me that your mental
faculties are under some slight cloud. There is a vacant look in your
usually radiant eyes; a want of intelligence in the curve of your rosy
lips--"

"Eugen! Stop that string of fantastic rubbish! Where have you been, and
what have you been doing?"

"I have not deserved that from you. Haven't I been telling you all this
time where I have been and what I have been doing? There is a brutality
in your behavior which is to a refined mind most lamentable."

"But where have you been, and what have you done?"

"Another time, _mein lieber_--another time!"

With this misty promise I had to content myself. I speculated upon the
subject for that evening, and came to the conclusion that he had
invented the whole story, to see whether I would believe it (for we had
all a reprehensible habit of that kind), and very soon the whole
circumstance dropped from my memory.

On the following morning I had occasion to go to the public eye
hospital. Eugen and I had interested ourselves to procure a ticket for
free, or almost free, treatment as an out-patient for a youth whom we
knew--one of the second violins--whose sight was threatened, and who,
poor boy, could not afford to pay for proper treatment. Eugen being
busy, I went to receive the ticket.

It was the first time I had been in the place. I was shown into a room
with the light somewhat obscured, and there had to wait some few
minutes. Every one had something the matter with his or her eyes--at
least so I thought, until my own fell upon a girl who leaned, looking a
little tired and a little disappointed, against a tall desk at one side
of the room.

She struck me on the instant as no feminine appearance had ever struck
me before. She, like myself, seemed to be waiting for some one or
something. She was tall and supple in figure, and her face was girlish
and very innocent-looking; and yet, both in her attitude and countenance
there was a little pride, some hauteur. It was evidently natural to her,
and sat well upon her. A slight but exquisitely molded figure, different
from those of our stalwart Elberthaler _Maedchen_--finer, more refined
and distinguished, and a face to dream of. I thought it then, and I say
it now. Masses, almost too thick and heavy, of dark auburn hair, with
here and there a glint of warmer hue, framed that beautiful face--half
woman's, half child's. Dark-gray eyes, with long dark lashes and brows;
cheeks naturally very pale, but sensitiv