ght be
made to understand. I haven't been a newspaper reporter all these
years without acquiring a golden gift of persuasiveness. Perhaps--who
knows?--we may meet again in Vienna. Stranger things have happened."

Frau Nirlanger shook her head with a little hopeless sigh. "You do not
know Vienna; you do not know the iron strength of caste, and custom and
stiff-necked pride. I am dead in Vienna. And the dead should rest in
peace."

It was late in the afternoon when Von Gerhard and I turned the corner
which led to the building that held the Post. I had saved that for the
last.

"I hope that heaven is not a place of golden streets, and twanging harps
and angel choruses," I said, softly. "Little, nervous, slangy, restless
Blackie, how bored and ill at ease he would be in such a heaven! How
lonely, without his old black pipe, and his checked waistcoats, and
his diamonds, and his sporting extra. Oh, I hope they have all those
comforting, everyday things up there, for Blackie's sake."

"How you grew to understand him in that short year," mused Von Gerhard.
"I sometimes used to resent the bond between you and this little Blackie
whose name was always on your tongue."

"Ah, that was because you did not comprehend. It is given to very few
women to know the beauty of a man's real friendship. That was the bond
between Blackie and me. To me he was a comrade, and to him I was a
good-fellow girl--one to whom he could talk without excusing his pipe
or cigarette. Love and love-making were things to bring a kindly, amused
chuckle from Blackie."

Von Gerhard was silent. Something in his silence held a vague irritation
for me. I extracted a penny from my purse, and placed it in his hand.

"I was thinking," he said, "that none are so blind as those who will not
see."

"I don't understand," I said, puzzled.

"That is well," answered Von Gerhard, as we entered the building. "That
is as it should be." And he would say nothing more.

The last edition of the paper had been run off for the day. I had
purposely waited until the footfalls of the last departing reporter
should have ceased to echo down the long corridor. The city room was
deserted except for one figure bent over a pile of papers and proofs.
Norberg, the city editor, was the last to leave, as always. His desk
light glowed in the darkness of the big room, and his typewriter alone
awoke the echoes.

As I stood in the doorway he peered up from beneath his green eye-shade,
a