; and you were going; and it's late. We will leave it
till to-morrow: that will be time enough. And if it is fine, we can go
out somewhere, and I'll tell you as we go."

It was a brilliant May afternoon: great white clouds were piled one on
the top of another, like bales of wool; and their fantastic bulging
roundnesses made the intervening patches of blue seem doubly distant.
The wind was hardly more than a breath, which curled the tips of thin
branches, and fluttered the loose ends of veils and laces. In the
ROSENTAL, where the meadow-slopes were emerald-green, and each branch
bore its complement of delicately curled leaves, the paths were so
crowded that there could be no question of a connected conversation.
But again, Louise was not in a hurry to begin.

She continued meditative, even when they had reached the KAISERPARK,
and were sitting with their cups before them, in the long, wooden,
shed-like building, open at one side. She had taken off her hat--a
somewhat showy white hat, trimmed with large white feathers--and laid
it on the table; one dark wing of hair fell lower than the other, and
shaded her forehead.

Maurice, who was on tenterhooks, subdued his impatience as long as he
could. Finally, he emptied his cup at a draught, and pushed it away.

"You wanted to speak to me, you said."--His manner was curt, from sheer
nervousness.

His voice startled her. "Yes, I have something to tell you," she said,
with a hesitation he did not know in her. "But I must go back a
little.--If you remember, Maurice, you wrote to me while I was away,
didn't you?" she said, and looked not at him, but at her hands clasped
before her. "You gave me a number of excellent reasons why it would be
better for me not to come back here. I didn't answer your letter at the
time because ... What should you say, Maurice, if I told you now, that
I intended to take your advice?"

"You are going away?" The words jerked out gratingly, of themselves.

"Perhaps.--That is what I want to speak to you about. I have a chance
of doing so."

"Chance? How chance?" he asked sharply.

"That's what I am going to tell you, if you will give me time."

Drawing a letter from her pocket, she smoothed the creases out of the
envelope, and handed it to him.

While he read it, she looked away, looked over the enclosure. Some
people were crossing it, and she followed them with her eyes, though
she had often seen their counterparts before. A man in a heavy
uls