eared to know a good thing when
they saw it, and rolled heavily downward, thus proving in their passage
the sincerity of both her nature and her color. Her companion drew her
hand within his own, pressing her fingers hard and fast. He did not say
one word, and finally she wiped her eyes, smiled through the mist that
hung upon her lashes, and said with simple directness:

"I don't want to go."

"I know."

"But they want me to, and I must."

There was another long silence, and then he said:

"You would not stay for me?"

His voice was wonderfully soft and persuasive, and for a single instant
she admitted the possibility into her mental future; but the instant
after it found itself driven violently forth again.

"No, no," she cried, forcibly, "I will not--I cannot. I _never_ want
another husband."

He hesitated one step in his gait and then went on as before.

"I do not say that all would be as you wished," he said slowly, with
pauses between, "or that I would live only to joy your life. That would
be very untrue. To be with you this week I put aside as it would not be
right for me to put aside again. These days I have throw away because I
will not say all in my after life that I did not try." He stopped and
his voice changed strangely. "I must try with all my strength," he
continued, drawing each breath as if in great pain; "I must, because to
me with my work it is what does not trouble, what gives me sympathy,
that is the most large of all. I have never marry because I know that so
well. How could I ever do my work if a single discord is there to
fret--fret--fret? As well ask me to play in concert on an untuned
instrument. To my ear the untune is agony; to my music, a discord in my
day is death to what would have been written that day. It is so that I
have come to expect to never marry. My music must be first, and how can
I risk--" he stopped his speech and his steps. She tried to move on but
he held her still. "But," he said, very low but with an accent the
intensity of which cut into her very heart, "but now I know that better
work would be if you were there; I should have greater force; I
should--I--if you loved--"

He trailed his speech helplessly, faltered, and was silent. The night
had come heavily down and they learned the fact by the discovery that
they could no longer look into the eyes of one another. The quiet little
street had led them down to the borders of the Englischergarten, and its
forest r