ternal arrangements. Has there, then, been
some mistake about the salary you are to receive?"

"What salary?"

"For teaching Miss Letty Estcourt?"

"Pah--the salary. Love does not look at salaries."

"That sounds magnificent. Did you say love?"

"For weeks past, all the time that I have taught the niece, she has
taken my flowers, my messages, at first verbal and at last written----"

"One moment. Of whom are we talking? I have met you with Miss Leech----"

"The governess? _Ich danke._ It is Miss Estcourt who has encouraged me
and led me on, and now, after calling me her _Laemmchen_, takes away her
niece and shuts her door in my face----"

"You have been drinking?"

"Certainly not," cried Klutz, the more indignantly because of his
consciousness of the brandy.

"Then you have no excuse at all for talking in this manner of my
neighbour?"

"Excuse! To hear you, one would think she must be a queen," said Klutz,
laughing derisively. "If she were, I should still talk as I pleased. A
cat may look at a king, I suppose?" And he laughed again, very bitterly,
disliking even for one moment to imagine himself in the role of the cat.

"A cat may look as long and as often as it likes," said Axel, "but it
must not get in the king's way. I am sure you can guess why."

"I have not come here to guess why about anything."

"Oh, it is not very abstruse--the cat would be kicked by somebody, of
course."

"Oh, ho! Not if it could bite, and had what I have in its pocket."

"Cats do not have pockets, my dear Herr Klutz. You must have noticed
that yourself. Pray, what is it that you have in yours?"

"A little poem she sent me in answer to one of mine. A little, sweet
poem. I thought you might like to see how your future wife writes to
another man."

"Ah--that is why you have called so kindly on me? Out of pure
thoughtfulness. My future wife, then, is Miss Estcourt?"

"It is an open secret."

"It is, most unfortunately, not true."

"_Ach_--I knew you would deny it," cried Klutz, slapping his leg and
grinning horribly. "I knew you would deny it when you heard she had been
behaving badly. But denials do not alter anything--no one will believe
them----"

Axel shrugged his shoulders. "Am I to see the poem?" he asked.

Klutz took it out and handed it to him. The twilight had come into the
room, and Axel put the paper down a moment while he lit the candles on
his table. Then he smoothed out its creases, and holding it close t