y, she has to
reach up to me when I kiss her.

She put my hair tidy with a gentle hand, and said, "You are not at all
what a _junges Madchen_ generally is, but you are very nice. Please
wish that my child may be a boy, so that I shall become the mother of a
soldier."

I kissed her again, and got out of it that way, for I don't wish
anything of the sort, and with that we parted.

Meanwhile the Grafin had been sitting very firmly in her carriage,
having refused all Frau Bornsted's entreaties to come in. It was
wonderful to see how affable she was and yet how firm, and wonderful to
see the gulf her affability put between the Bornsteds--he was at the
gate too, bowing--and herself.

And now here I am, and it's past eleven, and my window opens right on
to the Haff, and far away across the water I can see the lights of
Swinemunde twinkling where the Haff joins the open sea. It is a most
beautiful old house, centuries old, and we had a romantic
evening,--first at supper in a long narrow pannelled room lit by
candles, and then on the terrace beneath my window, where larkspurs
grow against the low wall along the water's edge. There is nobody here
except the Koseritzes, and Herr von Inster, and two girl-friends of
Helena's, very pretty and smart-looking, and an old lady who was once
the Grafin's governess and comes here every summer to enjoy what she
called, speaking English to me, the Summer Fresh.

It was like a dream. The water made lovely little soft noises along
the wall of the terrace. It was so still that we could hear the throb
of a steamer far away on the Haff, crossing from Stettin to Swinemunde.
The Graf, as usual, said nothing,--"He has much to think of," the
Grafin whispered to me. The girls talked together in undertones, which
would have made me feel shy and out of it if I hadn't somehow not
minded a bit, and they did look exactly what the Colonel had said they
were, in their pale evening frocks,--a nosegay of very delicate and
well cared-for hothouse flowers. I had on my evening frock for the
first time since I left England, and after the weeks of high blouses
felt conspicuously and terribly overdressed up in my bedroom and till I
saw the frocks the others had on, and then I felt the exact opposite.
Herr von Inster hardly spoke, and not to me at all, but I didn't mind,
I had so much in my head that he had talked about this morning. I feel
so completely natural with him, so content; and I think it is b