ose up before them. He led her straight towards it.

"It will be wet," he said, in reply to the resistance in her arm; "but
we must be alone until I have finished all that I will to say. The trees
about us are best; we do not want cabs and streets just now."

She felt blindly, miserably wretched.

"I don't want to be married again," she declared in a voice that was
thick with more tears; and then she gathered her skirt well into her
hand and they plunged together into the darkness beyond.

The park was dusk with night's downfall and heavily misted by the day's
rain. Its paths, usually like hard gray cement, were a slippery mosaic
of clay and brown leaves, and on either hand arose a stockade-like
effect of tree-trunks knowing no light beyond. Wind there was none to
rustle the leaves, nor sound of bird or beast. An utter and complete
silence echoed the footfalls of these two who had come into the
solitude, to the end that they might search there for a solution of
themselves.

At the first forking of their way, Rosina said timidly:

"We must not go too far; it is so lonely, I am afraid."

Von Ibn stopped short, drew one of her arms behind his back, caught her
firmly to his bosom, and approached his face so close to hers that his
breath came and went against her lips.

"Are you frightened?" he asked.

"No," she said, wrapt in a sort of awe at the wonder of her own
sensations, "I have the utmost faith in you."

He loosed her instantly, and walked a little way off for a moment.

"I felt that you wished not," he said, bitterly, "and so I held myself
back. _Mon Dieu_, how good I am to you,--how cruel to myself,--and no
thanks."

Her heart was wrung.

"Oh, let us go back and go home," she cried; "all this is of no use. It
makes me glad to go away, because I see now that for me to go will be
better for you."

"And for you?" he asked, returning to her side.

"I said 'for you,'" she answered gently.

"Then not at all for you too?"--he laid his hand insistently upon her
arm,--"not at all for you too?" he repeated.

She was silent.

"It was there in Lucerne," he went on presently; "I knew it at
first--the first time I see you; and when I found that it was you
who had sent for me--I--I dared to hope that you too felt something,
even then, even so at the very first. Have you never known that
feeling?"--he exclaimed, his breath rising passionately, "has such
storm never swept within you?--and you have no other lif