intermission, the
convict's repose between his turns on the treadmill or the hour's
flouting of hard life that good wine brings. But it was impossible to
rear on stable foundations a Pleasure House of Pretence. With every
honest revelation of her heart Elsa shattered it. I can not blame her. I
myself was at my analytic undermining.

"You'll go on then?" I asked, with a laugh.

She laughed for answer. The question seemed to her to need no answer.
What, would she go back to Bartenstein--to insignificance, to dulness,
and to tutelage? Surely not!

"But I'm not very like the grenadier," I said.

She understood me and flushed, relapsing into uneasiness. I saw that I
had touched some chord in her, and I would willingly have had my words
unsaid. Presently she turned to me, and forgetting the gazers round held
out her hands to mine. Her eyes seemed dim.

"I'll try--I'll try to make you happy," she said.

[Illustration: "I'll try--I'll try to make you happy."]

And she said well. Letting all think what they would, I rose to my feet
and bowed low over the hand that I kissed. Then I gave her my arm, and
walked with her through the lane that they made for us. Surely we
pretended well, for somehow, from somewhere, a cheer arose, and they
cheered us as we walked through. Elsa's face was in an instant bright
again. She pressed my arm in a spasm of pleasure. We proceeded in
triumph to where Princess Heinrich sat; away behind her in the foremost
row of a group of men stood Wetter--Wetter leading the cheers, waving
his handkerchief, grinning in charmingly diabolical fashion. The
suitability of Princess Heinrich's reception of us I must leave to be
imagined; it was among her triumphs.

I fell at once into the clutches of Cousin Elizabeth, my regard for whom
was tempered by a preference for more restraint in the display of
emotion.

"My dearest boy," she said, pulling me into a seat by her, "I saw you.
It makes me so happy."

A thing, without being exactly good in itself, may of course have
incidental advantages.

"It was sure to happen. You were made for one another. Dear Elsa is
young and shy, and--and she didn't quite understand." Cousin Elizabeth
looked almost sly. "But now the weight is quite off my mind. Because
Elsa doesn't change."

"Doesn't she?" I asked.

"No, she's constancy itself. Once she takes up a point of view, you
know, or an impression of a person, nothing alters it. Dear me, we used
to think her obstin