, and presently found myself
repeating many things that he had said. Before I ended I had even let
her hear of our midnight stroll about the place and our look at the
gabled room where we believed her to be sleeping. This pleased her.

"That is not unlike you," she remarked with charming complacency, "but I
never before heard of Jack's doing anything so poetic."

"Jack is not a man to write poems," said I, "but he is one of the men
poets write about. After you had gone up stairs last night Helen sang to
her father, and the words of one of her songs were Heine's: it reminded
me of Holt beneath your window."

"One of those German songs? I understand nothing but English."

"They have translated it, and it runs like this:

Silent the streets by night overtaken:
This house my darling's presence did grace;
But she the town has long forsaken,
Yet there stands the house in the selfsame place;
And there stands a man who upward is staring,
His hands hard wringing in outbursts of woe!"

I paused and looked into her face.

"That is not all of it?"

"No: I will tell you the rest some day."

"Did Jack 'wring his hands in outbursts of woe'?"

"Good Heavens, no! I presume we both stood with our hands in our
pockets: I was smoking a cigar myself. It is only in poetry that one may
be picturesque in one's grief now-a-days."

"Did you think of me when you stood there, Floyd?"

Her little fingers closed on the edge of my coat and she looked up in my
eyes. I smiled demurely. I was determined to be quite the master of
myself with Georgina. I had suffered too much from her in the past not
to be on my guard. Still, it was hard to resist the upturned face--the
face with which was associated all the passionate inspiration of my
early life--the face I had carried in my mind and heart through all my
wanderings, finding none to compare with it--the face which always came
with flash and quickness when I felt the warm desire and longing to love
somebody which youth must always know.

I kissed her.

She looked at me startled, and ran ten paces away and sat down upon a
rock.

"Upon my word!" she exclaimed, bursting into light laughter, "you have
learned pretty manners abroad!"

"I am so glad you like them," said I, going up to her.

"But I don't like them at all," she retorted, shaking her head. "You
remind me of a toy I used to play with years ago--a very pretty,
h