o old to sing now any more."

"Was she the greatest singer you ever heard?"

Wunsch nodded gravely. "Quite so. She was the most--" he hunted for an
English word, lifted his hand over his head and snapped his fingers
noiselessly in the air, enunciating fiercely, "KUNST-LER-ISCH!" The word
seemed to glitter in his uplifted hand, his voice was so full of
emotion.

Wunsch rose from the stool and began to button his wadded jacket,
preparing to return to his half-heated room in the loft. Thea
regretfully put on her cloak and hood and set out for home.

When Wunsch looked for his score late that afternoon, he found that Thea
had not forgotten to take it with her. He smiled his loose, sarcastic
smile, and thoughtfully rubbed his stubbly chin with his red fingers.
When Fritz came home in the early blue twilight the snow was flying
faster, Mrs. Kohler was cooking HASENPFEFFER in the kitchen, and the
professor was seated at the piano, playing the Gluck, which he knew by
heart. Old Fritz took off his shoes quietly behind the stove and lay
down on the lounge before his masterpiece, where the firelight was
playing over the walls of Moscow. He listened, while the room grew
darker and the windows duller. Wunsch always came back to the same
thing:--

"ACH, ICH HABE SIE VERLOREN,...EURIDICE, EURIDICE!"

From time to time Fritz sighed softly. He, too, had lost a Euridice.

XI

One Saturday, late in June, Thea arrived early for her lesson. As she
perched herself upon the piano stool,--a wobbly, old-fashioned thing
that worked on a creaky screw,--she gave Wunsch a side glance, smiling.
"You must not be cross to me to-day. This is my birthday."

"So?" he pointed to the keyboard.

After the lesson they went out to join Mrs. Kohler, who had asked Thea
to come early, so that she could stay and smell the linden bloom. It was
one of those still days of intense light, when every particle of mica in
the soil flashed like a little mirror, and the glare from the plain
below seemed more intense than the rays from above. The sand ridges ran
glittering gold out to where the mirage licked them up, shining and
steaming like a lake in the tropics. The sky looked like blue lava,
forever incapable of clouds,--a turquoise bowl that was the lid of the
desert. And yet within Mrs. Kohler's green patch the water dripped, the
beds had all been hosed, and the air was fresh with rapidly evaporating
moisture.

The two symmetrical linden trees were