hygienic hotel, where Lassalle sat brooding
with his feet on the mantelpiece, to tell him that a magnificent lady
wanted to see him. She was with a party that had taken refuge in a
mountain-side shed. A great coup his resurging energy was meditating
at Hamburg, was swept clean from his mind.

He dashed down, his heart beating with a hopeless surmise, and saw,
amid a strange group, the golden hair of Helene von Doenniges shining
like a star. He accepted it at once as the star of his destiny. His
strength seemed flowing back in swift currents of glowing blood.

"By all the gods of Greece," he cried, "'tis she!"

In an instant they were lovers again, and her American friend and
confidante, Mrs. Arson, was enchanted by this handsome apparition,
which, Helene protested, she had only summoned up half laughingly.
Dear old Holthoff had written her that Lassalle was somewhere on the
Righi, but she had not really believed she would stumble on him. She
was suffering from nervous prostration, and it was only the accident
of Mrs. Arson's holiday plan for her children that had enabled her to
obey the doctor's advice to breathe mountain air.

"I breathe it for the first time," said Lassalle. "Do you know what I
was doing when your boy-angel came? Writing to Holthoff and old Boeckh
the philologist for introductions to your father. The game has dallied
on long enough. We must finish."

Helene blushed charmingly, and looked at Mrs. Arson with a glance that
sought protection against and admiration for his audacity.

"I guess you're made for each other," said Mrs. Arson, carried off her
feet. "Why, you're like twins. Are you relatives?"

"That's what everybody asks," said Helene. "Why, even before I met
him, people piqued my curiosity about him by saying I talked like
him."

"It was the best compliment I had ever received--said behind my back
too. But people are right for once. Do you know that the painter to
whom I gave your portrait to inspire him for the Brunehild fresco said
that in drawing our two faces he discovered that they have exactly the
same anatomical structure."

Her face took on that fascinating _diablerie_ which men found
irresistible.

"Then your compliments to me are only boomerangs."

"Boomerangs only return when they miss."

The storm abating, they moved up the mountain, talking gaily. Mrs.
Arson and her children kept considerately in the rear with their
guide. Helene admired Lassalle's stick. He handed i