ll dare repeat another of those foolish
self-reproaches, it shall be construed as a petition for further kisses.
Silence! he said to her, imagining that he had been silent, and enjoying
silence with a perfect quietude beyond the trouble of a thought of her
kisses and his happiness. His full heart craved for the infinity of
silence.

Another moment and he was counting to her the days, hours, minutes, which
had been the gulf of torture between then and now--the separation and the
reunion: he was voluble, living to speak, and a pause was only for the
drawing of most blissful breath.

His watch went slowly. She was beginning to drop her eyelids in front of
Tresten. Oh! he knew her so well. He guessed the length of her acting,
and the time for her earnestness. She would have to act a coquette at
first to give herself a countenance; and who would not pardon the girl
for putting on a mask? who would fail to see the mask? But he knew her so
well: she would not trifle very long: his life on it, that she will soon
falter! her bosom will lift, lift and check: a word from Tresten then, if
he is a friend, and she melts to the truth in her. Alvan heard her
saying: 'I will see him yes, to-day. Let him appoint. He may come when he
likes--come at once'

'My life on it!' he swore by his unerring knowledge of her, the certainty
that she loved him.

He had walked into a quarter of the town strange to him, he thought; he
had no recollection of the look of the street. A friend came up and put
him in the right way, walking back with him. This was General Leczel, a
famous leader of one of the heroical risings whose passage through blood
and despair have led to the broader law men ask for when they name
freedom devotedly. Alvan stated the position of his case to Leczel with
continental frankness regarding a natural theme, and then pursued the
talk on public affairs, to the note of: 'What but knocks will ever open
the Black-Yellow Head to the fact that we are no longer in the first
years of the eighteenth century!'

Leczel left him at his hotel steps, promising to call on him before
night. Tresten had not returned, neither he nor the advocate, and he had
been absent fully an hour. He was not in sight right or left. Alvan went
to his room, looked at his watch, and out of the window, incapable of
imagining any event. He began to breathe as if an atmosphere thick as
water were pressing round him. Unconsciously he had staked his all on the
rev