he gasped sharply; "we shall wake every one in the building
before we get through."

"It is very terrible--this night," he said quietly, and as he spoke he
found the match-box and there was light again. Then he picked up his
umbrella, and they returned down the three flights of stairs. In the
lower hall he stopped again.

"We _cannot_ separate like this," he said, laying his hand upon her arm;
"there are doings that one human cannot do. I must speak longer with you
before I go. It is not talking to be going ever up and down steps with a
wax taper. I know nothing of what I have say since we leave the cab, and
here, each minute, any one may enter. When we go out, come with me
across to the Hofbrauhaus, and there we will talk for but five minutes,
and then you shall return. Your skirt will go very well there. We shall
quickly return. _Dites 'oui'_."

The Hofbrauhaus is, as its name indicates, the cafe, or rather
_brasserie_, of the Court brewery. It is a curious place, the beer of
which is backed by centuries of fame, and Von Ibn told no lie when he
said that any skirt would do well there.

"Oh, I can't go," she said, almost crying in her distress and agitation.
"It will do no good; we just suffer more and more the longer we are
together. I am miserable and you are miserable, and it takes all my
strength to remember that if I yield we shall be very much more
miserable in the end. Let me get home!"

She unlocked the large _porte_ as she spoke, and he blew out the taper,
pushed it open, held it while she passed through, and then stayed its
slam carefully behind her.

Then there was the _porte_ of No. 5 to unlock and the taper to relight,
and three more staircases to mount.

"I shall go to-morrow morning," he said quietly and hopelessly, as they
went a second time upon their upward way. "I shall put all the force of
my will to it that I go. It is better so. _Pourquoi vous vexer avec mon
ardent desir pour vous?_"

Her heart contracted with a spasm of pain, but she made no reply.

"To meet again will be but more to suffer," he continued. "I touch at
the end of what I am capable to suffer. Why should I distress you for no
good to any one? And for me all this is so very bad! I can accomplish
nothing. The power dies in me these days. _Toute ma jeunesse est prise!_
I feel myself become old and most desolate. I am content that it is
good-bye here."

It seemed to her that her turn had come to falter, and fail to move, and