g in his
presence. This gave her some comfort, and there was consolation in the
fact that she had left them together without the least intention or
connivance, and now, no matter what happened, she could not accuse
herself, and he could not accuse her of match-making.

He said that his own sense of guilt was so great that he should not
dream of accusing her of anything except of regret that now she
could never claim the credit of bringing the lovers together under
circumstances so favorable. As soon as they were engaged they could join
in renouncing her with a good conscience, and they would probably make
this the basis of their efforts to propitiate the general.

She said she did not care, and with the mere removal of the lovers in
space, her interest in them began to abate. They began to be of a minor
importance in the anxieties of the change of trains at Halle, and in
the excitement of settling into the express from Frankfort there were
moments when they were altogether forgotten. The car was of almost
American length, and it ran with almost American smoothness; when the
conductor came and collected an extra fare for their seats, the Marches
felt that if the charge had been two dollars instead of two marks they
would have had every advantage of American travel.

On the way to Berlin the country was now fertile and flat, and now
sterile and flat; near the capital the level sandy waste spread almost
to its gates. The train ran quickly through the narrow fringe of
suburbs, and then they were in one of those vast Continental stations
which put our outdated depots to shame. The good 'traeger' who
took possession of them and their hand-bags, put their boxes on a
baggage-bearing drosky, and then got them another drosky for their
personal transportation. This was a drosky of the first-class, but they
would not have thought it so, either from the vehicle itself, or from
the appearance of the driver and his horses. The public carriages of
Germany are the shabbiest in the world; at Berlin the horses look like
old hair trunks and the drivers like their moth-eaten contents.

The Marches got no splendor for the two prices they paid, and their
approach to their hotel on Unter den Linden was as unimpressive as
the ignoble avenue itself. It was a moist, cold evening, and the mean,
tiresome street, slopped and splashed under its two rows of small trees,
to which the thinning leaves clung like wet rags, between long lines
of shops