his being: "You love! Follow! Seek
her!" And under the sudden impulsion of this passion he arose and made a
few steps toward the curve of the path around which the girl and her
companions had disappeared. The absurdity of this hasty translation into
action of his desire halted him. Yes, his nerves must be in a bad way if
a casual encounter with a pretty woman--but was she pretty? He did not
return to his seat. He continued his stroll leisurely. Pretty! Not
exactly pretty--distinguished! Noble! Lovely! Beautiful! He smiled. Here
he was playing the praises of the unknown in double octaves. He did not
overtake her. She had vanished on the other side of the bridge, and in a
few minutes he found himself entering Alt-Aussee. It wore a bright
appearance, with its various-coloured villas on the lake shores, and its
church and inn for a core. The garden of this hotel he found to be
larger than he had imagined; it stretched along the bank and only
stopped as if stone and mortar had been too lazy to go farther.

Again he hesitated. The garden, the _restauration_--full of people:
women knitting, children bawling, men reading; and all sipping coffee to
a background of gossip. He remembered that it was the sacred hour of
_Kaffeeklatsch_, and he would have escaped by a flight of steps that led
down to the beach, but he was hailed. A company of a half-dozen sat at a
large table under the trees, and the host was an orchestral conductor
well known to Davos. There was no alternative. He took a chair. He was
introduced as the celebrated pianoforte-virtuoso to men and women he had
never seen before, and hoped--so rancorous was his mood--never to see
again. A red-headed girl from Brooklyn, who confessed that she thought
Maeterlinck the name of some new Parisian wickedness, further bothered
him with questions about piano teachers. No, he didn't give lessons! He
never would! She dropped out of the conversation. Finally by an effort
he swore that his head was splitting, that he must return to Ischl. He
broke away. When he discovered that the crowd was also bound for the
same place, he abruptly disappeared. It took him just two hours to
traverse the irregular curves of the lake on the Franz Carl Promenade,
and he ate his dinner in peace at the inn upon a balcony that projected
over the icy waters.

Davos decided, as he smoked a mild cigarette, that he would remain at
Alt-Aussee for the night. The peace of the landscape purified his soul
of its