to be--and I wasn't half
scrapping. I could see you weren't yourself."

"Indeed no! Would I," he struck himself gloomily upon the breast,
"would I intrude upon a young Fraeulein, and attack her protector? It
was that bottle--that last bottle.... I knew--at the time.... I
offer you my apology. I can do no more--unless you would have
satisfaction--no?"

"I guess I had all the satisfaction that was coming to me
yesterday," said Billy. "You've got a fist like a professional. But
there's no harm done.... Only you want to get over taking that last
bottle and offering presents to young ladies," he concluded, with an
accent of youthful severity.

The German nodded a depressed head. His melancholy, bloodshot eyes
fixed themselves sadly upon Billy. "Ach, it is so," he assented
meekly, "but when one has a sadness--" He sighed.

"Yes, of course, that's tough," agreed Billy sympathetically. "I
hate a sadness."

"Perhaps you have known--?" The other's eyes lifted toward him, then
dropped dispiritedly. "But, no, you are too young. But I--Ach!" He
added in his own tongue a line of which Billy caught _geliebt_ and
_gelebt_, and so nodded understandingly.

"That geliebing business is bad stuff," he returned, and again the
other tugged at his mustaches with a nervous hand and shook his big
blond head.

"She was to have met me here," he said abruptly. "She wrote--I was
to come quick--and then she comes not. That is woman, the _ewige
weibliche_." He scowled. "But, Gott, how enchantment was in her!"

Billy heard himself sigh in unison. The phrase suggested Arlee. And
the situation was not dissimilar. He felt a positive sympathy for
the big blond fellow in his pronounced clothes and glossy boots and
careful boutonniere.... He smiled in friendly fashion.

"She'll come along yet," he prophesied, "and if she doesn't, just
you go out after her. I wouldn't take too many chances in the
waiting game."

The German shook his head. His blue eyes swam with sentimental
moisture. "You do not understand," he said. "She went with
another--I must wait for her to come away. I have no address--so?"

"Well, that--that's different," stammered the young American. His
sympathy became cynical. Fishy business--but even a fishy business
has its human side. So presently he found himself gazing
interestedly upon the photograph the German displayed in the back of
his watch--the photograph of a decollete young woman with
provocative dark eyes and parted