ects. Randall stood looking at her with a singular expression of
aversion on his listless face. But, after panting a few times, the woman
recovered her vivacity and began to ply him vigorously with exclamations
and questions, beaming the while with delighted interest. He answered
her like a schoolboy, too destitute of presence of mind to do otherwise
than to yield passively to her impulse. But he made no inquiries
whatever of her, and did not distantly allude to the reason of his
presence in Germany. As he stood there looking at her, the real facts
about that matter struck him as so absurd and incredible that he could
not believe them himself.

Pretty soon he observed that she was becoming a little conscious in her
air, and giving a slightly sentimental turn to the conversation. It was
not for some time that he saw her drift, so utterly without connection
in his mind were Ida and this comfortable matron before him; and when he
did, a smile at the exquisite absurdity of the thing barely twitched the
corners of his mouth, and ended in a sad, puzzled stare that rather put
the other out of countenance.

But the children had now for some time been whimpering for supper and
home, and at length Frau Stein rose, and, with an urgent request that
Randall should call on her and see her husband, bade him a cordial
adieu. He stood there watching her out of sight, with an unconscious
smile of the most refined and subtle cynicism. Then he sat down and
stared vacantly at the close-cropped grass on the opposite side of the
path. By what handle should he lay hold of his thoughts?

That woman could not retroact and touch the memory of Ida. That dear
vision remained intact. He drew forth his locket, and opening it gazed
passionately at the fair girlish face, now so hopelessly passed away. By
that blessed picture he could hold her and defy the woman. Remembering
that fat, jolly, comfortable matron, he should not at least ever again
have to reproach himself with his cruel treatment of Ida. And yet why
not? What had the woman to do with her? She had suffered as much as if
the woman had not forgotten it all. His reckoning was with Ida,--was
with her. Where should he find her? In what limbo could he imagine her?
Ah, that was the wildering cruelty of it. She was not this woman, nor
was she dead in any conceivable natural way so that her girlish spirit
might have remained eternally fixed. She was nothing. She was nowhere.
She existed only in th