ncredible fondness to her, saw her listening with wonder in her eyes.

At still other moments, he was ready to renounce every hope, if, by
doing so, he could add jot or tittle to her happiness.

The further he spun himself into his dreams, however, and the better he
learnt to know her in imagination, the harder it grew to take the first
step towards realising his wishes. In those few, brief days, when he
hugged her name to him as a talisman, he waited cheerfully for
something to happen, something unusual, that would bring him to her
notice--a dropped handkerchief, a seat vacated for her at a concert,
even a timely accident. But as day after day went by, in eventless
monotony, he began to cast about him for human aid. From Dove, his
daily companion, Dove of the outstretched paws of continual help, he
now shrank away. Miss Martin was not to be spoken to except in Dove's
company. There was only one person who could assist him, if she would,
and that was Madeleine Wade. He called to mind the hearty invitation
she had given him, and reproached himself for not having taken
advantage of it.

One afternoon, towards six o'clock, he rang the bell of her lodgings in
the MOZARTSTRASSE. This was a new street, the first blocks of which
gave directly on the Gewandhaus square; but, at the further end, where
she lived, a phalanx of redbrick and stucco fronts looked primly across
at a similar line. In the third storey of one of these houses,
Madeleine Wade had a single, large room, the furniture of which was so
skilfully contrived, that, by day, all traces of the room's double
calling were obliterated.

As he entered, on this first occasion, she was practising at a grand
piano which stood before one of the windows. She rose at once, and,
having greeted him warmly, made him sit down among the comfortable
cushions that lined the sofa. Then she took cups and saucers from a
cupboard in the wall, and prepared tea over a spirit-lamp. He soon felt
quite at home with her, and enjoyed himself so well that many such
informal visits followed.

But the fact was not to be denied: it was her surroundings that
attracted him, rather than she herself. True, he found her frankness
delightfully "refreshing," and when he spoke of her, it was as of an
"awfully good sort," "a first-class girl"; for Madeleine was invariably
lively, kind and helpful. At the same time, she was without doubt a
trifle too composed, too sure of herself; she had too keen an eye