nd now, when you know everything, and can no more be deceived, are you
so most happy?"

"I do not know," she said slowly.

"How have you lost your faith?" he inquired; "what in especial can no
more deceive you?"

"I don't believe in men," she declared; "I don't believe in anything
that they say, nor in anything that they promise. And I don't believe
one bit in love!"

The man stopped by an empty bench.

"We have walked so long," he remarked parenthetically; and she sat down,
parenthetically also, so to speak.

"That is sad," he said, digging in the gravel with his cane, "not to
believe in love, or in the truth of a man! and you are a woman, too!
Then there is no more truth and love for you."

Rosina felt disheartened. A ready acquiescence in her views is always
discouraging to a woman. What is the use of having views, if they are
just tamely agreed to at once?

"I think perhaps men really mean what they say when they say it," she
began; "but, oh dear, they can't stick to it afterwards. Why, my husband
told me that my lightest wish should be his law, and then what do you
think he did?"

"He did perhaps kiss you."

"No, he went and bought a monkey!"

"What is a monkey?"

"Don't you know what a monkey is?"

"If I know I will not trouble you to ask."

"_C'est un singe,--affe_; now you know."

"Oh, yes; I was thinking of a monk, and of how one told me that you had
them not with you."

Then he scraped gravel for a long time, while her mind wandered through
a vista of monks and monkeys, and finally, entering the realm of the
present day, paused over the dream of a hat which she had seen that
morning in the Theatinerstrasse, a hat with a remarkably clever
arrangement of one buckle between two wings; it was in the store that
faced--

"I am an atheist," said her companion, rising abruptly from his seat.

"Apropos of what?" she asked, decidedly startled, but rising
too,--"apropos of the monkey?"

"_Comment?_" he said blankly.

"Nothing, nothing!" quickly.

They walked on slowly among the shadows which were beginning to gather
beneath the trees; after a while he spoke again.

"I tell you just now that I am an atheist, and that is very true. Now I
will make you a proposal and you shall see how serious I mean. I will
change myself and believe in God, if you will change yourself and
believe once more in men."

"Can you believe in God or not just as you please?" she asked
wonderingly.

"I am the maste