and don't repeat them."

"But, my dear fellow, when there is a mystery about a man--"

"Mystery! Nonsense! What mystery is there in a man's choosing to have
private affairs? We didn't behave in this idiotic manner when you were
going on like a lunatic about Fraeulein Clara. We simply assumed that as
you didn't speak you had affairs which you chose to keep to yourself.
Just apply the rule, or it may be worse for you."

"For all that, there is something queer," he said, as we turned into the
restauration for dinner.

Yet again, some days later, just before the last concert came off, Karl,
talking to me, said, in a tone and with a look as if the idea troubled
and haunted him:

"I say, Friedel, do you think Courvoisier's being here is all square?"

"All square?" I repeated, scornfully.

He nodded.

"Yes. Of course all has been right since he came here; but don't you
think there may be something shady in the background?"

"What do you mean by 'shady'?" I asked, more annoyed than I cared to
confess at his repeated returning to the subject.

"Well, you know, there must be a reason for his being here--"

I burst into a fit of laughter, which was not so mirthful as it might
seem.

"I should rather think there must. Isn't there a reason for every one
being somewhere? Why am I here? Why are you here?"

"Yes; but this is quite a different thing. We are all agreed that
whatever he may be now, he has not always been one of us, and I like
things to be clear about people."

"It is a most extraordinary thing that you should only have felt the
anxiety lately," said I, witheringly, and then, after a moment's
reflection, I said:

"Look here, Karl; no one could be more unwilling than I to pick a
quarrel with you, but quarrel we must if this talking of Eugen behind
his back goes on. It is nothing to either of us what his past has been.
I want no references. If you want to gossip about him or any one else,
go to the old women who are the natural exchangers of that commodity.
Only if you mention it again to me it comes to a quarrel--_verstehst
du?_"

"I meant no harm, and I can see no harm in it," said he.

"Very well; but I do. I hate it. So shake hands, and let there be an end
of it. I wish now that I had spoken out at first. There's a dirtiness,
to my mind, in the idea of speculating about a person with whom you are
intimate, in a way that you wouldn't like him to hear."

"Well, if you will have it so," said he; but