funny;"
then pressing her handkerchief against her rioting lips, "you will
forgive me for laughing, won't you?"

He did not smile in the least nor reply to her appeal for forgiveness;
he only waited until she was quiet, and then went on with increased
asperity veiled in his tone.

"You are to see him again, _n'est-ce pas_?"

"I never expect to."

"Really?"

"Really."

He stopped short and offered her his hand.

"Why?" she asked in surprise.

"Your word that you do not hope to meet him again."

She began to laugh afresh.

Then, still holding out his hand, he repeated insistently.

"Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again."

They were in one of the steep, narrow streets that lie beyond the
bridges and lead up to the city wall. It was still, still as the desert;
she looked at him, and his earnestness quelled her sense of humor over
the absurdity of the situation.

"What shall I say to you?" she asked.

"Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again."

"Certainly I do not expect to meet him again; although, of course, I
might meet him by chance at any time."

He looked into her face with an instant's gravest scrutiny, and then
some of his shadow lifted; with the hand that he had held out he
suddenly seized hers.

"You are truthfully not caring for him, _n'est-ce pas_?" he demanded.

Rosina pulled her hand from his grasp.

"Of course not," she said emphatically. "Why, I never saw the man but
just that once."

"But one may be much interested in once only."

"Oh, no."

"Yes, that is true. I know it. Do not laugh, but give me your hand and
swear that he does not at all interest you now."

She did not give him her hand, but she raised her eyes to the narrow
strip of blazing sky that glowed above the street and said solemnly:

"I swear upon my word and honor that I do not take the slightest
interest in that English gentleman who so kindly raised and lowered my
windows when I was on the St. Gotthard last week."

Von Ibn drew a breath of relief.

"I am so glad," he said; and then he added, "because really, you know,
it had not been very nice in you to interest yourself only for the
getting up of your window."

"He put it down too," she reminded him.

"That is quite nothing--to put a window down. It is to raise them up
that is to every one such labor on the Gotthardbahn. To let them down is
not hard; very often mine have fell alone. And much smoke came in."

Rosina walked on and lo