g persons,
come of sturdy English breeds, fined down by that in this climate which
has taken the coarseness of line and feature out of so many of our
broods, and has made more than one English painter regret that the
Vandyke faces had crossed the ocean to return no more.

Schmidt and I looked out a moment into the long vista where, between the
rose-boughs bending from either wall under the apricot, we could see the
gray silvery shimmer of the woman's dress, and beyond it, passing to and
fro, the broad shoulders of the ex-captain.

"Come," I said, "walk down with me to the wharf."

"Yet leave me," he returned. "I shall wisely do to sit here on the step
over the council-fire of my pipe. Besides, when there are not markets
and flowers, and only a straight-down, early-afternoon sun, I shall find
it a more noble usage of time to see of my drama another scene. The
actors are good;" and he pointed with his pipe-stem down to the garden.
"And this," he said, "is the mute chorus of the play," indicating a
kitten which had made prey of the grand-dame's ball of worsted, and was
rolling it here and there with delight.

"But," I answered, "it is not right or decent to spy upon others'
actions."

"For right!" he said. "Ach! what I find right to me is my right; and for
decent, I understand you not. But if I tell you what is true, I find my
pleasure to sit here and see the maiden when at times the winds pull up
the curtain of the leaves."

"Well! well!" said I, for most of the time he was not altogether plain
as to what he meant, as when he spoke of the cat as a chorus--"Well!
well! you will go out with me on the water at sundown?"

"That may be," he answered; and I went away.

I have observed since then, in the long life I have lived, that the
passion called love, when it is a hopeless one, acts on men as ferments
do on fluids after their kind--turning some to honest wine and some to
vinegar. With our stout little German all trials seemed to be of the
former use, so that he took no ill from those hurts and bruises which
leave other men sore and tender. Indeed, he talked of Mistress White to
me, or even to Wholesome, whom he much embarrassed, in a calm,
half-amused way, as of a venture which he had made, and, having failed,
found it pleasant to look back upon as an experience not altogether to
be regretted. We none of us knew until much later that it was more than
a mere fancy for a woman who was altogether so sweet and winsome