't suppose the sky in Germany could
ever be so clear."

"It seems to be doing its best."

"The flowers over there look like ghosts in the light," she said
dreamily.

"They're not. Don't you want to get your hat and wrap, and go over and
expose the fraud?"

"Oh," she answered, as if it were merely a question of the hat and wrap,
"I have them."

They sauntered through the garden walks for a while, long enough to have
ascertained that there was not a veridical phantom among the flowers, if
they had been looking, and then when they came to their accustomed seat,
they sat down, and she said, "I don't know that I've seen the moon so
clear since we left Carlsbad." At the last word his heart gave a jump
that seemed to lodge it in his throat and kept him from speaking, so
that she could resume without interruption, "I've got something of
yours, that you left at the Posthof. The girl that broke the dishes
found it, and Lili gave it to Mrs. March for you." This did not account
for Agatha's having the thing, whatever it was; but when she took a
handkerchief from her belt, and put out her hand with it toward him, he
seemed to find that her having it had necessarily followed. He tried to
take it from her, but his own hand trembled so that it clung to hers,
and he gasped, "Can't you say now, what you wouldn't say then?"

The logical sequence was no more obvious than be fore; but she
apparently felt it in her turn as he had felt it in his. She whispered
back, "Yes," and then she could not get out anything more till she
entreated in a half-stifled voice, "Oh, don't!"

"No, no!" he panted. "I won't--I oughtn't to have done it--I beg your
pardon--I oughtn't to have spoken,--even--I--"

She returned in a far less breathless and tremulous fashion, but still
between laughing and crying, "I meant to make you. And now, if you're
ever sorry, or I'm ever too topping about anything, you can be perfectly
free to say that you'd never have spoken if you hadn't seen that I
wanted you to."

"But I didn't see any such thing," he protested. "I spoke because I
couldn't help it any longer."

She laughed triumphantly. "Of course you think so! And that shows that
you are only a man after all; in spite of your finessing. But I am going
to have the credit of it. I knew that you were holding back because you
were too proud, or thought you hadn't the right, or something. Weren't
you?" She startled him with the sudden vehemence of her challenge: "If