nour is an abstraction! If a man is not true to an
abstraction, he is a low type; but wait a minute!"

He put his hand to his side as though in pain.

The hedges were brightening with a faint pinky glow; there was no sound
on the long, deserted road, but that of their footsteps; suddenly a bird
commenced to chirp, another answered--the world seemed full of these
little voices.

Sarelli stopped.

"That white girl," he said, speaking with rapidity. "Yes! You do well!
get away! Don't let it catch you! I waited, it caught me--what happened?
Everything horrible--and now--kummel!" Laughing a thick laugh, he gave a
twirl to his moustache, and swaggered on.

"I was a fine fellow--nothing too big for Mario Sarelli; the regiment
looked to me. Then she came--with her eyes and her white dress, always
white, like this one; the little mole on her chin, her hands for ever
moving--their touch as warm as sunbeams. Then, no longer Sarelli this,
and that! The little house close to the ramparts! Two arms, two eyes,
and nothing here," he tapped his breast, "but flames that made ashes
quickly--in her, like this ash--!" he flicked the white flake off his
cigar. "It's droll! You agree, hein? Some day I shall go back and kill
her. In the meantime--kummel!"

He stopped at a house close to the road, and stood still, his teeth
bared in a grin.

"But I bore you," he said. His cigar, flung down, sputtered forth its
sparks on the road in front of Harz. "I live here--good-morning! You are
a man for work--your honour is your Art! I know, and you are young! The
man who loves flesh better than his honour is a low type--I am a low
type. I! Mario Sarelli, a low type! I love flesh better than my honour!"

He remained swaying at the gate with the grin fixed on his face; then
staggered up the steps, and banged the door. But before Harz had walked
on, he again appeared, beckoning, in the doorway. Obeying an impulse,
Harz went in.

"We will make a night of it," said Sarelli; "wine, brandy, kummel? I am
virtuous--kummel it must be for me!"

He sat down at a piano, and began to touch the keys. Harz poured out
some wine. Sarelli nodded.

"You begin with that? Allegro--piu--presto!

"Wine--brandy--kummel!" he quickened the time of the tune: "it is not
too long a passage, and this"--he took his hands off the keys--"comes
after."

Harz smiled.

"Some men do not kill themselves," he said.

Sarelli, who was bending and swaying to the music of a tara