r
quietly on Sunday evenings after having too much beer.

Presently the stranger rose and bowed to the Marches for good-by; and
as he walked down the aisle of trees in which they had been fitting
together, he seemed to be retreating farther and farther from such
Americanism as they had in common. He had reverted to an entirely German
effect of dress and figure; his walk was slow and Teutonic; he must be a
type of thousands who have returned to the fatherland without wishing
to own themselves its children again, and yet out of heart with the only
country left them.

"He was rather pathetic, my dear," said March, in the discomfort he knew
his wife must be feeling as well as himself. "How odd to have the lid
lifted here, and see the same old problems seething and bubbling in the
witch's caldron we call civilization as we left simmering away at home!
And how hard to have our tariff reach out and snatch the bread from the
mouths of those poor glass-workers!"

"I thought that was hard," she sighed. "It must have been his bread,
too."

"Let's hope it was not his cake, anyway. I suppose," he added, dreamily,
"that what we used to like in Italy was the absence of all the modern
activities. The Italians didn't repel us by assuming to be of our epoch
in the presence of their monuments; they knew how to behave as pensive
memories. I wonder if they're still as charming."

"Oh, no," she returned, "nothing is as charming as it used to be. And
now we need the charm more than ever."

He laughed at her despair, in the tacit understanding they had lived
into that only one of them was to be desperate at a time, and that they
were to take turns in cheering each other up. "Well, perhaps we don't
deserve it. And I'm not sure that we need it so much as we did when we
were young. We've got tougher; we can stand the cold facts better now.
They made me shiver once, but now they give me a sort of agreeable
thrill. Besides, if, life kept up its pretty illusions, if it insisted
upon being as charming as it used to be, how could we ever bear to
die? We've got that to consider." He yielded to the temptation of his
paradox, but he did not fail altogether of the purpose with which he
began, and they took the trolley back to their hotel cheerful in the
intrepid fancy that they had confronted fate when they had only had the
hardihood to face a phrase.

They agreed that now he ought really to find out something about the
contemporary life of Nurem