"It was a happy day, then, yesterday?" he asked quickly.

"Yes--that is, it ought to have been, and probably would have been
if--if I hadn't been tired."

"But the others--the new arrivals--they must have been happy?"

"Yes--oh yes--" said Anna, hesitating, "I think so. Fraeulein Kuhraeuber
was, I am sure, at intervals. I think the other two would have been if
they hadn't had a journey."

"By the way, do you remember what I said yesterday about the Elmreichs?"

"Yes, I do. You said horrid things." Her voice changed.

"About a Baron Elmreich. But he had a sister who made a hash of her
life. I saw her once or twice in Berlin. She was dancing at the
Wintergarten, and under her own name."

"Poor thing. But it doesn't interest me."

"Don't get angry yet."

"But it doesn't interest me. And why shouldn't she dance? I knew several
people who ended by dancing at London Wintergartens."

"You admit, then, that it is an end?"

"It is hardly a beginning," conceded Anna.

"She was so amazingly like your baroness would be if she painted and
wore a wig----"

"That you are convinced they must be sisters. Thank you. Now what do you
suppose is the good of telling me that?" And she stood still and faced
him, her eyes flashing.

Do what he would, Axel could not help smiling at her wrath. It was the
wrath of a mother whose child has been hurt by someone on purpose, "I
wish," he said, "that you would not be so angry when I tell you things
that might be important for you to know. If your baroness is really the
sister of the dancing baroness----"

"But she is not. She told me last night that she has no brothers and
sisters. And she wrote it in the letters before she came. Do you think
it is a praiseworthy occupation for a man, doing his best to find out
disgraceful things about a very poor and very helpless woman?"

"No, I do not," said Axel decidedly. "Under any other circumstances I
would leave the poor lady to take her chance. But do consider," he said,
following her, for she had begun to walk on quickly again, "do consider
your unusual position. You are so young to be living away from your
friends, and so young and inexperienced to be at the head of a home for
homeless women--you ought to be quite extraordinarily particular about
the antecedents of the people you take in. It would be most unpleasant
if it got about that they were not respectable."

"But they are respectable," said Anna, looking straight before her.