I sent them to the little
shoemaker in the Wurzerstrasse and he soled them with rubber half an
inch thick."

"How much is an inch?" he asked.

"Twice the width of the rubber on my boots."

"No, but earnestly," he said, "is it a _centimetre_?"

"Two _centimetres_ and a half make one inch."

"You are droll, you English and Americans," he said, "you see nothing
but your own way. I have heard Englishmen laugh as to how yet the
Russians count their time different from the civilization part of the
world, and then all England and America do their measure and weight in
a manner so uneven that a European is useless to even attempt to
understand it. There was a man there at Lucerne,--what did he say to me?
'A mark is a quarter, is it not?' that is what he asked. '_Mon Dieu_,' I
said, 'if you cut it in four pieces it is four quarters, and if you
leave it whole it is whole,' then he looked to find me _bete_, and I was
very sure that he was, and we spoke no more."

Rosina laughed.

"He meant a quarter of a dollar," she explained.

"I know that. You do not really think that I did not know that, do you?
It was for his poor careless grammar that I find the American even more
_bete_ than for his ignorance. Do you believe that in my own tongue I
would speak as many of you speak yours? In my own tongue I am above
correction."

They were under the long arcade in front of the Regierung and in view of
the discussion which seemed impending she judged it advisable to say,
with a gesture:

"There is where we met Jack; you remember?"

Von Ibn looked quickly about.

"Yes, it was here," he said, and then he shuddered slightly. "It was
very well to laugh after, but that might have been so bad. I was angry
and I struck a fearful blow then; I have often think of it when we were
travelling together."

She grew thoughtful also, and her imagination found food among some
miserable possibilities which might have been.

So they came to the river banks and the Maximilianbrucke, and paused by
its rail.

The air was grand, fresh and moist, reminiscent of summer's breath while
also prophetic of winter's bite, and the Isar swept below them, carrying
its hurry of tumult away, away, far into the west, towards a wealth of
rose and golden sky. Between the glory and the water, in the middle
distance, lay a line of roofs stretching irregularly into the blackness
of their own shadows, and beyond them was the forest, to the fringing
haze of whose b