hort skirt."

"Why can you not?"

"Can't you see why?"

He walked off some ways to the side and gazed critically at her skirt.

"Yes," he said, rejoining her, "I can see why."

They were halfway across the bridge; he laid his hand on her arm and
stopped her.

"_Je vous ferai un propos_," he said eagerly; "we will take a car going
to the Ostbahnhof, and then we will leave it at a quiet place and seek a
quiet cafe and dine there."

"All right," she said; "but you must telephone to the _pension_, or they
won't know what has become of me."

"I can say that we are gone to the theatre," he suggested.

"They won't believe that because of this skirt."

"I will say we are gone too far and must send for a cab, and will eat
while we wait."

"I think that whatever you say will sound like a lie, so it doesn't
really matter."

"Then I will say that we do not return until after the supper, and
nothing else."

"Where will you telephone from?"

"From the cafe. Where would I telephone from?"

Rosina looked vaguely around in the darkness.

"We are only three or four blocks from the _pension_ now, are we not?"

He glanced about.

"It will be droll if we meet some one you know."

"Yes," she said coldly; "it will be very funny--like Mrs. Jones to-day."

"I am quite vexed when she came in," he said seriously; "why do people
come in like that?"

"We'll be just as thoughtless when we're her age," Rosina said
charitably. "I think myself that it is astonishing that so many young
people manage to get betrothed when there are so many old people to keep
coming in."

"Getting betrothed is very simple," said Von Ibn, "because always the
young girl is willing; but when she is a young widow and not willing,
that is what is difficult, and makes Mrs. Jones _de trop_."

She was obliged to laugh.

They were come to the Maximiliansstrasse, and a car was making its way
jerkily around the corners of the monument in the middle of the square.
It was a car for the Ostbahnhof, and full--very full.

"Let it go by," he said. "We will walk on and another comes in a
moment."

They let it pass, and wandered on towards the rushing river.

"You see why it was so foolish to be sad," he remarked, as they
approached the bridge; "here is the second time that you have seen the
Isar since you weep good-bye forever this afternoon."

"I didn't weep," she said indignantly.

"Did you not? I thought that you did."

They waited for another ca