I had just as much
cause for displeasure over your returning as you had over my going."

"No," he said quickly, "for it was a compliment to you that I return,
and no compliment at all to me that you stay after I am gone so as to
visit the concert with monsieur."

She laughed a little.

"I hope that you will never behave so again; you were so unbearably rude
that I was sorry to have sent for you. If I had not," she asked, with
real curiosity, "if I had not, would you have spoken to me after a
while?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"_Je ne sais pas_," he replied with brevity; and then looking down at
her with one of his irresistible smiles he added, "but I find it
probable."

She smiled in return, saying:

"Do undertake to never be angry like that again."

"Again!" he said quickly and pointedly; "then I _may_ come to
Constance?"

Her mind was forced to take a sudden leap in order to rejoin his rapid
deduction of effect from cause.

"No, no," she cried hastily, "you must not think any more of Constance,
you must go to Leipsic, just as you intended doing."

"But you said--" he began.

"I meant, in the future, if we should ever chance to meet by accident."

His brow darkened.

"Where?" he asked briefly.

"Who can tell," she answered cheerfully; "people are always meeting
again. See how that man of the steamer met me again to-day."

"But you have hear of him since you come?" he demanded, a fresh shade of
suspicion in his tone.

"Never! Never a word until he came out of the Promenade and spoke to me
this afternoon."

Von Ibn thought about it frowningly for a little and then decided it was
not worth his pains.

"I would not care to meet again as he," he declared carelessly; "how he
was sent to fetch me, and then he must go alone while we speak together,
and then make that tale of a drive when there was no drive by the
University, only a knowledge that he was much not wanted."

"Do you think he was not really invited to go to drive?" she asked,
opening her eyes widely.

"Of a certainty not. But he could see he was not wanted by us. When he
came near, you really looked to weep."

"Oh, _no_!" she cried, in great distress.

"Yes; it was just so."

There was a pause while she pondered this new phase of herself, and
after a while he went on:

"There is something that I do not understand. Why do you desire so much
to speak to me to-night and then not desire me at Constance? _Ca--je ne
le comprends pa