of the German word he could not think of, and she seemed
to be struck by this as a very original fashion of eliciting
information. On one occasion at the piano they heard the entrance
bell below clang, announcing a visitor, and Gard, hastening to
disappear upstairs, exclaimed:

"Wir muessen--wir muessen--_stopfen_!"

The word for stop would not come to him. Fraeulein blushed and
snickered and ran off to tell her mother about Herr Kirtley and his
German. He was frightened. What absurdity had he uttered? He got to
his dictionary as soon as he could and found he had said--We must
darn stockings!

The incident nearly always put Elsa in good humor. She doubtless
considered Yankees an odd folk. How could they expect to become
civilized with their rudimentary attainments? Must he not be seeming
to her a sort of freak?...

But, for the most part, she continued to hold him aloof, and he
concluded the reason lay in the mystery which shadowed her young
life and to which he could trace no clue. What could it frankly be
that sent her to her room and to Heine? The beginning of the answer
seemed to come at last in the form of a youth who suddenly soared in
at Villa Elsa.

Herr Friedrich von Tielitz-Leibach was a composer and a music
director. He was the son of a neighbor who had moved away, and the
musical Buchers doted on him as one with a shining future. Kirtley
had often heard them refer to Friedrich as to so many of their
friends of whom he knew nothing.

When Friedrich called, at very rare intervals, it was always a
wonderful day. The steady, stolid routine of the home became
perturbed, gladdened. He was a German of Hungarian extraction, and
the Magyar blood gave him a dash and sparkle. He was tall, very
thin, with the intellectual look that black-rimmed glasses produce.
His eyes harmonized in color with the black shock of tossing hair
that set off a distinguished appearance. And, like a traditional
votary of music, he wore a great black cloak swinging around him
with an operatic air, giving the impression that he was just going
to or coming from the theater.

Highly agitated, gilded with flattery, readily acquainted, he
bubbled over promptly in confidences and intimate allusions. He was
ever brimming with the freshest gossip of himself and his exalted
career; and his personal experiences, he assumed, were bound to be
unique and entertaining.

Making friends with everyone, he insisted on calling on Gard up in
the at