er."

"_Ei!_ That is foolish. Those things--old times and all that--are the
very deuce for making one miserable. Strauss--he who writes dance
music--has made a waltz, and called it 'The Good Old times.' _Lieber
Himmel!_ Fancy waltzing to the memory of old times. A requiem or a
funeral march would have been intelligible."

"Yes."

"Well, you must not sit here and let these old times say what they like
to you. Will you come out with me?"

"Go out!" I echoed, with an unwilling shrinking from it. My soul
preferred rather to shut herself up in her case and turn surlily away
from the light outside. But, as usual, he had his way.

"Yes--out. The two loneliest people in Elberthal will make a little
zauberfest for themselves. I will show you some pictures. There are some
new ones at the exhibition. Make haste."

So calm, so matter-of-fact was his manner, so indisputable did he seem
to think his proposition, that I half rose; then I sat down again.

"I don't want to go out, Herr von Francius."

"That is foolish. Quick! before the daylight fades and it grows too dark
for the pictures."

Scarcely knowing why I complied, I went to my room and put on my
things. What a shabby sight I looked! I felt it keenly; so much, that
when I came back and found him seated at the piano, and playing a
wonderful in-and-out fugue of immense learning and immense difficulty,
and quite without pathos or tenderness, I interrupted him incontinently.

"Here I am, Herr von Francius. You have asked the most shabbily dressed
person in Elberthal to be your companion. I have a mind to make you hold
to your bargain, whether you like it or not."

Von Francius turned, surveying me from head to foot, with a smile. All
the pedagogue was put off. It was holiday-time. I was half vexed at
myself for beginning to feel as if it were holiday-time with me too.

We went out together. The wind was raw and cold, the day dreary, the
streets not so full as they had been. We went along the street past
the Tonhalle, and there we met Courvoisier alone. He looked at us,
but though von Francius raised his hat, he did not notice us. There
was a pallid change upon his face, a fixed look in his eyes, a strange,
drawn, subdued expression upon his whole countenance. My heart leaped
with an answering pang. That mood of the morning had fled. I had
"found myself again," but again not "happily."

I followed von Francius up the stairs of the picture exhibition. No one
was in t