om him and
insisting on being left to return to the Schweizerhof alone. But
something kept her impulse in check.

"He is a genius," she thought, "and they are entirely different from
other men," so she waited a moment and then spoke with the utmost
earnestness.

"Please tell me what it all means, monsieur; why are you like this?"

"Because,"--he cried with a sudden passionate outburst of
feeling,--"because you have lied to me!"

"Monsieur!" she exclaimed, in a shocked voice.

"You have done that," he cried; "you have lift your eyes to heaven and
swear that you were not interested in him, and then--" he stopped, and
put his hands to either side of his collar as if it strangled him.

She grew pale at the sight of his emotion.

"Is it that man still?" she asked.

"But naturally it is that man still! _Je ne me fache jamais sans
raison._"

"But what is there new to worry about him?"

She dared not contemplate smiling, instead she felt that the Englishman
was rapidly becoming the centre of a prospective tragedy.

Von Ibn scowled until his black brows formed a terrible V just over his
eyes.

"You do expect to see him in Zurich," he declared.

"But I told you that I didn't."

He laughed harshly.

"I know; but you betrayed yourself so nicely."

"How?"

"Just now, when I say where do you go from Constance, you quite forget
your part, and you say, 'I do not know where _we_ shall go next.' Yes,
that is what you say, 'We--_we_!'"

"And if I did."

"But of a surety you did; and I must laugh in my interior when I hear
your words."

"Oh," she exclaimed quickly, "you must not say that you laughed in your
interior, it isn't good English."

"Where must I laugh within myself?"

"We say, 'I laughed _to_ myself.'"

He gave another shrug, as if her correction was too petty a matter to
rightfully command attention at that crisis.

"This all does seem so foolish," she said, "the idea of again having an
explanation."

"I do not care for you to explain," he interrupted.

"Don't you want to know what I meant?"

"I know quite well what you meant."

"I meant my maid, she always travels with me."

He looked his thorough disbelief.

"Very pretty!" he commented.

She glanced at him and wondered why she was not disgusted, but instead
her heart swelled with a pity for the unhappiness that overlaid the
doubt in his face.

"Just think," she said softly, "our friendship is so very young, and you
are already so v