pped and broke a piece of cake into tiny morsels, pushing them
together into a neat little pile. "Why were you unhappy in your
husband?" he asked slowly.

"He drank," she replied.

"Perhaps he was unhappy?"

"Perhaps."

"And you?"

"Beyond a doubt."

He took another bit of cake and crumbed that up as he had the first.

"Don't do that."

"Why shall I not?" with an air of surprise.

"It isn't right."

"But I shall pay for it," he said remonstrantly.

"It's bad manners, anyhow."

"What does it matter if I like, and pay for it too?"

"Well, then, if you must know, it makes me horribly nervous!"

He looked at her quickly.

"Are you nervous?"

"Yes, when people waste cake like that."

He sighed and stopped his play.

"Did you ever love after?" he asked presently.

"No, never! Good Heavens, once was enough!"

"Was your husband so very bad?"

"He wasn't bad at all; he was only disagreeable."

"Perhaps he made you nervous?" he queried.

"Perhaps," she answered dryly.

There was a long, long pause. The band now played "_Doch Einer Schoner
Zeit_," and some peasants in the native costume sang the words.

Finally he pushed his plate away and crossed his arms upon the table;
his eyes were very earnest.

"Once I loved," he said; "I have speak of that to you before."

She made no reply.

"It was no passion of a whole life, but for a boy, as I was then, it was
much. I was quite young, and, _Gott!_ how I _did_ love! She was such a
woman as says, 'I will make this man absolutely mad;' and she did so.
She made me crazy--_tout-a-fait fou_; and then, when I could only
breathe by her eyes, she showed me that she was uncaring!"

He stopped, stared sightlessly out at the black water beyond, and then
turned towards her.

"Is it so in _your_ mind towards me?" he asked, and in his voice and
eyes was that heartrending pathos which once in a lifetime a man's soul
may come to share with childhood's heavy sorrows.

She drew a quick breath. The pointed roofs of the Inselhaus off there
beyond the trees printed themselves darkly and forever upon her brain;
the scattered lights in the windows, the inky spots where the ivy
trailings were massed thickest,--all those details and a dozen others
were in that instant photographed upon her spirit, destined to
henceforth form the background to the scene whose centre was the face
opposite to her, all of the expression of which seemed to have condensed
itself into the burn