n!" said the drummer, threateningly, and it may be that the tinkle
of the "ready" bell prevented something more than words between them,
for the drummer, at the time, was holding the bass-drum-stick. He
could have struck a mighty blow with it.

Just when the thought of leaving for America first began to grow in
Kreutzer's mind, it would be hard to say, but it took definite form
immediately subsequent to the London visit of a Most Exalted Personage
from Prussia. On the last day of this Most Exalted Personage's stay
Herr Kreutzer was enjoying, with his Anna, the long Sunday twilight in
Hyde Park. They often strolled there of a Sunday evening. The Most
Exalted Personage, being in a democratic mood and wishful of seeing
London and its people quietly, was also strolling in Hyde Park and met
the father and the daughter, face to face.

There was nothing, so far as Anna saw, about the stranger in plain
_mufti_, to make her father drop his head, pull down his hat and
hurry on, almost as if in sudden panic, dragging her by a slender
wrist clasped in a hand which trembled; but he did do all these
things, while the queer gentleman with the upturned moustaches (Anna
had no notion who he was) stopped stonestill in his stroll and gazed
after them with puzzled eyes in which a semi-recognition and a very
lively curiosity seemed growing.

"Who is he, father?" Anna asked, in English, which the father much
preferred to German from her lips and which she spoke with carefully
exact construction, but with charming rolling of the r's and hissing
of the s's. Her accent was much more pronounced than his, due,
doubtless, to the fact that while he went daily to his little corner
of the English world to earn their living, her seclusion was complete.
She saw few English save M'riar and the landlady--whose accent never
tempted her to imitation. "He seemed to know you," she went on. "He
seemed to wish, almost, to speak with you, but seemed to feel not
positive that you _were_ you."

Kreutzer gave her a quick glance, then seemed to pull himself together
with an effort. He assumed a carefully surprised air. "Who is he? Who
is who, mine liebschen?"

"The gentleman from whom you ran away?"

"I run!" said Kreutzer, doubling his demeanor of astonishment as if in
total ignorance of what she meant. "I run! Why should I run, my Anna?
Why should I run from anybody?"

The daughter looked at him and sighed and then she looked at him and
smiled, and said