aid earnestly. "Every one knows that you didn't
have a fair show first time. Your husband was--Well, you know what he
was."

"I should say that I did know what he was."

"I always wondered if you just wanted to get your hands on a big
establishment."

"Oh, what makes you say such things? You know that I was desperately in
love with him--as much so as a girl can be."

"Do you feel anything like it again now?"

She shook her head.

"No, indeed; I feel that I may get tired of monsieur any day."

They turned down towards the Ludwigsstrasse and Rosina appeared to be
thinking deeply. At last she spoke, and her accents were firm as
granite.

"I do not believe that I ever _could_ marry again."

Jack shrugged his shoulders.

"There's no string on you," he declared lightly.

* * * * *

The next morning, as the lady was stirring her whipped cream into her
chocolate, Ottillie entered with a note:

"DEAR ROSINA,--Von Ibn and I are leaving for the Tagernsee by
the early train. Think we'll be gone four or five days.

"Always yours,
"JACK."

Chapter Eleven

It was three o'clock on the last day of September, and the last day of
September had been a very rainy one. Little draggled sparrows quarrelled
on the black asphalt of the Maximiliansstrasse because it was wet and
they came in for their share of the consequent ill-humor; all the cabs
and cabmen and cab-horses were waterproofed to the fullest possible
extent; all the cocks' plumes in the forlorn green hats of the forlorn
street-sweeping women hung dolefully and dejectedly down their backs.
People coming to the Schauspielhaus lowered their umbrellas at the
entrance and scooted in out of the drizzle; people coming out of the
Schauspielhaus raised their umbrellas and slopped away through the
universal damp and spatters.

All of which but served to deepen the already deep melancholy and
_ennui_ of Rosina, who leaned in her window across the way, staring upon
the outer world with an infinite sense of its pitiful inadequacy to meet
her present wishes, and a most profound regret that her cousin had ever
crossed the ocean on her account.

For they had not returned from the Tagernsee. On the contrary the
expedition had stretched to other "sees," to the Herrn-Chiemsee, to
Salzburg, and now she held in her hand a hastily pencilled scrawl,
brought by the two o'clock post, which said:

"Ho for Vienna. Always