oyed yourself?"

"H'm--well--yes and no. And you, Adelaide?"

"I never enjoy myself now," she replied, very gently. "I am getting used
to that, I think."

She clasped her jeweled hands and stood by the lamp, whose calm light
lighted her calm face, showing it wasted and unutterably sad.

Something--a terror, a shrinking as from a strong menacing hand--shook
me.

"Are you ill, Adelaide?" I cried.

"No. Good-night, dear May. _Schlaf' wohl_, as they say here."

To my unbounded astonishment, she leaned forward and gave me a gentle
kiss; then, still holding my hand, asked: "Do you still say your
prayers, May?"

"Sometimes."

"What do you say?"

"Oh! the same that I always used to say; they are better than any I can
invent."

"Yes. I never do say mine now. I rather think I am afraid to begin
again."

"Good-night, Adelaide," I said, inaudibly; and she loosed my hand.

At the door I turned. She was still standing by the lamp; still her face
wore the same strange, subdued look. With a heart oppressed by new
uneasiness, I left her.

It must have been not till toward dawn that I fell into a sleep, heavy,
but not quiet--filled with fantastic dreams, most of which vanished as
soon as they had passed my mind. But one remained. To this day it is as
vivid before me, as if I had actually lived through it.

Meseemed again to be at the Grafenbergerdahl, again to be skating, again
rescued--and by Eugen Courvoisier. But suddenly the scene changed; from
a smooth sheet of ice, across which the wind blew nippingly, and above
which the stars twinkled frostily, there was a huge waste of water which
raged, while a tempest howled around--the clear moon was veiled, all was
darkness and chaos. He saved me, not by skating with me to the shore,
but by clinging with me to some floating wood until we drove upon a bank
and landed. But scarcely had we set foot upon the ground, than all was
changed again. I was alone, seated upon a bench in the Hofgarten, on a
spring afternoon. It was May; the chestnuts and acacias were in full
bloom, and the latter made the air heavy with their fragrance. The
nightingales sung richly, and I sat looking, from beneath the shade of
a great tree, upon the fleeting Rhine, which glided by almost past my
feet. It seemed to me that I had been sad--so sad as never before. A
deep weight appeared to have been just removed from my heart, and yet so
heavy had it been that I could not at once recover from its pressur