orning. Twice he packed fully--once
he ordered his travelling carriage, but countermanded it the following
day. What definitely he hoped, intended, resolved, he could not have
said. He was always thinking of Rozsi, he could not read the riddle in
her face--she held him in a vice, notwithstanding that everything about
her threatened the very fetishes of his existence. And Boleskey!
Whenever he looked at him he thought, 'If he were only clean?' and
mechanically fingered his own well-tied cravatte. To talk with the
fellow, too, was like being forced to look at things which had no place
in the light of day. Freedom, equality, self-sacrifice!

'Why can't he settle down at some business,' he thought, 'instead of all
this talk?' Boleskey's sudden diffidences, self-depreciation, fits of
despair, irritated him. "Morbid beggar!" he would mutter; "thank God I
haven't a thin skin." And proud too! Extraordinary! An impecunious
fellow like that! One evening, moreover, Boleskey had returned home
drunk. Swithin had hustled him away into his bedroom, helped him to
undress, and stayed until he was asleep. 'Too much of a good thing!' he
thought, 'before his own daughters, too!' It was after this that he
ordered his travelling carriage. The other occasion on which he packed
was one evening, when not only Boleskey, but Rozsi herself had picked
chicken bones with her fingers.

Often in the mornings he would go to the Mirabell Garden to smoke his
cigar; there, in stolid contemplation of the statues--rows of half-heroic
men carrying off half-distressful females--he would spend an hour
pleasantly, his hat tilted to keep the sun off his nose. The day after
Rozsi had fled from him on the stairs, he came there as usual. It was a
morning of blue sky and sunlight glowing on the old prim garden, on its
yew-trees, and serio-comic statues, and walls covered with apricots and
plums. When Swithin approached his usual seat, who should be sitting
there but Rozsi--"Good-morning," he stammered; "you knew this was my
seat then?"

Rozsi looked at the ground. "Yes," she answered.

Swithin felt bewildered. "Do you know," he said, "you treat me very
funnily?"

To his surprise Rozsi put her little soft hand down and touched his;
then, without a word, sprang up and rushed away. It took him a minute to
recover. There were people present; he did not like to run, but overtook
her on the bridge, and slipped her hand beneath his arm.

"You sho