articular reason."

She sat down at the table, opened the book, and turned the leaves.

"Oh well, I daresay I can, if you wish it, and an opportunity
occurs--if you're with me some day when I meet her.--Now shall we go on
with the JUNGFRAU? We were beginning the third act, I think. Here it is:

Wir waren Herzensbruder, Waffenfreunde,
Fur eine Sache hoben wir den Arm!"

But Maurice did not take the book she handed him across the table.

"Won't you give me a more definite promise than that?"

Madeleine sat back in her chair, and, folding her arms, looked
thoughtfully at him.

Only a momentary silence followed his words, but, in this fraction of
time, a series of impressions swept through her brain with the
continuity of a bird's flight. It was clear to her at once, that what
prompted his insistence was not an ordinary curiosity, or a passing
whim; in a flash, she understood that here, below the surface,
something was at work in him, the existence of which she had not even
suspected. She was more than annoyed with herself at her own foolish
obtuseness; she had had these experiences before, and then, as now, the
object of her interest had invariably been turned aside by the first
pretty, silly face that came his way. The main difference was that she
had been more than ordinarily drawn to Maurice Guest; and, believing it
impossible, in this case, for anyone else to be sharing the field with
her, she had over-indulged the hope that he sought her out for herself
alone.

She endeavoured to learn more. But this time Maurice was on his guard,
and the questions she put, straight though they were, only elicited the
response that he had seen Miss Dufrayer shortly after arriving, and had
been much struck by her.

Madeleine's brain travelled rapidly backwards. "But if I remember
rightly, Maurice, we met Louise one day in the SCHEIBENHOLZ, the first
time we went for a walk together. Why didn't you stop then, and be
introduced to her, if you were so anxious?"

"Why do we ever do foolish things?"

Her amazement was so patent that he made uncomfortable apology for
himself. "It is ridiculous, I know," he said and coloured. "And it must
seem doubly so to you. But that I should want to know her--there's
nothing strange in that, is there? You, too, Madeleine, have surely
admired people sometimes--some one, say, who has done a fine thing--and
have felt that you must know them personally, at all costs?"

"Perhaps I have. But