chin had fallen. He did not care to see it
like this: it made him uneasy. He stooped and touched her hand. She
started up, and could not remember where she was. She put both hands to
her forehead. "Maurice!--what is it? Have I been asleep long?"

He held his watch before her eyes. With a cry she sprang to her feet.
Then she sent him downstairs.

They were the only guests. They had supper alone in a longish room, at
a little table spread with a coloured cloth. The window was open behind
them, and the branches of the trees outside hung into the room. In
honour of the occasion, Maurice ordered wine, and they remained
sitting, after they had finished supper, listening to the rustling and
swishing of the trees. The only drawback to the young man's happiness
was the pertinacious curiosity of the girl who waited on them. She
lingered after she had served them, and stared so hard that Maurice
turned at length and asked her what the matter was.

The girl coloured to the roots of her hair.

"Ach, Fraulein is so pretty," she answered naively, in her broad Saxon
dialect.

Both laughed, and Louise asked her name, and if she always lived there.
Thus encouraged, Amalie, a buxom, thickset person, with a number of
flaxen plaits, came forward and began to talk. Her eyes were fixed on
Louise, and she only occasionally glanced from her to the young man.

"It's nice to have a sweetheart," she said suddenly.

Louise laughed again and coloured. "Haven't you got one, Amalie?"

Amalie shook her head, and launched out into a tale of faithlessness
and desertion. "Yes, if I were as pretty as you, Fraulein, it would be
a different thing," she ended, with a hearty sigh.

Maurice clattered up from the table. "All right, Amalie, that'll do."

They went out of doors, and strolled about in the twilight. He had
intended to show her some of the pretty nooks in the neighbourhood of
the house. But she was not as affable with him as she had been with
Amalie; she walked at his side with an air of preoccupied indifference.

When they sat down on a seat, on the side of the hill, the moon had
risen. It was almost at the full, and a few gently sailing scraps of
cloud, which crossed it, made it seem to be coming towards them. The
plains beneath were veiled in haze; detached sounds mounted from them:
the prolonged barking of a dog, the drone of an approaching train.
Round about them, the air was heavy with the scent of the sun-warmed
pines. Maurice had