."

Abruptly I turned to hide my pain, and began to ascend the stairs. With
a bound Von Gerhard was beside me, his face drawn and contrite.

"Forgive me, Dawn! I know that you are wisest. It is only that I become
a little mad, I think, when I see you battling alone like this, among
strangers, and know that I have not the right to help you. I knew not
what I was saying. Come, raise your eyes and smile, like the little
Soldatin that you are. So. Now I am forgiven, yes?"

I smiled cheerily enough into his blue eyes. "Quite forgiven. And now
you must run along. This is scandalously late. The aborigines will
be along saying 'Morgen!' instead of 'Nabben'!' if we stay here much
longer. Good-night."

"You will give me your new address as soon as you have found a
satisfactory home?"

"Never fear! I probably shall be pestering you with telephone calls,
urging you to have pity upon me in my loneliness. Now goodnight again.
I'm as full of farewells as a Bernhardt." And to end it I ran up the
stairs. At the bend, just where Frau Nirlanger had turned, I too stopped
and looked over my shoulder. Von Gerhard was standing as I had left him,
looking up at me. And like Frau Nirlanger, I wafted a little kiss in his
direction, before I allowed the bend in the stairs to cut off my view.
But Von Gerhard did not signify by look or word that he had seen it, as
he stood looking up at me, one strong white hand resting on the broad
baluster.

CHAPTER XVI. JUNE MOONLIGHT, AND A NEW BOARDINGHOUSE

There was a week in which to scurry about for a new home. The days
scampered by, tripping over one another in their haste. My sleeping
hours were haunted by nightmares of landladies and impossible
boarding-house bedrooms. Columns of "To Let, Furnished or Unfurnished"
ads filed, advanced, and retreated before my dizzy eyes. My time
after office hours was spent in climbing dim stairways, interviewing
unenthusiastic females in kimonos, and peering into ugly bedrooms
papered with sprawly and impossible patterns and filled with the odors
of dead-and-gone dinners. I found one room less impossible than the
rest, only to be told that the preference was to be given to a man who
had "looked" the day before.

"I d'ruther take gents only," explained the ample person who carried the
keys to the mansion. "Gents goes early in the morning and comes in late
at night, and that's all you ever see of 'em, half the time. I've tried
ladies, an' they get me wild,