Paris to-morrow. There's a little
too much movement here, maybe. For God's sake, let your hair grow, and
we'll go down to Italy and study bones and ruins and delight the aged
parent!--It's all right, isn't it?"

I shook the hand of that kind Poor Jr. with a feeling in my heart that
kept me from saying how greatly I thanked him--and I was sure that I
could do anything for him in the world!

Chapter Five

Three days later saw us on the pretty waters of Lake Leman, in the
bright weather when Mont Blanc heaves his great bare shoulders of ice
miles into the blue sky, with no mist-cloak about him.

Sailing that lake in the cool morning, what a contrast to the champagne
houpla nights of Paris! And how docile was my pupil! He suffered me to
lead him through the Castle of Chillon like a new-born lamb, and even
would not play the little horses in the Kursaal at Geneva, although,
perhaps, that was because the stakes were not high enough to interest
him. He was nearly always silent, and, from the moment of our departure
from Paris, had fallen into dreamfulness, such as would come over myself
at the thought of the beautiful lady. It touched my heart to find how he
was ready with acquiescence to the slightest suggestion of mine, and,
if it had been the season, I am almost credulous that I could have
conducted him to Baireuth to hear Parsifal!

There were times when his mood of gentle sorrow was so like mine that I
wondered if he, too, knew a grey pongee skirt. I wondered over this so
much, and so marvellingly, also, because of the change in him, that at
last I asked him.

We had gone to Lucerne; it was clear moonlight, and we smoked on our
little balcony at the Schweitzerhof, puffing our small clouds in the
enormous face of the strangest panorama of the world, that august
disturbation of the earth by gods in battle, left to be a land of tragic
fables since before Pilate was there, and remaining the same after
William Tell was not. I sat looking up at the mountains, and he leaned
on the rail, looking down at the lake. Somewhere a woman was singing
from Pagliacci, and I slowly arrived at a consciousness that I had
sighed aloud once or twice, not so much sadly, as of longing to see that
lady, and that my companion had permitted similar sounds to escape him,
but more mournfully. It was then that I asked him, in earnestness, yet
with the manner of making a joke, if he did not think often of some one
in North America.

"Do