gotten to do, such as snuffing the candles or closing the door.

"Just let me hear your scale, will you?" she said patronisingly to Mrs.
Lautenschlager. The latter, nothing loath, stuck out her chin, opened
her mouth, and, for a short time, all other noises were drowned in a
fine, full volume of voice.

On their sofa, Madeleine and Maurlee sat in silence, pretending to
listen to Dove, who was narrating his journey. Madeleine was out of
humour; she tapped the floor, and had a crease in her forehead. As for
Maurice, he was in such poor spirits that she could not but observe it.

"Why are you so quiet? Is anything the matter?"

He shook his head, without speaking. His vague sense of impending
misfortune had crystallised into a definite thought; he knew now what
it signified. If Schilsky went away from Leipzig, Louise would probably
go, too, and that would be the end of everything.

"I represented to him," he heard Dove saying, "that I had seen the
luggage with my own eyes at Flushing. What do you think he answered? He
looked me up and down, and said: 'ICH WERDE TELEGRAPHIEREN UND
ERKUNDIGUNGEN EINZIEHEN.' Now, do you think if you said to an English
station-master: 'Sir, I saw the luggage with my own eyes,' he would not
believe you? No, in my opinion, the whole German railway-system needs
revision. Would you believe it, we did not make fifty kilometers in the
hour, and yet our engine broke down before Magdeburg?"

So this would be the end; the end of foolish dreams and weak hopes,
which he had never put into words even to himself, which had never
properly existed, and yet had been there, nevertheless, a mass of
gloriously vague perhapses. The end was at hand--an end before there
had been any beginning.

"... the annoyance of the perpetual interruptions," went on the voice
on the other side. "A lady who was travelling in the same
compartment--a very pleasant person, who was coming over to be a
teacher in a school in Dresden--I have promised to show her our lions
when she visits Leipzig: well, as I was saying, she was quite alarmed
the first time he entered in that way, and it took me some time, I
assure you, to make her believe that this was the German method of
revising tickets."

The break occasioned by the arrival of the beer had been of short
duration, and the audience was growing impatient; at the back of the
room, some one began to stamp his feet; others took it up. Furst
perspired with anxiety, and made repea