id softly, at last. "How far you can see
from here over the city! You are very happy to be able to live in such
a beautiful place."

"Well, you can share the happiness, then. Only make yourself quite at
home. Are you tired?"

"Oh, no! but please don't trouble yourself about me. If you want to go
to sleep, I will sit here and will not stir."

He came and stood beside her by the open window.

"Well, Zenz," he said, "you must not mind if I leave you alone now. The
day has been so hot, the wretched music of that band and all sorts of
other things have given me a furious headache, and I had better get to
sleep. Good-night, child! If you want anything to amuse you, here are
all manner of things--photographs and books of pictures. I will light
you another candle. And now, make yourself comfortable. You can bolt
the door from this side, and my housekeeper goes to market early in the
morning, so that you are quite safe from her. And so, good-night!"

He touched her cheek lightly. She raised her face toward him, quietly
and submissively, and looked at him half inquiringly, half afraid. Her
lips, with their white teeth, were parted--yet now without a laugh--and
her hands lay quietly folded in her lap. Yet, as he bent over her, he
only touched the hair upon her forehead lightly with his lips.

"Good-night!" he said again.

Then he went into the adjoining room, and closed the door behind him.

CHAPTER XI.

At the foot of his bed stood a cabinet in which he preserved all kinds
of relics, diaries, letters--mementos of his lost love. He thrust in
his hand at random, and drew out a portfolio containing all Irene's
letters, from the first unimportant notes, in which she sent him some
communication from her uncle--her uncle had an aversion to pen and ink,
and was very glad to make use of his niece as a secretary--to the
sheets on which the fate of his life stood written.

He lit a lamp and spread out before him this chronicle of the happiest
years of his youth. Thus he sat with his back to the door of the
sitting-room, now reading, and now mechanically taking up one sheet
after the other. What could they tell him that was new? And yet these
fine, slender letters reminded him of the hand that had written them.
He had never seen any other hand that had expressed so much character,
so much delicacy and firmness, so much flexibility and noble repose. He
had often teased Irene about this, by tel