might have been taken out of Ida's own
face. As may be supposed, he was thoroughly disgusted to be reminded of
that sweet girlish vision by this broadly moulded, comfortable-looking
matron. His romantic mood was scattered for that evening at least, and
he knew he should not get the prosaic suggestions of the unfortunate
resemblance out of his mind for a week at least. It would torment him as
a humorous association spoils a sacred hymn.

He bowed with rather an ill grace, and was about to retire, when a
certain peculiar turn of the neck, as the lady acknowledged his salute,
caught his eye and turned him to stone. Good God! this woman was Ida!

He stood there in a condition of mental paralysis. The whole fabric of
his thinking and feeling for months of intense emotional experience had
instantly been annihilated, and he was left in the midst of a great void
in his consciousness out of touching-reach of anything. There was no
sharp pang, but just a bewildered numbness. A few filaments only of
the romantic feeling for Ida that filled his mind a moment before
still lingered, floating about it, unattached to anything, like vague
neuralgic feelings in an amputated stump, as if to remind him of what
had been there.

All this was as instantaneous as a galvanic shock the moment he had
recognized--let us not say Ida, but this evidence that she was no
more. It occurred to him that the woman, who stood staring, was in
common politeness entitled to some explanation. He was in just that
state of mind when, the only serious interest having suddenly dropped
out of the life, the minor conventionalities loom up as peculiarly
important and obligatory.

"You were Fraiilein Ida Werner, and lived at No.-- ------strasse in
1866, _nicht wahr?_"

He spoke in a cold, dead tone, as if making a necessary but distasteful
explanation to a stranger.

"Yes, truly," replied the woman curiously; "but my name is now Frau
Stein," glancing at the children, who had been staring open-mouthed at
the queer man.

"Do you remember Karl Randall? I am he."

The most formal of old acquaintances could hardly have recalled himself
in a more indifferent manner.

"_Herr Gott im Himmel!_" exclaimed the woman, with the liveliest
surprise and interest "Karl! Is it possible? Yes, now I recognize you.
Surely! surely!"

She clapped one hand to her bosom, and dropped on the bench to recover
herself. Fleshy people, overcome by agitation, are rather disagreeable
obj