o a hotel alone with a gentleman in broad daylight.
I caught sight of a reflection in a mirror of a tall, pale girl, with
heavy, tumbled auburn hair, a brown hat which suited her, and a severely
simple traveling-dress. I did not realize until I had gone past that it
was my own reflection which I had seen.

"Suppose we sit here," said he, going to a table in a comparatively
secluded window recess, partially overhung with curtains.

"How very kind and considerate of him!" thought I.

"Would you rather have wine or coffee, Fraeulein?"

Pulled up from the impulse to satisfy my really keen hunger by the
recollection of my "lack of gold," I answered hastily.

"Nothing, thank you--really nothing."

"_O doch!_ You must have something," said he, smiling. "I will order
something. Don't trouble about it."

"Don't order anything for me," said I, my cheeks burning. "I shall not
eat anything."

"If you do not eat, you will be ill. Remember, we do not get to
Elberthal before eight," said he. "Is it perhaps disagreeable to you to
eat in the saal? If you like we can have a private room."

"It is not that at all," I replied; and seeing that he looked surprised,
I blurted out the truth. "I have no money. I gave my purse to Miss
Hallam's maid to keep and she has taken it with her."

With a laugh, in which, infectious though it was, I was too wretched to
join:

"Is that all? Kellner!" cried he.

An obsequious waiter came up, smiled sweetly and meaningly at us,
received some orders from my companion, and disappeared.

He seated himself beside me at the little round table.

"He will bring something at once," said he, smiling.

I sat still. I was not happy, and yet I could not feel all the
unhappiness which I considered appropriate to the circumstances.

My companion took up a "Koelnische Zeitung," and glanced over the
advertisements, while I looked a little stealthily at him, and for the
first time took in more exactly what he was like, and grew more puzzled
with him each moment. As he leaned upon the table, one slight, long,
brown hand propping his head, and half lost in the thick, fine brown
hair which waved in large, ample waves over his head, there was an
indescribable grace, ease, and negligent beauty in the attitude. Move as
he would, let him assume any possible or impossible attitude, there was
still in the same grace, half careless, yet very dignified in the
position he took.

All his lines were lines of beauty, b