your
doll's head. But you did not come back. Then I set on fire your doll's
house. But even that did not bring you back. Nothing brought you back.
That was my dream. I hope you are not offended. Not that it makes any
difference if you are."

Bernardine laughed.

"I am sorry that I should have been such an unpleasant playmate," she
said. "It was a good thing I did disappear."

"Perhaps it was," he said. "There would have been a terrible scene about
that doll's head. An odd thing for me to dream about Christmas-trees and
dolls and playmates: especially when I went to sleep thinking about my
new camera."

"You have a new camera?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered, "and a beauty, too. Would you like to see it?"

She expressed a wish to see it, and when they reached the Kurhaus, she
went with him up to his beautiful room, where he spent his time in the
company of his microscope and his chemical bottles and his photographic
possessions.

"If you sit down and look at those photographs, I will make you some
tea," he said. "There is the camera, but please not to touch it until I
am ready to show it myself."

She watched him preparing the tea; he did everything so daintily, this
Disagreeable Man. He put a handkerchief on the table, to serve for an
afternoon tea-cloth, and a tiny vase of violets formed the centre-piece.
He had no cups, but he polished up two tumblers, and no housemaid could
have been more particular, about their glossiness. Then he boiled the
water and made the tea. Once she offered to help him; but he shook his
head.

"Kindly not to interfere." he said grimly. "No one can make tea better
than I can."

After tea, they began the inspection of the new camera, and Robert
Allitsen showed her all the newest improvements. He did not seem to
think much of her intelligence, for he explained everything as though
he were talking to a child, until Bernardine rather lost patience.

"You need not enter into such elaborate explanations," she suggested.
"I have a small amount of intelligence, though you do not seem to
detect it."

He looked at her as one might look at an impatient child.

"Kindly not to interrupt me," he replied mildly. "How very impatient you
are! And how restless! What must you have been like before you fell ill?"

But he took the hint all the same, and shortened his explanations, and
as Bernardine was genuinely interested, he was well satisfied. From time
to time he looked at his old camera a