her hand and pressed it so strongly against his lips that his
lips parted and she felt his teeth against her flesh.

"_Je vous aime!_" he whispered, almost inaudibly. "Adieu!"

Part II

THE BEATING OF THE WAVES

[Illustration]

Chapter Ten

It was September in Munich. They stood together on the Maximilianbrucke,
and, looking down into the gray and black turbulence of the Isar, felt
themselves to be by contrast most tranquil and even-tempered. The little
river rushed beneath them, forming a wealth of tiny whirlpools above its
stone-paved way, its waters seeming to clash and struggle in a species
of mimic, liquid warfare, and then, of a sudden, victor and vanquished
fled wildly on together, giving place to other waves with their other
personal scores to settle.

The banks on either side were beginning to show some touches of autumnal
scarlet among those masses of vine whose ends trailed in the water
below, and among the shrubs of the Promenade the same blood stain
betrayed the summer's death at the hands of the merciless frost king.
The Peace Monument was there, piercing heaven with its golden wings;
the Lucaskirche towered to the east; above them all sat the lofty
Maximilianeum, that open-work crown of Munich, whose perfectly curved
approach and double arcaded wings must joy the soul of every
artist-nature that lingers near it.

"How old are you?" the man said suddenly.

Rosina jerked her consciousness up out of the bed of the Isar.

"No gentleman at home would ask a lady that," she told him, thus showing
great presence of mind.

He smiled and twisted his moustache.

"But I am not a gentleman at home," he said pleasantly, "I am a
gentleman travelling."

"How old are you?"

"I have thirty-three years."

"Well, I haven't," she said with decision; "you might think that I was
forty, but that is only because I have had so much experience."

He looked at her in a dubious, troubled way.

"I did not think that you had forty: I did not get that just perhaps.
You have not truthfully forty, have you?"

Rosina laughed in unfeigned amusement.

"No, monsieur, I am not thirty even. I told you that if I seemed to be
forty, it was because I had had so much experience."

"So much experience?"

"Yes."

"You feel that you have had experience?"

"I know it."

"Experience as, _par exemple_, me?"

"Yes."

He looked at her and smiled, shaking his head.

"Oh, madame, you say that, not at all knowing