where he remained for several minutes, looking
out and saying nothing.

She dried her eyes quickly and quietly (only a foolish woman continues
to weep after the man has gone), and waited for him to turn. Finally he
did so.

"It is not raining once more," he said; "let us go out and walk far.
That will do you quite well; I cannot bear that you weep."

He added the last words in a lower tone, and coming close behind her
chair suddenly stooped.

She realized all in a flash where he was, what he was meditating, the
half-open door, and writhed quickly out of the chair and away.

"Why not?" he asked, looking after her unsmilingly. "It will do you no
hurt and me much good."

"I'm out of the habit," she said shortly, recollecting Jack's words on
that famous night of his arrival.

They were both on their feet, she by the window and he by the chair
which she had just left.

"Was your husband very _tendre_?" he asked.

She felt the corners of her mouth give way under the stressful shock of
this question. "I might say, 'I never tried him to see,'" she thought,
"but he _never_ would understand," and so there was an instant of
silence.

"Why do you smile?" he demanded, smiling himself.

"Because we don't call men 'tender.' We call meat 'tender' and men
'affectionate.'"

"But I _am_ tender," he affirmed.

"Are you? Well, you are younger than my husband and perhaps that
accounts for it."

He reflected, but did not appear to understand; finally he gave it up
for a bad job and said, changing to a less abstruse subject:

"We go to walk? yes?"

"Certainly; if you will wait while I have some proper boots found for
me."

"Yes, I will wait."

He came towards her.

"Oh, you had better go into the corridor and wait," she exclaimed
hastily. "I'll come in a moment."

He stopped short and smiled his irresistible smile.

"You are so madly queer. _Qu'est-ce que vous avez_? You scream always,
and yet I have not done nothing."

Then without another word he left the room.

When she was alone Rosina rang for her maid. As Ottillie knelt at her
feet, she frowned deeply, thinking how more than horrid it was that Jack
should have come, that she should be obliged to go, and that women may
not allow themselves to be kissed. Later she recollected that Jack was
in Vienna, that there was the half of October yet to be lived, and that
all disembodied kisses must of necessity have an incarnation yet to
come. And then she smiled once