w it," she replied, starting swiftly upward.

At the curve he stopped short and shut his eyes; she stopped too, three
steps farther on.

"Are you ill?" she asked anxiously.

He opened his eyes.

"I am most unhappy," he replied, and went on again.

So they came to the top at last.

"Here we are," she said, halting before the door; "give me the keys,
they work intricately."

He handed them to her in silence; she took them in her hand and tried to
smile.

"If you really go to-morrow," she said, as she put one into the lock, "I
hope--" her lips trembled traitorously and she could not go on.

"_Dites_," he whispered, coming nearer, "you do care a little, a very--"

He dropped the matches a second time.

"_That_ was never an accident," she cried, below her breath.

"It was not my intention," he declared; then he added, "you have only to
go in, I can very well find my way out in the dark."

But the door refused to open; instead, the key turned around and around
in the lock.

"I do believe," she said at last, in a curiously inexplicable tone,
"that we have come up the wrong stairs!"

A sort of atmosphere of blankness saturated the gloom.

"Is there another stair?" he asked.

"Yes; it goes from the other passage. It's the staircase to No. 5. I
think--indeed I'm sure--that we have come up the stairs of No. 6 with
the keys of No. 5."

"I have never know that there was another stair," he declared. "If you
had say that before I--" then a fresh thought led him to interrupt
himself. "It is a fate that leads us. We must go to the street again,
and we shall go to the American Bar and talk there."

The "American Bar" is the name which the Hotel Vierjahreszeiten has
elected to give to a small and curious restaurant situated in its
basement. There is nothing against the "American Bar" except its name,
which naturally leads American women to avoid it.

"I don't want to go anywhere," said Rosina, drawing the keys into her
hand; "it is no use. We are both all used up. I want to get home. And I
couldn't go anywhere if I wanted to in this skirt."

"It is always that skirt," he cried angrily; "that my heart breaks
to-night is nothing,--only ever I must hear of your skirt."

"Oh, where _are_ the matches?" she said nervously; "we must find them
somehow."

He stooped to institute another search, and the umbrella slipped from
his hand; it struck the floor with a noise that echoed from the attic to
the cellar.

"Oh!" s