t?" The other laughed in her face.

"We go to Rome, to make what dear Mrs. Minne calls the pilgrimage,"
declared the girl unflinchingly.

"Then I hope the Wagner miracle will take place again," mockingly
answered Mrs. Holda, and after a few more sentences the visitors went
away. Venus burst into her drawing-room holding her sides, almost
choking. "Harry, Harry, Harry Tannhaeuser, I shall die. They're engaged
to be married. They came to tell me, to tell me, knowing that you were
upstairs. Oh, that deceitful virgin with her sly airs! I understood her.
She fancied that she would put me out of countenance. She and that sheep
of a brewer's son, Eschenbach. They're engaged, I tell you, and going to
Rome on their wedding trip--their pilgrimage she called it. Oh, these
affected Wagnerites! You had better go, too, Mr. Tannhaeuser; perhaps the
miracle might be renewed and your staff of faith grow green with the
leaves of repentance. Oh, Harry, what a lark it all is!"

He sat on the couch and stared at her as she rolled about on a divan,
gripped by malicious laughter.... Engaged! Elizabeth Landgrave engaged
to be married! And a few hours ago she told him she loved him, could
never love another--and now! What had happened in such a brief time to
make her change her mind? Engaged to Wolfram Eschenbach, dear, old
stupid Wolfram, who had loved her with a dog's love for years, even when
she flouted him. Wolfram, his best friend, slow Wolfram, with his
poetizing, his fondness for German singing societies, his songs to
evening stars; Eschenbach, the brewer's son, to cut him out, cut out
brilliant Harry Tannhaeuser! It was incredible, it was monstrous!... He
slowly went to the window. The street was empty, and only his desperate
thoughts made noise as they clattered through his hollow head. Her voice
roused him. "You can take the pitcher too often to the well, Harry dear,
and you drove once too often to Berg Street. Elizabeth, sensible girl,
instead of dying, takes the best man she could possibly find; a better
man than you, Harry, and she couldn't resist letting me know it. So,
silly old boy, better give up your Wartburg ambitions, your pilgrimage
to Rome, and stay here in the Venusberg. I know I'm old, but, after all,
am I not your Venus?" In the soft light of an early evening in May the
face of Mrs. Holda seemed impossibly charming....

THE RED-HEADED PIANO PLAYER

The two young men left the trolley car that carried them fr