t the impression she has made on me--"

"Come here under the gateway," said he. "We are blocking up the way,
and you speak so loud you will attract attention. You see I was right;
indeed I should have been surprised if it had not turned out thus. But
you will agree that it is impossible to go on. One or other must
retire."

"Very well," returned I, endeavouring to assume an inimical and dogged
expression. "One of us must retire. Only I do not see why it should be
I. Just because I am the younger by two stupid years, though as
advanced a student as yourself."

I had hardly spoken the hasty heartless words before I regretted them.
At that moment they sounded like a humiliating boast.

"Besides," I hastily added, "it does not signify so much which of us
takes precedence, as who it is she cares for. At present you and I seem
to have equally poor prospects."

"That is true," he said. "But none the less I cannot find it in my
heart to enter into a contest with you; and then you are the bolder,
the more fluent, I should give up the game beforehand if we were both
to declare our feelings for her: you know what I mean."

"If this be so," I rejoined, looking with artificial indifference
through the dark gateway into a garden where a lonely rose-tree
blossomed; "if you have not more confidence in yourself than this, you
cannot after all be so much in love as you suppose, and as I can fairly
say I am. I have spent a sleepless night" (I did not reckon those seven
hours snatched in a chair) "and a wasted day. And so I thought--"

I could not end my sentence. The pallor of his good, true-hearted face
shewed me how much more deeply he was affected by this conversation
than I, for whom indeed it had a certain romantic charm. I felt fond of
him again.

"Listen," said I, "we shall never get on this way. I see that neither
of us will retire of his own free will. Fate must decide."

"Fate?"

"Or chance if you prefer it. I will throw down this piece of money. If
the royal arms are uppermost, you have won; if the inscription--"

"Do so," he whispered. "Although it would be fairer--"

"Will you cry done?"

"Done!"

The coin fell to the ground. I stooped down in the dim light we were
standing in to make sure of the fact.

"Which is uppermost?" I could hear him murmur, while he leaned against
the door-post. He himself did not venture to look. "Bastel," said I,
"it cannot be helped. The inscription is uppermost. You understand