e Central
European Depression the changes of the weather are very deliberate. If
rain is coming, the cautious receive full warning of its approach. The
clouds gather slowly, and disperse without haste when their work is
done. For some days it had been looking like rain. The leaves on the
trees of the Saski Gardens were hanging limp and lifeless. The whole
world was dusty and expectant. Cartoner left Warsaw in a deluge of rain.
It had come at last.

In the afternoon Deulin went to call at the Bukaty Palace. He was
ushered into the great drawing-room, and there left to his own devices.
He did an unusual thing. He fell into a train of thought so absorbing
that he did not hear the door open or the soft sound of Wanda's dress as
she entered the room. Her gay laugh brought him down to the present with
a sort of shock.

"You were dreaming," she said.

"Heaven forbid!" he answered, fervently. "Dreams and white hairs--No, I
was listening to the rain."

He turned and looked at her with a sudden defiance in his eyes, as if
daring her to doubt him.

"I was listening to the rain. The summer is gone, Wanda--it is gone."

He drew forward a chair for her, and glanced over his shoulder towards
the large folding-doors, through which the conservatory was visible in
the fading light. The rain drummed on the glass roof with a hopeless,
slow persistency.

"Can you not shut that door?" he said. "Bon Dieu! what a suicidal note
that strikes--that hopeless rain--a northern autumn evening! There was
a chill in the air as I drove down the Faubourg. If I were a woman I
should have tea, or a cry. Being a man, I curse the weather and drive in
a hired carriage to the pleasantest place in Warsaw."

Without waiting for further permission, he went and closed the large
doors, shutting out the sound of the rain and the sight of the streaming
glass, with sodden leaves stuck here and there upon it. Wanda watched
him with a tolerant smile. Her daily life was lived among men; and she
knew that it is not only women who have unaccountable humors, a sudden
anger, or a quick and passing access of tenderness. There was a shadow
of uneasiness in her eyes. He had come to tell her something. She knew
that. She remembered that when this diplomatist looked most idle he was
in reality about his business.

"There," he said, throwing himself back in an easy-chair and looking at
her with smiling lips and eyes deeply, tragically intelligent. "That is
more comfort