ound he must have slept as he sat; for
when he lifted his head again, the hands of the clock had moved forward
by several hours.

X.

One morning towards the end of January, Krafft disappeared from
Leipzig, and some days later, the body of Avery Hill was found in a
secluded reach of the Pleisse, just below Connewitz. Some workmen,
tramping townwards soon after dawn, noticed a strip of light stuff
twisted round a snag, which projected slightly above the surface of the
water. It proved to be the skirt of her dress, which had been caught
and held fast. Ambulance and police were summoned, and the body was
recovered and taken to the police-station.

The last of his friends to see Krafft was Madeleine, and the number of
those interested in his departure, and in Avery's quick suicide, was so
large that she several times had to repeat her lively account of the
last visit he paid her. He had come in, one afternoon, and settling
himself on the sofa, refused to be dislodged. As he was in one of his
most ambiguous moods, she left him to himself, and went on with her
work.

On rising to go, he had stood for a moment with his hands on her
shoulders.

"Well, Mada, whatever happens, remember I was sorry you wouldn't have
me."

"Oh, come now, Heinz, you never really asked me!"

It was snowing hard that night, a moist, soft snow that melted as it
touched the ground, and Krafft borrowed her umbrella. As usual,
however, he returned before he could have got half-way down the stairs,
to say that he had changed his mind and would not take it.

"But you'll get wet through."

"I don't want your umbrella, I tell you.--Or have you two?"

"No; but I'm not going out.--Oh, well, leave it then. And may you reap
a frightful rheumatism!"

As he went down, for the second time, he whistled the ROSE OF SHARON:
she listened to it grow fainter in the distance: and that was the last
she or anyone had heard of Krafft. The following morning, his landlady
found a note on her kitchen-table, instructing her to keep his
belongings for four weeks. If, by that time, they had not been claimed,
she might sell them, and take the money obtained for herself. Only a
few personal articles were missing, such as would be necessary for a
hurried journey.--Of course, so Madeleine wound up the story, she had
never expected Heinz to behave like a normal mortal, and to take leave
of his friends in the ordinary way, and she was also grateful to him
for not