y saw were
charmingly like serving-maids in the 'Fliegende Blatter'; when they went
ashore she challenged his silence for some assent to her own conclusion
that the Colmannia was perfect.

"She has only one fault," he assented. "She's a ship."

"Yes," said his wife, "and I shall want to look at the Norumbia before I
decide."

Then he saw that it was only a question which steamer they should take,
and not whether they should take any. He explained, at first gently and
afterwards savagely, that their visit to the Colmannia was quite enough
for him, and that the vessel was not built that he would be willing to
cross the Atlantic in.

When a man has gone so far as that he has committed himself to the
opposite course in almost so many words; and March was neither surprised
nor abashed when he discovered himself, before they reached home,
offering his wife many reasons why they should go to Europe. She
answered to all, No, he had made her realize the horror of it so much
that she was glad to give it up. She gave it up, with the best feeling;
all that she would ask of him was that he should never mention Europe to
her again. She could imagine how much he disliked to go, if such a ship
as the Colmannia did not make him want to go.

At the bottom of his heart he knew that he had not used her very well.
He had kindled her fancy with those notions of a Sabbatical year and a
Silver Wedding Journey, and when she was willing to renounce both he
had persisted in taking her to see the ship, only to tell her afterwards
that he would not go abroad on any account. It was by a psychological
juggle which some men will understand that he allowed himself the next
day to get the sailings of the Norumbia from the steamship office; he
also got a plan of the ship showing the most available staterooms, so
that they might be able to choose between her and the Colmannia from all
the facts.

IV.

From this time their decision to go was none the less explicit because
so perfectly tacit.

They began to amass maps and guides. She got a Baedeker for Austria and
he got a Bradshaw for the continent, which was never of the least use
there, but was for the present a mine of unavailable information. He
got a phrase-book, too, and tried to rub up his German. He used to read
German, when he was a boy, with a young enthusiasm for its romantic
poetry, and now, for the sake of Schiller and Uhland and Heine, he held
imaginary conversations with a b