. Louise was there, too, just before
him, and, from the first minute he saw her, he couldn't take his eyes
off her--others who were by say, too, he seemed perfectly fascinated.
No one can stare as rudely as Schilsky, and he ended by making her so
uncomfortable that she couldn't bear it any longer, and went out of the
hall. He after her, and it didn't take him an hour to find out all
about her. The next evening, at an ABEND, they were both there again it
was just like Louise to go!--and the same thing was repeated. She left
again before it was over, he followed, and this time found her in one
of the side corridors; and there--mind you, without a single word
having passed between them!--he took her in his arms and kissed her,
kissed her soundly, half a dozen times--though they had never once
spoken to each other: he boasts of it to this day. That same
evening----"

"Don't, Madeleine--please, don't say any more! I don't care to hear
it," broke in Maurice. He had flushed to the roots of his hair, at some
points of resemblance to his own case, then grown pale again, and now
he waved his arm meaninglessly in the air. "He is a scoundrel,
a--a----" But he recognised that he could not condemn one without the
other, and stopped short.

"My dear boy, if I don't tell you, other people will. And at least you
know I mean well by you. Besides," she went on, not without a touch of
malice as she eyed him sitting there, spoiling the leaves of a book.
"Besides, I may as well show you, how you have to treat Louise, if you
want to make an impression on her. You call him a scoundrel, but what
of her? Believe me, Maurice," she said more seriously, "Louise is not a
whit too good for him; they were made for each other. And of course he
will marry her eventually, for the sake of her, money "--here she
paused and looked deliberately at him--"if not for her own."

This time there was no mistaking the meaning of her words.

"Madeleine!"

He rose from his seat with such force that the table tilted.

But Madeleine did not falter. "I told you already, you know, that
Louise doesn't care what is said about her. As soon as this unfortunate
affair began, she threw up the rooms she was in at the time, and moved
nearer the TALSTRASSE--where he lives. Rumour has it also that she
provided herself with an accommodating landlady, who can be blind and
deaf when necessary."

"How CAN you repeat such atrocious scandal?"

He stared at her, in incredulous