buried her face still more closely in her hands.

He understood her--

The first signal of bell ringing sounded, which announced the closing
of the cemetery. Rudolf cast a hasty glance towards the entrance. His
wife and his brother-in-law, with whom he had appointed this place of
meeting, had just appeared there and were looking in every direction.
Rudolf glanced once more at the kneeling supplicant, then with a slow,
noiseless, faltering step he left the circle of flowers. He passed
down the wide avenue as though walking in a dream. When he had nearly
reached the gate he stopped and turned for the last time. The western
sky was steeped in the glow of sunset. A light mist was rising from
the damp ground, filling the paths of the cemetery and effacing the
outlines of the human beings and the monuments. Shrouded by these
floating vapours, Pauline's motionless dark figure stood forth in
strong relief against the bright sky, and seemed to be gradually
merging into a background of flaming crimson sunset.

Rudolf felt as if he were beholding his own youth fade and melt into
white cloudlets of mist.

II.

ANOTHER WAY.

"So we have met again, old fellow?" said Wolf Breuning, with heartfelt
pleasure, filling his friend Sigmund Friese's glass with wine.

"May it not be so long before the next meeting," cried Sigmund, as he
touched glasses and drank.

Wolf Breuning, a tall, handsome man, with bold blue eyes and a long,
parted beard, which seemed as though it was woven of threads of red
gold, was the manager of a chemical factory in Paris. Sigmund Friese,
shorter in stature, with a gentle, somewhat sensitive face, a short,
fair, curly beard, and hair aristocratically thin, which already
suggested a diplomatic bald head, was teaching mathematics in an
American university. Both were natives of South Germany, friends from
childhood, and had once plunged into the flood of life from the same
spot on the shore, but were afterward washed far apart.

After a long absence, Sigmund had come from Washington to Europe to
attend his sister's wedding, and availed himself of the opportunity, on
the way from Havre to Mannheim, to visit his friend Wolf in Paris. The
latter met him at the station and took him to his pleasant bachelor
lodgings in the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette. Now, scarcely an hour
later, the first overflow of mutual confidences had been exchanged, and
the friends were seated comfortably at dinner.

"Do you