like."

Marie rose and picked up her muff.

Marie's sordid little tragedy played itself out in Semmering. Stewart
neglected her almost completely; he took fewer and fewer meals at the
villa. In two weeks he spent one evening with the girl, and was so
irritable that she went to bed crying. The little mountain resort was
filling up; there were more and more Americans. Christmas was drawing
near and a dozen or so American doctors came up, bringing their families
for the holidays. It was difficult to enter a shop without encountering
some of them. To add to the difficulty, the party at the hotel, finding
it crowded there, decided to go into a pension and suggested moving to
the Waldheim.

Stewart himself was wretchedly uncomfortable. Marie's tragedy was his
predicament. He disliked himself very cordially, loathing himself and
his situation with the new-born humility of the lover. For Stewart was
in love for the first time in his life. Marie knew it. She had not lived
with him for months without knowing his every thought, every mood. She
grew bitter and hard those days, sitting alone by the green stove in
the Pension Waldheim, or leaning, elbows on the rail, looking from the
balcony over the valley far below. Bitter and hard, that is, during his
absences; he had but to enter the room and her rage died, to be
replaced with yearning and little, shy, tentative advances that he only
tolerated. Wild thoughts came to Marie, especially at night, when the
stars made a crown over the Rax, and in the hotel an orchestra played,
while people dined and laughed and loved.

She grew obstinate, too. When in his desperation Stewart suggested that
they go back to Vienna she openly scoffed.

"Why?" she demanded. "That you may come back here to her, leaving me
there?"

"My dear girl," he flung back exasperated, "this affair was not a
permanent one. You knew that at the start."

"You have taken me away from my work. I have two months' vacation. It is
but one month."

"Go back and let me pay--"

"No!"

In pursuance of the plan to leave the hotel the American party came to
see the Waldheim, and catastrophe almost ensued. Luckily Marie was on
the balcony when the landlady flung open the door, and announced it as
Stewart's apartment. But Stewart had a bad five minutes and took it out,
manlike, on the girl.

Stewart had another reason for not wishing to leave Semmering. Anita
was beautiful, a bit of a coquette, too; as are most pretty