothes were being stripped from her, and she left standing naked. Louise saw the changing colour, and interpreted it in her own way. His–all his! He was not the mortal–she knew it only too well–to have this flower within his reach, and not clutch at it, instinctively, as a child clutches at sunbeams. It would riot have been in nature for him to do otherwise than take, greedily, without reflection. At the thought of it, a spasm of jealousy caught her by the throat; her hanging hands trembled to hurt this infantile prettiness, to spoil these lips that had been kissed by his.

Maurice was at her side. “Don’t hurt her,” he said, and did not know how the words came to his lips.

The spell was broken. The unnatural expression died out of her face; she was tired and apathetic.

“Hurt her?” she repeated faintly. “No, don’t be afraid. I shall not hurt her. But if I beat her with ropes till all my strength was gone, I couldn’t hurt her as she has hurt me.”

“Hush! Don’t say such things.”

“I? I hurt you?” said Ephie, and began to cry afresh. “How could I? I don’t even know you.”

“No, you don’t know me; and yet you have done me the cruellest wrong.”

“Oh, no, no,” sobbed Ephic. “No, indeed!”

“He was all I had–all I cared for. And you plotted, and planned, and stole him from me–with your silly baby face.”

“It’s not true,” wept Ephie. “How could I? I didn’t know anything about you. He . . . he never spoke of you.”

Louise laughed. “Oh, I can believe that! And you thought, didn’t you, you poor little fool, that he only cared for you? That was why my name was never mentioned. He didn’t need to scheme, and contrive, and lie, lie abominably, for fear I should come to hear what he was doing!”

“No, indeed,” sobbed Ephie. “Never! And you’ve no right to say such things of him.”

“I no right?” Louise drew herself up. “No right to say what I like of him? Are you going to tell me what I shall say and what I shan’t of the man I loved?–yes, and who loved me, too, but in a way you couldn’t understandyou who think all you have to do is to smile your silly smile, and spoil another person’s life. You didn’t know, no, of course not!–didn’t know this was his room as well as mine. Look, his music is still lying on the piano; that’s the chair he sat in, not many days ago; here,” she took Ephie by the shoulder and drew her behind the screen, where a small door, papered like the wall, gave, direct from the stair-head, a second entrance to the room–” here’s the door he came in at.–For he came as he liked, whenever he chose.”

“It’s not true; it can’t be true,” said Ephie, and raised her tear-stained face defiantly. “We are engaged–since the summer. He’s coming back to marry me soon.”

“He’s coming back to marry you!” echoed Louise in a blank voice. “He’s coming back to marry you!”

She moved a few steps away, and stood by the writing-table, looking dazed, as if she did not understand. Then she laughed.

Ephie cried with renewed bitterness. “I want to go home.”

But Maurice did not pay any attention to her. He was watching Louise, with a growing dismay. For she continued to laugh, in a breathless way, with a catch in the throat, which made the laughter sound like sobbing. On his approaching her, she tried to check herself, but without success. She wiped her lips, and pressed her handkerchief to them, then took the handkerchief between her teeth and bit it. She crossed to the window, and stood with her back to the others; but she could not stop laughing. She went behind the low, broad screen that divided the room, and sat down on the edge of the bed; but still she had to laugh on. She came out again into the other part of the room, and saw Maurice pale and concerned, and Ephie’s tears dried through pure fear; but the sight of these two made her laugh more violently than before. She held her face in her hands, and pressed her jaws together as though she would break them; for they shook with a nervous convulsion. Her whole body began to shake, with the efforts she made at repression.

Ephie cowered in her seat. “Oh, Maurice, let us go. I’m so afraid,” she implored him.

“Don’t be frightened! It’s all right.” But he was following Louise about the room, entreating her to regain the mastery of herself. When he did happen to notice Ephie more closely, he said: “Go downstairs, and wait for me there. I’ll come soon.”

Ephie did not need twice telling: she turned and fled. He heard the hall-door bang behind her.

“Do try to control yourself. Miss Dufrayer–Louise! Every one in the house will hear you.”

But she only laughed the more. And now the merest trifles helped to increase the paroxysm–the way Maurice worked his hands, Ephie’s muff lying forgotten on a chair, the landlady’s inquisitive face peering in at the door. The laugh continued, though it had become a kind of cackle–a sound without tone. Maurice could bear it no longer. He went up to her and tried to take her hands. She repulsed him, but he was too strong for her. He took both her hands in his, and pressed her down on a chair. He was not clear himself what to do next; but, the moment he touched her, the laughter ceased. She gasped for breath; he thought she would choke, and let her hands go again. She pressed them to her throat; her breath came more and more quickly; her eyes closed; and falling forward on her knees, she hid her face in the cushioned seat of the sofa.

Then the tears came, and what tears! In all his life, Maurice had never heard crying like this. He moved as far away from her as he could, stood at the window, staring out and biting his lips, while she sobbed, regardless of his presence, with the utter abandon of a child. Like a child, too, she wept rebelliously, unchastenedly, as he could not have believed it possible for a grown person to cry. Such grief as this, so absolute a despair, had nothing to do with reason or the reasoning faculties; and the words were not invented that would be able to soothe it.

But, little by little, a change came over her crying. The rebellion died out of it; it grew duller, and more blunted, hopeless, without life. Her strength was almost gone. Now, however, there was another note of childishness in it, that of complete exhaustion, which it is so hard to hear. The tears rose to his own eyes; he would have liked to go to her, to lay his hand on her head, and treat her tenderly, to make her cease and be happy once more; but he did not dare. Had he done so, she might not have repelled him; for, in all intensely passionate grief, there comes a moment of subsidence, when the grief and its origin are forgotten, and the one overruling desire is the desire to be comforted, no matter who the comforter and what his means, so long as they are masterful and strong.

She grew calmer; and soon she was only shaken at widening intervals by a sob. Then these, too, ceased, and Maurice held his breath. But as, after a considerable time had elapsed, she still lay without making sound or movement, he crossed the room to look at her. She was fast asleep, half sitting, half lying, with her head on the cushions, and the tears wet on her cheeks. He hesitated between a wish to see her in a more comfortable position, and an unwillingness to disturb her. Finally, he took an eider-down quilt from the bed, and wrapped it round her; then slipped noiselessly from the room.

It was past eight o’clock.

* * * * *

Ephie ran down the stairs as if a spectre were at her heels, and even when in the street, did not venture to slacken her speed. Although the dusk was rapidly passing into dark, a good deal of notice was attracted by the sight of a well-dressed young girl running along, holding a handkerchief to her face, and every now and then emitting a loud sob. People stood and stared after her, and some little boys ran with her. Instead of dropping her pace when she saw this, Ephie grew confused, and ran more quickly than before. She had turned at random, on coming out of the house; and she was in a part of the town she did not know. In her eagerness to get away from people, she took any turn that offered; and after a time she found that she had crossed the river, and was on what was almost a country road. A little further off, she knew, lay the woods; if once she were in their shelter, she would be safe; and, without stopping to consider that night was falling, she ran towards them at full speed. On the first seat she came to she sank breathless and exhausted.

Her first sensation was one of relief at being alone. She unpinned and took off the big, heavy hat, and laid it on the seat beside her, in order to be more at her case; and then she cried, heartily, and without precautions, enjoying to the full the luxury of being unwatched and unheard. Since teatime, she seemed to have been fighting her tears, exercising a self-restraint that was new to her and very hard; and not to-day alone–oh, no, for weeks past, she had been obliged to act a part. Not even in her bed at night had she been free to indulge her grief; for, if she cried then, it made her pale and heavy-eyed next day, and exposed her to Joan’s comments. And there were so many things to cry about: all the emotional excitement of the summer, with its ups and downs of hope and fear; the never-ceasing need of dissimulation; the gnawing uncertainty caused by Schilsky’s silence; the growing sense of blankness and disappointment; Joan’s suspicions; Maurice’s discovery; the knowledge that Schilsky had gone away without a word to her; and, worst of all, and most inexplicable, the terrible visit of the afternoon–at the remembrance of the madwoman she had escaped from, Ephie’s tears flowed with renewed vigour. Her handkerchief was soaked and useless; she held her fur tippet across her eyes to receive the tears as they fell; and when this grew too wet, she raised the skirt of her dress to her face. Not a sound was to be heard but her sobbing; she was absolutely alone; and she wept on till those who cared for her, whose chief wish was to keep grief from her, would hardly have recognized in her the child they loved.

How long she had been there she did not know, when she was startled to her feet by a loud rustling in the bushes behind her. Then, of a sudden, she became aware that it was pitch-dark, and that she was all by herself in the woods. She took to her heels, in a panic of fear, and did not stop running till the street-lamps came into sight. When she was under their friendly shine, and could see people walking on the other side of the river, she remembered that she had left her hat lying on the seat. At this fresh misfortune, she began to cry anew. But not for anything in the world would she have ventured back to fetch it.

She crossed the Pleisse and came to a dark, quiet street, where few people were; and here she wandered up and down. It was late; at home they would be sitting at supper now, exhausting themselves in conjectures where she could be. Ephie was very hungry, and at the thought of the warmth and light of the supper-table, a lump rose in her throat. If it had been only her mother, she might have faced her–but Joan! Home in this plight, at this hour, hatless, and with swollen face, to meet Joan’s eyes and questions!–she shivered at the idea. Moreover, the whole PENSION would get to know what had happened to her; she would need to bear inquisitive. looks and words; she would have to explain, or, still worse, to invent and tell stories again; and of what use were they now, when all was over? A feeling of lassitude overcame her–an inability to begin fresh. All over: he would never put his arm round her again, never come towards her, careless and smiling, and call her his “little, little girl.”

She sobbed to herself as she walked. Everything was bleak, and black, and cheerless. She would perhaps die of the cold, and then all of them, Joan in particular, would be filled with remorse. She stood and looked at the inky water of the river between its stone walls. She had read of people drowning themselves; what if she went down the steps and threw herself in?–and she feebly fingered at the gate. But it was locked and chained; and at the idea of her warm, soft body touching the icy water; at the picture of herself lying drowned, with dank hair, or, like the Christian Martyr, floating away on the surface; at the thought of their grief, of HIM wringing his hands over her corpse, she was so moved that she wept aloud again, and amost ran to be out of temptation’s way.

It had begun to drizzle. Oh, how tired she was! And she was obliged constantly to dodge impertinently staring men. In a long, wide street, she entered a door-way that was not quite so dark as the others, and sat down on the bottom step of the stairs. Here she must have dozed, for she was roused by angry voices on the floor above. It sounded like some one who was drunk; and she fled trembling back to the street.

A neighbouring clock struck ten. At this time of night, she could not go home, even though she wished to. She was wandering the streets like any outcast, late at night, without a hat–and her condition of hatlessness she felt to be the chief stigma. But she was starving with hunger, and so tired that she could scarcely drag one foot after the other. Oh, what would they say if they knew what their poor little Ephie was enduring! Her mother–Joan—Maurice!

Maurice! The thought of him came to her like a ray of light. It was to Maurice she would turn. He would be good to her, and help her; he had always been kind to her, till this afternoon. And he knew what had happened; it would not be necessary to explain.–Oh, Maurice, Maurice!

She knew his address, if she could but find the street. A droschke passed, and she tried to hail it; but she did not like to advance too far out of the shadow, on account of her bare head. Finally, plucking up courage, she inquired the way of a feather-hatted woman, who had eyed her with an inquisitive stare.

It turned out that the BRAUSTRASSE was just round the corner; she had perhaps been in the street already, without knowing it; and now she found it, and the house, without difficulty. The street-door was still open; or she would never have been bold enough to ring.

The stair was poorly lighted, and full of unsavoury smells. In her agitation, Ephie rang on a wrong floor, and a strange man answered her timid inquiry. She climbed a flight higher, and rang again. There was a long and ominous pause, in which her heart beat fast; if Maurice did not live here either, she would drop where she stood. She was about to ring a second time, when felt slippers and an oil lamp moved along the passage, the glass window was opened, and a woman’s face peered out at her. Yes, Herr Guest lived there, certainly, said Frau Krause, divided between curiosity and indignation at having to rise from bed; and she held the lamp above her head, in order to see Ephie better. But he was not at home, and, even if he were, at this hour of night . . . The heavy words shuffled along, giving the voracious eyes time to devour.

At the thought that her request might be denied her, Ephie’s courage took its last leap.

“Why, I must see him. I have something important to tell him. Could I not wait?” she urged in her broken German, feeling unspeakably small and forlorn. And yielding to a desire to examine more nearly the bare, damp head and costly furs, Frau Krause allowed the girl to pass before her into Maurice’s room.

She loitered as long as she could over lighting the lamp that stood on the table; and meanwhile threw repeated glances at Ephie, who, having given one look round the shabby room, sank into a corner of the sofa and hid her face: the coarse browed woman, in petticoat and night-jacket, seemed to her capable of robbery or murder. And so Frau Krause unwillingly withdrew, to await further developments outside: the holy, smooth-faced Herr Guest was a deep one, after all.

When Maurice entered, shortly before eleven, Ephie started up from a broken sleep. He came in pale and disturbed, for Frau Krause had met him in the passage with angry mutterings about a FRAUENZIMMER in his room; and his thoughts had at once leaped fearfully to Louise. When he saw Ephie, he uttered a loud exclamation of surprise.

“Good Lord, Ephie! What on earth are you doing here?”

She sprang at his hands, and caught her breath hysterically.

“Oh, Morry, you’ve come at last. Oh, I thought you would never come. Where have you been? Oh, Morry, help me–help me, or I shall die!”

“Whatever is the matter? What are you doing here?”

At his perturbed amazement, she burst into tears, still clinging fast to his hands. He led her back to the sofa, from which she had sprung.

“Hush, hush! Don’t cry like that. What’s the matter, child? Tell me what it is–at once–and let me help you.”

“Oh, yes, Morry, help me, help me! There’s no one else. I didn’t know where to go. Oh, what shall I do!”

Her own words sounded so pathetic that she sobbed piteously. Maurice stroked her hand, and waited for her to grow quieter. But now that she had laid the responsibility of herself on other shoulders, Ephie was quite unnerved: after the dark and fearful wanderings of the evening, to be beside some one who knew, who would take care of her, who would tell her what to do!

She sobbed and sobbed. Only with perseverance did Maurice draw from her, word by word, an account of where she had been that evening, broken by such cries as: “Oh, what shall I do! I can’t ever go home again–ever! . . . and I lost my hat. Oh, Morry, Morry! And I didn’t know he had gone away–and it wasn’t true what I said, that he was coming back to marry me soon.. I only said it to spite her, because she said such dreadful things to me. But we were engaged, all the same; he said he would come to New York to marry me. And now . . . oh, dear, oh, Morry! . . .”

“Then he really promised to marry you, did he?”

“Yes, oh, yes. Everything was fixed. The last day I was there,” she wept. “But I didn’t know he was going away; he never said a word about it. Oh, what shall I do! Go after him, and bring him back, Morry. He must come back. He can’t leave me like this, he can’t–oh, no, indeed!”

“You don’t mean to say you went to see him, Ephie?–alone?–at his room?” queried Maurice slowly, and he did not know how sternly. “When? How often? Tell me everything. This is no time for fibbing.”

But he could make little of Ephie’s sobbed and hazy version of the story; she herself could not remember clearly now; the impressions of the last few hours had been so intense as to obliterate much of what had gone before. “I thought I would drown myself . . . but the water was so black. Oh, why did you take me to that dreadful woman? Did you hear what she said? It wasn’t true, was it? Oh, it can’t be!”

“It was quite true, Ephie. What he told YOU wasn’t true. He never really cared for anyone but her. They were–were engaged for years.”

At this, she wept so heart-rendingly that he was afraid Frau Krause would come in and interfere.

“You MUST control yourself. Crying won’t alter things now. If you had been frank and candid with us, it would never have happened.” This was the only reproach he could make her; what came after was Johanna’s business, not his. “And now I’m going to take you home. It’s nearly twelve o’clock. Think of the state your mother and sister will be in about you.”

But at the mention of Johanna, Ephie flung herself on the sofa again and beat the cushions with her hands.

“Not Joan, not Joan!” she wailed. “No, I won’t go home. What will she say to me? Oh, I am so frightened! She’ll kill me, I know she will.” And at Maurice’s confident assurance that Johanna would have nothing but love and sympathy for her, she shook her head. “I know Joan. She’ll never forgive me. Morry, let me stay with you. You’ve always been kind to me. Oh, don’t send me away!”

“Don’t be a silly child, Ephie. You know yourself you can’t stay here.”

But he gave up urging her, coaxed her to lie down, and sat beside her, stroking her hair. As he said no more, she gradually ceased to sob, and in what seemed to the young man an incredibly short time, he heard from her breathing that she was asleep. He covered her up, and stood a sheet of music before the lamp, to shade her eyes. In the passage he ran up against Frau Krause, whom he charged to prevent Ephie in the event of her attempting to leave the house.

Buttoning up his coat-collar, he hastened through the mistlike rain to fetch Johanna.

There was a light in every window of the PENSION in the LESSINGSTRASSE; the street-door and both doors of the flat stood open. As he mounted the stairs a confused sound of voices struck his car; and when he entered the passage, he heard Mrs. Cayhill crying noisily. Johanna came out to him at once; she was in hat and cloak. She listened stonily to his statement that Ephie was safe at his lodgings, and put no questions; but, on her returning to the sitting-room, Mrs. Cayhill’s sobs stopped abruptly, and several women spoke at once.

Johanna preserved her uncompromising attitude as they walked the midnight streets. But as Maurice made no mien to explain matters further, she so far conquered her aversion as to ask: “What have you done to her?”

The young man’s consternation at this view of the case was so evident that even she felt the need of wording her question differently.

“Answer me. What is Ephie doing at your rooms?”

Maurice cleared his throat. “It’s a long and unpleasant story, Miss Cayhill. And I’m afraid I must tell it from the beginning.–You didn’t suspect, I fear, that . . . well, that Ephie had a fancy for some one here?”

At these words, which were very different from those she had expected, Johanna eyed him in astonishment.

“A fancy!” she repeated incredulously. “What do you mean?”

“Even more–an infatuation,” said Maurice with deliberation. “And for some one I daresay you have never even heard of–a…a man here, a violinist, called Schilsky.”

The elaborate fabric she had that day reared, fell together about Johanna’s ears. She stared at Maurice as if she doubted his sanity; and she continued to listen, with the same icy air of disbelief, to his stammered and ineffectual narrative, until he said that he believed “it” had been “going on since summer.”

At this Johanna laughed aloud. “That is quite impossible,” she said. “I knew everything Ephie did, and everywhere she went.”

“She met him nearly every day. They exchanged letters, and—–“

“It is impossible,” repeated Johanna with vehemence, but less surely.

“—-and a sort of engagement seems to have existed between them.”

“And you knew this and never said a word to me?”

“I didn’t know–not till to-night. I only suspected something–once . . . long ago. And l couldn’t–I mean–one can’t say a thing like that without being quite sure—-“

But here he broke down, conscious, as never before, of the negligence he had been guilty of towards Ephie. And Johanna was not likely to spare him: there was, indeed, a bitter antagonism to his half-hearted conduct in the tone in which she said: “I stood to Ephie in a mother’s place. You might have warned me–oh, you might, indeed!”

They walked on in silence–a hard, resentful silence. Then Johanna put the question he was expecting to hear.

“And what has all this to do with to-night?”

Maurice took up the thread of his narrative again, telling how Ephie had waited vainly for news since returning from Switzerland, and how she had only learnt that afternoon that Schilsky had been in Leipzig, and had gone away again, without seeing her, or letting her know that he did not intend to return.

“And how did she hear it?”

“At a friend’s house.”

“What friend?”

“A friend of mine, a–No; I had better be frank with you: the girl this fellow was engaged to for a year or more.”

“And Ephie did not know that?”

He shook his head.

“But you knew, and yet took her there?”

It was a hopeless job to try to exonerate himself. “Yes, there were reasons–I couldn’t help it, in fact. But I’m afraid I should not be able to make you understand.”

“No, never!” retorted Johanna, and squared her shoulders.

But there was more to be said–she had worse to learn before Ephie was handed over to her care.

“And Ephie has been very foolish,” he began anew, without looking at her. “It seems–from what she has told me tonight–that she has been to see this man . . . been at his rooms . . . more than once.”

At first, he was certain, Johanna did not grasp the meaning of what he said; she turned a blank face curiously to him. But, a moment later, she gave a low cry, and hardly able to form the words for excitement, asked: “Who . . . what . . . what kind of a man was he–this . . . Schilsky?”

“Rotten,” said Maurice; and she did not press him further. He heard her breath coming quickly, and saw the kind of stiffening that went through her body; but she kept silence, and did not speak again till they were almost at his house-door. Then she said, in a voice that was hoarse with feeling: “It has been all my fault. I did not take proper care of her. I was blind and foolish. And I shall never be able to forgive myself for it–never. But that Ephic–my little Ephie–the child I–that Ephie could . . . could do a thing like this . . .” Her voice tailed off in a sob.

Maurice struck matches, to light her up the dark staircase; and the condition of the stairs, the disagreeable smells, the poverty of wall and door revealed, made Johanna’s heart sink still further: to surroundings such as these had Ephie accustomed herself. They entered without noise; everything was just as Maurice had left it, except that the lamp had burned too high and filled the room with its fumes. As Johanna paused, undecided what to do, Ephie started up, and, at the sight of her sister, burst into loud cries of fear. Hiding her face, she sobbed so alarmingly that Johanna did not venture to approach her. She remained standing beside the table, one thin, ungloved hand resting on it, while Maurice bent over Ephie and tried to soothe her.

“Please fetch a droschke,” Johanna said grimly, as Ephie’s sobs showed no signs of abating; and when, after a lengthy search in the night, Maurice returned, she was standing in the same position, staring with drawn, unblinking eyes at the smoky lamp, which no one had thought of lowering. Ephie was still crying, and only Maurice might go near her. He coaxed her to rise, wrapped his rug round her, and carried her, more than he led her, down the stairs.

“Be good enough to drive home with us,” said Johanna. And so he sat with his arm round Ephie, who pressed her face against his shoulder, while the droschke jolted over the cobbled streets, and Johanna held herself pale and erect on the opposite seat. She mounted the stairs in front of them. Ephie was limp and heavy going up; but no sooner did she catch sight of Mrs. Cayhill than, with a cry, she rushed from the young man’s side, and threw herself into her mother’s arms.

“Oh, mummy, mummy!”

Downstairs, in the rain-soaked street, Maurice found the droschke-driver waiting for his fare. It only amounted to a couple of marks, and it was no doubt a just retribution for what had happened that he should be obliged to lay it out; but, none the less, it seemed like the last straw–the last dismal touch–in a day of forlorn discomfort.

V.

A few weeks later, a great variety of cabin-trunks and saratogas blocked the corridor of the PENSION. The addresses they bore were in Johanna’s small, pointed handwriting.

On this, the last afternoon of the Cayhills’ stay in Leipzig, Maurice saw Johanna again for the first time. She had had her hands full. In the woods, on that damp October night, and on her subsequent wanderings, Ephie had caught a severe cold; and the doctor had feared an inflammation of the lungs. This had been staved off; but there was also, it seemed, a latent weakness of the chest, hitherto unsuspected, which kept them anxious. Ephie still had a dry, grating cough, which was troublesome at night, and left her tired and fretful by day. They were travelling direct to the South of France, where they intended to remain until she had quite recovered her strength.

Maurice sat beside Johanna on the deep sofa where he and Ephie had worked at harmony together. But the windows of the room were shut now, and the room itself looked unfamiliar; for it had been stripped of all the trifles and fancy things that had given it such a comfortable, home-like air, and was only the bare, lodging-house room once more. Johanna was as self-possessed as of old, a trifle paler, a trifle thinner of lip.

She told him that they intended leaving quietly the next morning, without partings or farewells. Ephie was still weak and the less excitement she had to undergo, the better it would be for her.

“Then I shall not see Ephie again?” queried Maurice in surprise.

Johanna thought not: it would only recall the unhappy night to her memory; besides, she had not asked to see him, as she no doubt would have done, had she wished it.–At this, the eleventh hour, Johanna did not think it worth while to tell Maurice that Ephie bore him an unalterable grudge.

“I never want to see him again.”

That was all she said to Johanna; but, during her illness, she had brooded long over his treachery. And even if things had come all right in the end, she would never have been able to forgive his speaking to her of Schilsky in the way he had done. No, she was finished with Maurice Guest; he was too double-faced, too deceitful for her.–And she cried bitterly, with her face turned to the wall.

The young man could not but somewhat lamely agree with Johanna that it was better to let the matter end thus: for he felt that towards the Cayhills he had been guilty of a breach of trust such as it is difficult to forgive. At the same time, he was humanly hurt that Ephie would not even say good-bye to him.

He asked their further plans, and learnt that as soon as Ephie was well again, they would sail for New York.

“My father has cabled twice for us.”

Johanna’s manner was uncompromisingly dry and short. After her last words, there was a long pause, and Maurice made a movement to rise. But she put out her hand and detained him.

“There is something I should like to say to you.” And thereupon, with the abruptness of a nervous person: “When I have seen my sister and mother safe back, I intend leaving home myself. I am going to Harvard.”

Maurice realised that the girl was telling him a fact of considerable importance to herself, and did his best to look interested.

“Really? That’s always been a wish of yours, hasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Johanna coloured, hesitated as he had never known her to do, then burst out: “And now there is nothing in the way of it.” She drew her thumb across the leaf-corners of a book that was lying on the table. “Oh, I know what you will say: how, now that Ephie has turned out to be weak and untrustworthy, there is all the more reason for me to remain with her, to look after her. But that is not possible.” She faced him sharply, as though he had contradicted her. “I am incapable of pretending to be the same when my feelings have changed; and, as I told you–as I knew that night–I shall never be able to feel for Ephie as I did before. I am ready, as I said, to take all the blame for what has happened; I was blind and careless. But if the care and affection of years count for nothing; if I have been so little able to win her confidence; if, indeed, I have only succeeded in making her dislike me, by my care of her, so that when she is in trouble, she turns from me, instead of to me–why, then I have failed lamentably in what I had made the chief duty of my life.”

“Besides,” she continued more quietly, “there is another reason: Ephie is going to fall a victim to her nerves. I see that; and my poor, foolish mother is doing her best to foster it.–You smile? Only because you do not understand what it means. It is no laughing matter. If an American woman once becomes conscious of her nerves, then Heaven help her!–Now I am not of a disinterested enough nature to devote myself to sick-nursing where there is no real sickness. And then, too, my mother intends taking a French maid back with her, and a person of that class will perform such duties much more competently than I.”

She spoke with bitterness. Maurice mumbled some words of sympathy, wondering why she should choose to say these things to him.

“Even at home my place is filled,” continued Johanna. “The housekeeper who was appointed during our absence has been found so satisfactory that she will continue in the post after our return. Everywhere, you see, I have proved superfluous. There, as here.”

“I’m sure you’re mistaken,” said Maurice with more warmth. “And, Miss Joan, there’s something I should like to say, if I may. Don’t you think you take what has happened here a little too seriously? No doubt Ephie behaved foolishly. But was it after all any more than a girlish escapade?”

“Too seriously?”

Johanna turned her shortsighted eyes on the young man, and gazed at him almost pityingly. How little, oh, how little, she said to herself, one mortal knew and could know of another, in spite of the medium of speech, in spite of common experiences! Some of the nights at the beginning of Ephie’s illness returned vividly to her mind, nights, when she, Johanna, had paced her room by the hour, filled with a terrible dread, a numbing uncertainty, which she would sooner have died than have let cross her lips. She had borne it quite alone, this horrible fear; her mother had been told of the whole affair only what it was absolutely necessary for her to know. And, naturally enough, the young man who now sat at her side, being a man, could not be expected to understand. But the consciousness of her isolation made Johanna speak with renewed harshness.

“Too seriously?” she repeated. “Oh, I think not. The girlish escapade, as you call it, was the least of it. If that had been all, if it had only been her infatuation for some one who was unworthy of her, I could have forgiven Ephie till seventy times seven. But, after all these years, after the way I have loved her–no, idolised her!–for her to treat me as she did–do you think it possible to take that too seriously? There was no reason she should not have had her little secrets. If she had let me see that something was going on, which she did not want to tell me about, do you think I should have forced her?” –and Johanna spoke in all good faith, forgetful of how she had been used to clip and doctor Ephie’s sentiments. “But that she could deceive me wilfully, and lie so lightly, with a smile, when, all the time, she was living a double life, one to my face and one behind my back–that I cannot forgive. Something has died in me that I used to feel for her. I could never trust her again, and where there is no trust there can be no real love.”

“She didn’t understand what she was doing. She is so young.”

“Just for that reason. So young, and so skilled in deceit. That is hardest of all, even to think of: that she could wear her dear innocent face, while behind it, in her brain, were cold, calculating thoughts how she could best deceive me! If there had been but a single sign to waken my suspicions, then, yes, then I could have forgiven her,” said Johanna, and again forgot how often of late she had been puzzled by the subtle change in Ephie. “If I could just know that, in spite of her efforts, she had been too candid to succeed!”

She had unburdened herself and it had been a relief to her, but nothing could be helped or mended. Both knew this, and after a few polite questions about her future plans and studies, Maurice rose to take his leave.

“Say good-bye to them both for me, and give Ephie my love.”

“I will. I think she will be sorry afterwards that she did not see you. She has always liked you.”

“Good-bye then. Or perhaps it is only AUF WIEDERSEHEN?”

“I hardly think so.” Johanna had returned to her usual sedate manner. “If I do visit Europe again, it will not be for five or six years at least.”

“And that’s a long time. Who knows where I may be, by then!”

He held Johanna’s hand in his, and saw her gauntly slim figure outlined against the bare sitting-room. It was not likely that they would ever meet again. But he could not summon up any very lively feelings of regret. Johanna had not touched him deeply; she had left him as cool as he had no doubt left her; neither had found the key to the other. Her chief attraction for him had been her devotion to Ephie; and now, having been put to the test, this was found wanting. She had been wounded in her own pride and self-love, and could not forgive. At heart she was no more generous and unselfish than the rest.

He repeated farewell messages as he stood in the passage. Johanna held the front door open for him, and, as he went down the stairs, he heard it close behind him, with that extreme noiselessness that was characteristic of Johanna’s treatment of it.

The following morning, shortly after ten o’clock, a train steamed out of the THURINGER BAHNHOF, carrying the Cayhills with it. The day was misty and cheerless, and none of the three travellers turned her head to give the town a parting glance. They left unattended, without flowers or other souvenirs, without any of the demonstratively pathetic farewells, the waving of hats, and crowding about the carriage-door, which one of the family, at least, had connected inseverably with their departure. And thus Ephie’s musical studies came to an abrupt and untimely end.

* * * * *

“My faith in women is shattered. I shall never believe in a woman again.”

Dove paced the floor of Maurice’s room with long and steady strides, beneath which a particular board creaked at intervals. His voice was husky, and the ruddiness of his cheeks had paled.

At the outset of Ephie’s illness, Dove had called every morning at the PENSION, to make inquiries and to leave his regards. But when the story leaked out, as it soon did, in an exaggerated and distorted form, he straightway ceased his visits. Thus he was wholly unprepared for the family’s hurried departure, the news of which was broken to him by Maurice. Dove was dumbfounded. Not a single sententious phrase crossed his lips; and he remained unashamed of the moisture that dimmed his eyes. But he maintained his bearing commendably; and it was impossible not to admire the upright, manly air with which he walked down the street.

The next day, however, he returned, and was silent no longer. He made no secret of having been hard hit; just as previously he had let his friends into his hopes and intentions, so now every one heard of his reverses. He felt a tremendous need of unbosoming himself; he had been so sure of success, or, at least, so unthinking of failure, and the blow to his selfesteem was a rude one.

Maurice sat with his hands in his pockets, and tried to urge reason. But Dove would not admit even the possibility of his having been mistaken. He had received innumerable proofs of Ephie’s regard for him.

“Remember how young she was! Girls of that age never know their own minds,” said Maurice. But Dove was inclined to take Johanna’s sterner view, and to cry: “So young and so untender!” for which he, too, substituted “untrue”; and, just on this score, to deduce unfavourable inferences for Ephie’s whole moral character. As Maurice listened to him, he could not help thinking that Johanna’s affection had been of the same nature as Dove’s, in other words, had had a touch of the masculine about it: it had existed only as long as it could guide and subordinate; it denied to its object any midget attempt at individual life; it set up lofty moral standards, and was implacable when a smaller, frailer being found it impossible to live up to them.

At the same time, he was sorry for Dove, who, in his blindness, had laid himself open to receive this snubbing; and he listened patiently, even a thought flattered by his confidence, until he learnt from Madeleine that Dove was making the round of his acquaintances, and behaving in the same way to anyone who would let him. Then he found that the openness with which Dove related his past hopes, and the marks of affection Ephie had given him, bordered on indecency. He said so, with a wrathful frankness; but Dove could not see it in that light, and was not offended.

As the personal smart weakened, the more serious question that Dove had to face was, what he was going to tell his relatives at home. For it now came out that he had represented the affair to them as settled; in his perfectly sincere optimism, he had regarded himself as an all but engaged man. And the point that disturbed him was, how to back out with dignity, yet without violating the truth, on which he set great store.

“I’m sure he needn’t let that trouble him,” said Madeleine, on hearing of his dilemma. “He has only to say that HE has changed his mind, which is true enough.”

This was the conclusion Dove eventually came to himself– though not with such unseemly haste as Madeleine. Having approached the matter from all sides, he argued that it would be more considerate to Ephie to put it in this light than to tell the story in detail. And consequently, two elderly people in Peterborough nodded to each other one morning over the breakfast-table, and agreed that Edward had done well. They had not been much in favour of the American match, but they had trusted implicitly in their son’s good sense, and now, as ever, he had acted in the most becoming way. He had never given them an hour’s uneasiness since his birth.

Dove wrote:

CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE ARISEN, MY DEAR PARENTS, WHICH MAKE IT INCONTROVERTIBLY CLEAR TO ME THAT THE YOUNG LADY TO WHOM I WAS PAYING MY ADDRESSES WHEN I CONSULTED YOU IN SUMMER AND MYSELF WOULD NOT HAVE KNOWN TRUE HAPPINESS IN OUR UNION. ON MORE INTIMATE ACQUAINTANCE IT TRANSPIRED THAT OUR CHARACTERS WERE TOTALLY UNSUITED. I HAVE THEREFORE FOUND IT ADVISABLE TO BANISH THE AFFAIR FROM MY MIND AND TO DEVOTE MYSELF WHOLLY TO MY STUDIES.

As time passed, and Dove was able to view what had happened more objectively, he began to feel and even to hint that, all things considered, he had had a rather lucky escape; and from this, it was not very far to believing that if he had not just seen through the whole affair from the beginning, he had at any rate had some inkling of it; and now, instead of giving proofs of Ephie’s affection, he narrated the gradual growth of his suspicions, and how these had ultimately been verified. In conclusion, he congratulated himself on having drawn back, with open eyes, while there was still time.

“Like his cheek!” said Madeleine. “But he could imagine himself into being the Shah of Persia, if he sat down and gave his mind to it. I don’t believe the snub is going to do him a bit of good. He bobs up again like a cork, irrepressible. HAVE you heard him quote: ‘Frailty thy name is woman!’ or: ‘If women could be fair and yet not fond’?–It’s as good as a play.”

But altogether, Madeleine was very sharp of tongue since she learnt the part Maurice had played in what, for a day, was the scandal of the English-speaking colony. She had taken him to task at once, for his “lamentable interference.”

“Haven’t I warned you, Maurice, not to mix yourself up in Louise’s affairs? No good can come of it. She breeds mischief. And if that absurd child had really drowned herself”–in the version of the story that had reached Madeleine’s ears, Maurice was represented fishing Ephie bodily from the river–“you would have had to bear the whole brunt of the blame. It ought to teach you a lesson. For you’re just the kind of boy women will always take advantage of, a mean advantage, you know. Consider how you were treated in this case–by both of them! They were not a scrap grateful to you for what you did–women never are. They only look down on you for letting them have their own way. Kindness and complaisance don’t move them. A well-developed biceps and a cruel mouth–that’s what they want, and that’s all!” she wound up with a flourish, in an extreme bad temper.

She sat, one dull November afternoon, at her piano, and continued to run her fingers over the keys. Maurice leant on the lid, and listened to her. But they had barely exchanged a word, when there was a light tap at the door, and Krafft entered. Both started at his unexpected appearance, and Madeleine cried: “You come in like a ghost, to frighten people out of their wits.”

Krafft was buttoned to the chin in a travelling-ulster, and looked pale and thin.

“What news from St. Petersburg?” queried Madeleine with a certain asperity.

But Maurice recalled an errand he had to do in town; and, on hearing this, Krafft, who was lolling aimlessly, declared that he would accompany him.

“But you’ve only just come!” expostulated Madeleine. “What in the name of goodness did you climb the stairs for?”

He patted her cheek, without replying.

The young men went away together, Maurice puffing somewhat ostentatiously at a cigarette. The wind was cold, and Krafft seemed to shrink into his ulster before it, keeping his hands deep in his pockets. But from time to time, he threw a side-glance at his friend, and at length asked, in the tone of appeal which Maurice found it hard to withstand: “What’s the matter, LIEBSTER? Why are you so different?–so changed?”

“The matter? Nothing–that I’m aware of,” said Maurice, and considered the tip of his cigarette.

“Oh, yes, there is,” and Krafft laid a caressing hand on his companion’s arm. “You are changed. You’re not frank with me. I feel such things at once.”

“Well, how on earth am I to know when to be frank with you, and when not? Before you . . . not very long ago, you behaved as if you didn’t want to have anything more to do with me.”

“You are changed, and, if I’m not mistaken, I know why,” said Krafft, ignoring his answer. “You have been listening to gossip–to what my enemies say of me.”

“I don’t listen to gossip. And I didn’t know you had enemies, as you call them.”

“I ?–and not have enemies?” He flared up as though Maurice had affronted him. “My good fellow, did you ever bear of a man worth his salt, who didn’t have enemies? It’s the penalty one pays: only the dolts and the ‘all-too-many’ are friends with the whole world. No one who has work to do that’s worth doing, can avoid making enemies. And who knows what a friend is, who hasn’t an enemy to match him? It’s a question of light and shade, theme and counter-theme, of artistic proportion.” He laughed, in his superior way. But directly afterwards, he dropped back into his former humble tone. “But that you, my friend, are so ready to let yourself be influenced–I should not have believed it of you.”

“What I heard, I heard from Furst; and I have no reason to suspect him of falsehood.–Of course, if you assure me it was not true, that’s a different thing.” He turned so sharply that he sent a beautiful flush over Krafft’s face. “Come, give me your word, Heirtz, and things will be straight again.”

But Krafft merely shrugged his shoulders, and his colour subsided as rapidly as it had risen.

“Are you still such an outsider,” he asked, “after all this time–in my society–as to attach importance to a word? What is ‘giving a word’? Do you really think it is of any value? May I not give it tonight, and take it back to-morrow, according to the mood I am in, according to whether I believe it myself or not, at the moment?–You think a thing must either be true or not true? You are wrong. Do you believe, when you answer a question in the affirmative or the negative, that you are actually telling the truth? No, my friend, to be perfectly truthful one would need to lose oneself in a maze of explanation, such as no questioner would have the patience to listen to. One would need to take into account the innumerable threads that have gone to making the statement what it is. Do you think, for instance, if I answered yes or no, in the present case, it would be true? If I deny what you heard–does that tell you that I have longed with all my heart for it to come to pass? Or say I admit it–I should need to unroll my life before you to make you understand. No, there’s no such thing as absolute truth. If there were, the finest subtleties of existence would be lost. There is neither positive truth nor positive untruth; life is not so coarse-fibred as that. And only the grossest natures can be satisfied with a blunt yes or no. Truth?–it is one of the many miserable conventions the human brain has tortured itself with, and its first principle is an utter lack of the imaginative faculties.–A DIEU!”

VI.

In the days that followed, Maurice threw himself heart and soul into his work. He had lost ground of late, he saw it plainly now: after his vigorous start, he had quickly grown slack. He was not, to-day, at the stage he ought to be, and there was not a doubt but that Schwarz saw it, too. Now that he, came to think of it, he had more than once been aware of a studied coolness in the master’s manner, of a rather ostentatious indifference to the quality of the work he brought to the class: and this he knew by hearsay to be Schwarz’s attitude towards those of his pupils in whom his interest was waning. If he, Maurice, wished to regain his place in the little Pasha’s favour, he must work like a coal-heaver. But the fact was, the strenuous industry to which he now condemned himself, was something of a relaxation after the mental anxiety he had recently undergone; this striking of a black and white keyboard was a pleasant, thought-deadening employment, and could be got through, no matter what one’s mood.–And so he rose early again, and did not leave the house till he had five hours’ practice behind him.

WER SICH DER EINSAMKEIT ERGIEBT, ACH, DER IST BALD ALLEIN: at the end of a fortnight, Maurice smiled to find the words of Goethe’s song proved on himself. If he did not go to see his friends, none of them came to him. Dove, who was at the stage of: “I told you so,” in the affair of the Cayhills, had found fresh listeners, who were more sympathetic than Maurice could be expected to be: and Madeleine was up to her ears in work, as she phrased it, with the “C minor Beethoven.”

“Agility of finger equals softening of the brain” was a frequent gibe of Krafft’s; and now and then, at the close of a hard day’s work, Maurice believed that the saying contained a grain of truth. Opening both halves of his window, he would lean out on the sill, too tired for connected thought. But when dusk fell, he lay on the sofa, with his arms clasped under his head, his knees crossed in the air.

At first, in his new buoyancy of spirit, he was able to keep foolish ideas behind him, as well as to put away all recollection of the disagreeable events he had been mixed up in of late: after having, for weeks, borne a load that was too heavy for him, he breathed freely once more. The responsibility of taking care of Ephie had been removed from him–and this by far outweighed the little that he missed her. The matter had wound up, too, in a fairly peaceable way; all being considered, things might have been worse. So, at first, he throve under his light-heartedness; and only now became aware how great the strain of the past few weeks had been. His chief sensation was relief, and also of relief at being able to feel relieved–indeed, the moment even came when he thought it would be possible calmly to accept the fact of Louise having left the town, and of his never being likely to see her again.

Gradually, however, he began to be astonished at himself, and in the background of his mind, there arose a somewhat morbid curiosity, even a slight alarm, at his own indifference. He found it hard to understand himself. Could his feelings, those feelings which, a week or two ago, he had believed unalterable, have changed in so short a time? Was his nature one of so little stability? He began to consider himself with something approaching dismay, and though, all this time, he had been going about on a kind of mental tiptoe, for fear of rousing something that might be dormant in him, he now could not help probing himself, in order to see if the change he observed were genuine or not. And this with a steadily increasing frequency. Instead of continuing thankful for the respite, he ultimately grew uneasy under it. Am I a person of this weak, straw-like consistency, to be tossed about by every wind that blows? Is there something beneath it all that I cannot fathom?

He had not seen Louise since the night he had left her alseep, beside the sofa; and he was resolved not to see her–not, at least, until she wished to see him. It was much better for him that the uncertainties of the bygone months did not begin anew; then, too, she had called him to her when she was in trouble, and not for anything in the world would he presume on her appeal. Besides, his presence would recall to her the unpleasant details connected with Ephie’s visit, which he hoped she had by this time begun to forget. Thus he argued with himself, giving several reasons where one would have served; and the upshot of it was, that his own state of mind occupied him considerably.

His friends noticed the improvement in him; the careworn expression that had settled down on him of late gave way to his old air of animation; and on all the small topics of the day, he brought a sympathetic interest to bear, such as people had ceased to expect from him. Madeleine, in particular, was satisfied with her “boy,” as she took to calling him. She noted and checked off, in wise silence, each inch of his progress along the road of healthy endeavour; and the relations between them bcame almost as hearty as at the commencement of their friendship. Privately, she believed that the events of the past month had taught him a lesson, which he would not soon forget. It was sufficient, however, if they had inspired him with a distrust of Louise, which would keep him from her for the present; for Madeleine had grounds for believing that before many weeks had passed, Louise would have left Leipzig.

So she kept Maurice as close to her as work permitted; and as the winter’s flood of concerts set in, in full force, he accompanied her, almost nightly, to the Old Gewandhaus or the ALBERTHALLE; for Madeleine was an indefatigable concert-goer, and never missed a performer of note, rarely even a first appearance at the HOTEL DE PRUSSE or a BLUTHNER MATINEE. On the night she herself played in an AIBENDUNTERHALTUNG, with the easily gained success that attended all she did, Maurice went with her to the green-room, and was the first afterwards to tell her how her performance had “gone.” That same evening she took him with her to the house of friends of hers, the Hensels. There he met some of the best musical society of the place, made a pleasant impression, and was invited to return.

Meanwhile, winter had set in, with extreme severity. Piercing north winds drove down the narrow streets, and raged round the corners of the Gewandhaus square: on emerging from the PROBE on a Wednesday morning, one’s breath was cut clean off, and the tears raced down one’s cheeks. When the wind dropped, there were hard black frosts–a deadly, stagnant kind of cold, which seemed to penetrate every pore of the skin and every cranny of the house. Then came the snow, which fell for three days and nights on end, and for several nights after, so that the town was lost under a white pall: house-entrances were with difficulty kept free, and the swept streets were banked with walls of snow, four and five feet high. The night-frosts redoubled their keenness; the snow underfoot crackled like electric sparks; the sleighs crunched the roads. But except for this, and for the tinkling of the sleigh-bells, the streets were as noiseless as though laid with straw, and especially while fresh snow still formed a soft coating on the crisp layer below. All dripping water hung as icicles; water froze in ewers and pitchers; milk froze in cans and jugs; and this though the great stoves in the dwelling-rooms were heated to bursting-point. Red-nosed, red-eared men, on whose beards and moustaches the breath had turned to ice-drops, cried to one another at street-corners that such a winter had not been known for thirty years; and, as they spoke, they stamped their feet, and clapped their hands, to keep the chilly blood agoing. Women muffled and veiled themselves like Orientals, hardly showing the tips of their noses; and all manner of strange, antiquated fur-garments saw the day. At night, if one opened a window, and peered out at the houses crouching beneath their thick white load, and at the deserted, snow-bound streets, over which the street-lamps threw a pale, uncertain light–at night, familiar things took on an unfamiliar aspect, and the well-known streets might have been the untrodden ways that led to a new world.

Early in November, all ponds and pools were bearing, and forthwith many hundreds of people forgot the severity of the weather, and thronged out with their skates.

Maurice was among the first. He was a passionate skater; and it was the one form of sport in which he excelled. As four o’clock came round, he could contain himself no longer; he would rather have gone without his dinner, thanhave missed, on the JOHANNATEICH, the two hours that elapsed before the sweepers, crying: “FEIERABEND!” drove the skaters before them, with their brooms. In a tightly buttoned square jacket, the collar of which was turned up as far as it would go, with the flaps of his astrachan cap drawn over his cars, his hands in coarse woollen gloves, Maurice defied the cold, flying round the two ponds that formed the JOHANNATEICH, or practising intricate figures with a Canadian acquaintance in a corner.

Madeleine watched him approvingly from one of the wooden bridges that spanned the neck connecting the ponds. She rejoiced at his glowing face and vigorous, boyish pleasure, also at the skill that marked him out as one of the best skaters present. For some time, Maurice tried in vain to persuade her to join him. Madeleine, usually so confident, was here diffident and timid. She had never in her life attempted to skate, and was sure she would fall. And what should she do if she broke a thumb or strained a finger?–with her PRUFUNG just before the door. She would never have the courage to confess to Schwarz how it had happened; for he was against “sport” in any form. But Maurice laughed at her fears.

“There is not the least chance of your falling,” he cried up to her. “Do come down, Madeleine. Before you’ve gone round twice, you’ll be able to throw off all those mufflings.”

Finally, she let herself be persuaded, and according to his promise, Maurice remained at her side from the moment of her first, hesitating steps, each of which was accompanied by a faint scream, to the time when, with the aid of only one of his hands, she made uncertain efforts at striking out. She did not learn quickly; but she was soon as enthusiastic a skater as Maurice himself; and he fell into the habit of calling for her, every afternoon, on his way to the ponds.

Dove was also of assistance in the beginning, and, as usual, was well up in the theory of the thing, though he did not shine in practice.

“Oh, bother, never mind how you go at first. That’ll come afterwards,” said Maurice impatiently. But Dove thought the rules should be observed from the beginning, and gave Madeleine minute instructions how to place her feet.

Towards five o’clock, the ice grew more crowded, and especially was this the case on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when the schools had half-holidays. On one of these latter days, Maurice did not find Madeleine at home; and he had been on the ponds for nearly an hour, before he espied her on a bench beside the GARDEROBE, having her skates put on by a blue-smocked attendant. He waved his cap to her, and skated over.

“Why are you so late?”

“Oh, thank goodness, there you are. I should never have dared to stand up alone in this crowd. Aren’t these children awful? Get away, you little brutes! If you touch me, I’ll fall.–Here, give me change,” she said to the ice-man, holding out a twenty-pfennig piece.

Maurice saw that she was unusually excited, and as soon as he had drawn her out of reach of the children, asked her the reason.

“I’ve something interesting to tell you, Maurice.”

But here Dove, coming up behind, took possession of her left hand, with no other greeting than the military salute, which, on the ice, he adopted for all his friends, male and female, alike; and Madeleine hastily swallowed the rest of her sentence.

They skated round the larger of the ponds several times without stopping. The cold evening air stung their faces; the sun had gone down in a lurid haze; Madeleine’s skirts swayed behind her and lent her a fictitious grace.

But presently she cried a halt, and while she rested in a quiet corner, they watched Maurice doing a complicated figure, which he and his Canadian friend had invented the day before. Dove was explaining how it was done–“It is really not so hard as it looks”–when, with a cry of “ACHTUNG!” some one whizzed in among them, scattered the group, and, revolving on himself, ended with a jump in the air. It was James. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose, in the most unconcerned manner possible.

“I don’t think such acrobatic tricks should be allowed,” said Madeleine disapprovingly; she had been forced to grab Dove’s arm to keep her balance.

“Say, do you boys know the river has six inches and will be open to-morrow, if it isn’t to-day?” asked James, stooping to tighten a strap.

“Is that so? Oh gee, that’s fine!” cried Miss Martin, who had skated leisurely up in his rear. “Say, you people, why don’t we fix up a party an’ go up it nights? A lady in my boarding-house done that with some folks she was acquainted with last year. Seems to me we oughtn’t to be behind.”

Miss Martin was a skilled and graceful skater, and looked her best in a dark fur hat and jacket, which set off her abundance of pale flaxen hair. Others had followed her, and it was resolved to form a party for the following evening, provided Dove had previously ascertained if the river actually was “free,” in order that they ran no risk of being ignominiously turned off.

“The ice may be a bit rough, but it’s a fine run to Connewitz.”

“An’ by moonlight, too–but say, is there a moon? Why, I presume there ought to be,” said Miss Martin.

“‘Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?'” quoted Dove, examining a tiny pocket-calendar.

“Oh gee, that’s fine!” repeated Miss Martin, on hearing his answer. “Say, we must dance a FRANCAISE. Mr. Guest, you an’ I’ll be partners, I surmise,” and ceasing to waltz and pirouette with James, she took a long sweep, then stood steady, and let her skates bear her out to the middle of the pond. Her skirts clung close in front, and swept out behind her lithe figure, until it was lost in the crowd.

“Don’t you wish YOU could skate like that?” asked the sharp-tongued little student, called Dickensey, who was standing beside Madeleine. Madeleine, who held him in contempt because his trousers were baggy at the knees, and because he had once appeared at a ball in white cotton gloves, answered with asperity that there were other things in life besides skating. She had no further chance of speaking to Maurice in private, so postponed telling her news till the following evening.

Shortly after eight o’clock, the next night, a noisy party whistled and hallooed in the street below Maurice’s window. He was the last to join, and then some ten or eleven of them picked their steps along the hard-frozen ruts of the SCHLEUSSIGER WEG, a road that followed the river to the outskirts of the town. Just above the GERMANIABAD, a rough scat had been erected on the ice, for the convenience of skaters. They were the first to make use of it; the snow before it was untrodden; and the Pleisse wound white and solitary between its banks of snow.

They set off in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, each striking out for himself. When, however, they had passed the narrower windings, gone under the iron bridge which was low enough to catch the unwary by the forehead, and when the full breadth of the river was before them, they took hands, and, forming a long line, skated in time to the songs some one struck up, and in which all joined: THE ROSE OF SHARON, JINGLE BELLS, THERE IS A TAVERN IN OUR TOWN. As they advanced to the corners where the big trees trailed their naked branches on the ice, just as in summer they sank their leaves in the water, Miss Jensen, who, despite her proportions, was a surprisingly good skater, sent her big voice over the snow-bound stillness in an aria from the PROPHET; and after this, Miss Martin, no; to be done, struck up the popular ALLERSEELEN. This was the song of the hour; they all knew it, and up and down and across the ice rang out their voices in unison: WIE EINST IM MAI, WIE EINST IM MAI.

Inside Wagner’s WALDCAFE at Connewitz, they sat closely packed round one of the wooden tables, and drank beer and coffee, and ate BERLINER PFANNKUCHEN. The great iron stove was almost red-hot; the ladies threw off their wrappings; cold faces glowed and burnt, and frozen hands tingled. One and all were in high spirits, and the jollity reached a climax when, having exchanged hats, James and Miss Jensen cleared a space in the middle of the floor and danced a nigger-dance, the lady with her skirts tucked up above her ankles. In the adjoining room, some one began to play a concertina, and then two or three couples stood up and danced, with much laughter and many outcries at the narrowness of the space. Even Dove joined in, his partner being a very pretty American, whom Miss Martin had brought with her, and whose side Dove had not left for a moment. Only Madeleine and Dickensey sat aloof, and for once were agreed: Americans were really “very bad form.” There was no livelier pair than Maurice and Miss Martin; the latter’s voice could be heard above all others, as she taught Maurice new steps in a corner of the room. Her flaxen hair had partly come loose, and she did not stop to put it up. They were the first to run through the dark garden, past the snow-laden benches and arbours, which, in summer, were buried in greenery; and, from the low wooden landingplace, they jumped hand in hand on to the ice, and had shot a long way down the river before any of the rest could follow them.

But this did not please Madeleine. As it was, she was vexed at not having had the opportunity of a quiet word with Maurice; and when she had laboriously skated up, with Dickensey, to the spot where, in a bright splash of moonlight, Maurice and Miss Martin were cutting ingenious capers, she cried to the former in a peremptory tone: “There’s something wrong with my skate, Maurice. Will you look at it, please?” and as sharply declined Dickensey’s proffered aid.

Maurice came to her side at once, and in this way she detained him. But Dickensey hovered not far off, and Miss Martin was still in sight. Madeleine caught her skate in a crack, fell on her knee, and said she had now loosened the strap altogether. She sat down on a heap of snow, and Dickensey’s shade vanished good-naturedly round a corner.

“Well, YOU seem to be enjoying yourself,” she said as Maurice drew off his gloves and knelt down.

“Why, yes, aren’t you?” he replied so frankly that she did not continue the subject.

“I’ve been trying all the evening to get a word with you. I told you yesterday, you remember, that I wanted to speak to you. Sit down here, for a moment, so that we can talk in peace,” and she spread part of her skirt over the snow-heap.

Maurice complied, and she could not discover any trace of reluctance in his manner.

“I want your advice,” she continued. “I was taken quite by surprise myself. Schwarz sent for me, you know, after counterpoint. It was about my PRUFUNG at Easter. If I play then, it’s a case of the C minor Beethoven. Well, now he says it’s a thousand pities for me to break off just at the stage I’m at, and he wants me to stay for another year. If I do, he’ll give me the G major–that’s a temptation, isn’t it? On the other hand, I shall have been here my full time–three years–at Easter. That’s a year longer than I originally intended, and I feel I’m getting too old to be a pupil. But this talk with Schwarz has upset my plans. I’m naturally flattered at his interesting himself in me. He wouldn’t do it for every one. And I do feel I could gain an immense deal in another year.–Now, what do you think?”

“Why, stay, of course, Madeleine. If you can afford it, that is. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to leave.”

“Oh, my capital will last so long, and it’s a good enough investment.”

“But wasn’t a place being kept open for you in a school?”

“Yes; but I don’t think a year more or less will make much difference to them. I must sound them, of course, though,” said Madeleine, and did not mention that she had written and posted the letter the night before. “Then you advise me to stay?”

“Why, of course,” he repeated, and was mildly astonished at her. “If everything is as smooth as you say.”

“You would miss me, if I left?”

“Why, of course I should,” he said again, and wondered what in the world she was driving at.

“Well, all the better,” replied Madeleine. “For when one has really got to like a person, one would rather it made a difference than not.”

She was silent after this, and sat looking down the stretch of ice they had travelled: the moon was behind a cloud, and the woods on either side were masses of dense black shadow. Not a soul was in sight; the river was like a deserted highway. Madeleine stared down it, and did not feel exactly satisfied with the result of her investigation. She had not expected anything extraordinary–Heaven forbid!–but she had been uncomfortably conscious of Maurice’s surprise. To her last remark, he had made no answer: be was occupied with the screw of one of his skates.

She drew his attention to the fact that, if she remained in Leipzig for another twelvemonth, they would finish at the same time; and thereupon she sketched out a plan of them going somewhere together, and starting a music-school of their own. Maurice, who thought she was jesting, laughingly assented. But Madeleine was in earnest: “Other people have done it–why shouldn’t we? We could take a ‘cellist with us, and go to America, or Australia, or Canada–there are hundreds of places. And there’s a great deal of money in it, I’m sure. A little capital would be needed to begin with, but not much, and I could supply that. You’ve always said you dreaded going back to the English provinces to decay–here’s your chance!”

She saw the whole scheme cut and dried before her. As they, skated after the rest, she continued to enlarge upon it, in a detailed way that astonished Maurice. He confessed that, with a head like hers to conduct it, such a plan stood a fair chance of success; and thus encouraged, Madeleine undertook to make a kind of beginning at once, by sounding some of the numerous friends she had, scattered through America. Her idea was that they should go over together, and travel to various places, giving concerts, and acquainting themselves, as they did so, with the musical conditions of the towns they visited.

“And the ‘cellist shall be an American–that will draw.”

According to the pace at which they were skating, the others should have remained well out of reach. But on turning a corner, they came upon the whole party dancing a FRANCAISE–which two members whistled–on a patch of ice that was smoother than the rest.

“Here, Guest, come along, we want you,” was the cry as soon as Maurice appeared; and, to Madeleine’s deep displeasure, she was thrown on Dove, whose skill had not sufficed. When the dancing was over, Maurice once more found himself with Miss Martin, whom, for some distance, he pushed before him, she standing steady on her skates, and talking to him over her shoulder.

“That wasn’t a bit pretty of you, Mr. Guest,” she asserted, with her long, slow, twanged speech. “It was fixed up yesterday, I recollect, that you were to dance the FRANCAISE with me. Yes, indeed. An’ then I had to take up with Mr. Dove. Now Mr. Dove is just a lovely gentleman, but he don’t skate elegantly, an’ he nearly tumbled me twice. Yes, indeed. But I presume when Miss Wade says come, then you’re most obliged to go.”

“How is it one don’t ever see you now?” she queried a moment later. “It isn’t anyhow so pleasurable at dinner as it used to be. But I hear you’re working most hard–it’s to’ bad.”

“It’s what one comes to here.”

“I guess it is. But I do like to see my friends once in a while. Say, now, Mr. Guest, won’t you drink coffee with me one afternoon? I’ll make you some real American coffee if you do, sir. What they call coffee here don’t count.”

She turned, offered him her hand, and they began to skate in long, outward curving lines.

“I think one has just a fine time here, don’t you?” she continued. “Momma, she came right with me, an’ stopped a bit, till I was fixed up in a boarding-house. But she didn’t find it agreeable, no sir. She missed America, an’ presumed I would, too. When she was leaving, she said to me: ‘EI’nor Martin, if you find you can’t endure it among these Dutch, just you cable, and poppa he’ll come along an’ fetch you right home,’ But I’m sure I haven’t desired to quit, no, not once. I think it’s just fine. But then I’ve gotten me so many friends I don’t ever need to feel lonesome. Why, my friend Susie Fay, she says: ‘Why, EI’nor, I guess you’re acquainted with most every one in the place.’ An’ I reckon she’s not far out. Anyways there ain’t more than two Americans in the city I don’t know. An’ I see most all strangers that come. Say, are you acquainted with Miss Moses? She’s from Chicago, an’ resides in a boarding-house way down by the COLONNADEN. I got acquainted with her yesterday. She’s a lovely lady, an’, why, she’s just as smart as she can be. Say, if you like, I’ll invite her along, so you can get acquainted with her too.”

Maurice expressed pleasure at the prospect; and Miss Martin continued to rattle on, with easy frankness, of herself, her family, and her friends. He listened vaguely, with half an ear, since it was only required of him to throw in an occasional word of assent. But suddenly his attention was arrested, and brought headlong back to what she was saying: in the string of names that fell from her tongue, he believed he had caught one he knew.

“Miss Dufrayer?” he queried.

“That’s it,” replied his companion. “Louise Dufrayer. Well, sir, as I was going on to remark, when first I was acquainted with her, she was just as sweet as she could be; yes, indeed; why, she was just dandy. But she hasn’t behaved a bit pretty–I presume you heard tell of what took place here this fall?”

“Then you know Miss Dufrayer?”

“Yes, indeed. But I don’t see her any more, an’ I guess I don’t want to. Not but what I’ve heard she feels pretty mean about it now–beg pardon?–how I know? Why, indeed, the other day, Schwarz come in an’ told us how she’s moping what she can–moping herself to death–if I recollect, those were his very words. Yes, indeed. She don’t take lessons no more, I presume. I think she should go right away from this city. It ain’t possible to be acquainted with her any more, for all she’s so lonesome, an’ one feels sort of bad about it, yes, indeed. But momma, the last thing she said to me was: ‘Now EI’nor Martin, just keep your eyes open, an’ don’t get acquainted with people you might feel bad about afterwards.’ An’ I presume momma was right. I don’t– Oh, say, do look at her, isn’t she a peach?”–this, as her pretty friend, with Dove in tow, came gliding up to them. “Say, Susie Fay, are you acquainted with Mr. Guest?”

“MR. Guest. Pleased to know you,” said Susie cordially; and Miss Martin was good-natured enough to skate off with Dove, leaving Maurice to her friend.

But afterwards, at the bench, as he was undoing Madeleine’s skates, he overheard pretty Susie remark, without much care to moderate her voice: “Say, EI’nor Martin, that’s the quietest sort of young man I’ve ever shown round a district. Why, seems to me, he couldn’t say ‘shoh.’ Guess you shouldn’t have left us, EI’nor.”

And Miss Martin guessed so, too.