tar in desert drear and wild.'"

Now and then, in the evenings, when the Americans were away, and Bobby
was snug in bed, with Tucker on the tiny feather comfort at his feet,
the Fraulein would come downstairs and sit in Black Humbert's room. At
such times the niece would be sent on an errand, and the two would talk.
The niece, who, although she had no lover, was on the lookout for love,
suspected a romance of the middle-aged, and smiled in the half-darkness
of the street; smiled with a touch of malice, as one who has pierced the
armor of the fortress, and knows its weakness.

But it was not of love that Humbert and the Fraulein talked.

Herman Spier was busy in those days and making plans. Thus, day by day,
he dined in the restaurant where the little Marie, now weary of her
husband, sat in idle intervals behind the cashier's desk, and watched
the grass in the Place emerge from its winter hiding place. When she
turned her eyes to the room, frequently she encountered those of Herman
Spier, pale yet burning, fixed on her. And at last, one day when her
husband lay lame with sciatica, she left the desk and paused by Herman's
table.

"You come frequently now," she observed. "It is that you like us here,
or that you have risen in the shop?"

"I have left the shop," said Herman, staring at her. Flesh, in a
moderate amount, suited her well. He liked plump women. They were, if
you please, an armful. "And I come to see you."

"Left the shop!" Marie exclaimed. "And Peter Niburg--he has left also? I
never see him."

"No," said Herman non-committally.

"He is ill, perhaps?"

"He is dead," said Herman, devouring her with his eyes.

"Dead!" She put a hand to her plump side.

"Aye. Shot as a spy." He took another piece of the excellent pigeon pie.
Marie, meantime, lost all her looks, grew pasty white.

"Of the--the Terrorists?" she demanded, in a whisper.

"Terrorists! No. Of Karnia. He was no patriot."

So the little Marie went back to her desk, and to her staring out over
the Place in intervals of business. And what she thought of no one can
know. But that night, and thereafter, she was very tender to her spouse,
and put cloths soaked in hot turpentine water on his aching thigh.

On the surface things went on as usual at the Palace. Karl's visit had
been but for a day or two. He had met the Council in session, and had
had, because of their growing alarm, rather his own way with them.

But although he had pointed to