the week before, and he had three more weeks to stay. What might
not happen!

Just where the promenade twists under the shaded alleys that lead to the
Ferdinandsbrunnen, he saw four women holding hands. They were dressed in
Tyrolean fashion--pleated skirts, short enough to show white, plump
stockings, feet in slippers, upon the head huge caps, starched and
balloony; their massive white necks, well exposed, were encircled by
collars that came low on bodices elaborately embroidered. Behind them
marched several burly chaps, in all the bravery of the Austrian
Tyrol--the green alpine hat, with the feather at the back, the short
gray jacket, the bare knees, and the homespun stockings. Krayne regarded
curiously this strolling band of singers. Their faces seemed familiar to
him, and he rapidly recalled souvenirs of Salzburg and an open-air
concert. But this morning there was something that arrested his
attention in the group. It was a girl of eighteen or twenty, with a
brilliant complexion, large blue eyes, and a robust, shapely figure. As
she passed she gave him such an imploring look, such an appealing look,
that all his chivalric instincts rushed into the field of his
consciousness. He awkwardly dropped his tumbler. He turned around, half
expecting to see the big child still looking at him. Instead he gazed
upon the athletic backs of her male companions and to the unpleasant
accompaniment of hearty feminine laughter. Were these women laughing at
him? No fool like a fat one, he merrily thought, as he bought a new
glass at a bazaar, which a grinning, monkey-faced creature sold him at
the regular price redoubled.

Before his meagre breakfast of one egg and a dry rusk, Krayne
endeavoured to evoke the features of the pretty creature who had so
strongly attracted him. He saw a tangle of black hair, a glance that
touched his heart with its pathos, a pair of soft, parted red lips, and
dazzling teeth. It was an impression sufficiently powerful to keep him
company all the forenoon. Fat men, he reasoned on the steep pass that
conducts to the Cafe Forstwarte, are always sentimental, by no means
always amiable, and, as a rule, subject to sudden fancies. Ten years of
his sentimental education had been sown with adventures that had begun
well, caprices that had no satisfactory endings. He had fallen in love
with the girl who played Chopin on the piano, the girl who played
Mendelssohn on the violin, the girl who played Goltermann on the