ry busy looking out a word in my
lexicon.

"And what do you think of her now?"

"What I think? I have not yet found out the riddle. So much, however, I
know, that she is not a flesh and blood girl, but a water-nixie, a
Melusina, 'cold even to her heart,' and who knows whether her very
figure does not end like a mermaid's '_desinit in piscem_?'"

He sprang up. "I must beg you not to speak in such a tone!"

"Patience, old boy," said I. "Do not go and suppose that I think
lightly of her. A past history she has that is quite clear. But why
need there be any harm in it? Suppose there were only some misfortune,
a great grief, or a great love?"

"You think so?" and he looked at me anxiously and sadly.

"I should not be at all surprised," I continued, "if she, with those
precocious eyes and that wonderful composure, had already traversed the
agonies of hopeless love. Do not forget her Polish father. Polish girls
begin early both to excite and to feel passion. How the poor child ever
got into that fly-trap, God knows. But you and I together should find
it difficult to deliver her out of it."

After that followed a silent quarter of an hour, during which he turned
over my MS. poems.

"I should like to copy out this song," he suddenly said, reaching out a
page to me.

"What for?" asked I. "Bastel, I half suspect you want to pass it off as
your own."

"Shame upon you!" returned he with a deep flush, "_I_ give myself out
for a poet! But I have a tune running in my head; it is long since I
have composed anything."

"Look out something better and more cheerful. What could you make of
that feeble-minded whimper? That song is half a year old" (dated from
that 'olden time' that I could not myself distinctly remember!)

He had taken back the sheet, and was now bending over it, being
somewhat short-sighted, and singing in a low voice the following verses
to a simple pathetic melody:

"How could I e'er deserve thee,
By serving long years through;
Though thou wert fain to own me,
Most stedfast and most true.
Or what though high exalted,
Though glory were my meed:
Love is a free gift from above,
Desert it will not heed.

"Thou tree with head low bending,
Thy blossoms may prove vain;
Who knows if God will send thee
The blessing of his rain?
Thou heart by joy and anguish