.

* * * * *

A half-hour later the big green touring-car spluttered on its noisy
way again; but its tonneau contained no _partie carree_. A smartly
clipped poodle perched in the centre of the wide seat--on one side of
him lounged the shapeless green form of the pork-packer, on the other
side gracefully reposed the Comtesse de Boistelle.

And if the complacent admiring glances which Schwartzberger heavily
bestowed on the lady of his choice were perhaps too redolent of the
proprietorship in which a successful pork-packer might indulge, they
were at least small coins in the mart of love, which is Springtime in
Lucerne.

* * * * *

Up the lake Paul rowed briskly, working off his ill-humour in the
sheer exertion of his favorite sport. The splendid play of his
powerful muscles carried his light craft rapidly over the blue water,
until he reached a secluded little bay where he had often gone to
escape from troublesome travellers at the hotel. Beaching his skiff,
he threw himself at full length on the rocky shore, where he lay quite
still, drinking in the beauty of the prospect.

Occasionally the wind bore to him from some distant ridge or hidden
glen the tinkling of a cow-bell, as the herd wandered here and there
grazing upon the green uplands. Once--for an instant only--a mirage
appeared upon the southern sky, as if in mute testimony to the
transitory character of all earthy things, the fleeting phases of
human life. It seemed to Paul, with a score of years dimming the vista
of his young manhood, not more shadowy and unreal than the wonderful
scenes in which years before he had played all too brief a part.

Little by little, as he lay motionless, the sun stole toward the
zenith. But to Paul, alone with his memories, the earth seemed bathed
in a luminous pall--a mysterious golden shroud.

"Oh! God," he cried, out of the anguish of his soul, "what a hideous
world! Beneath all this painted surface, this bedizened face of earth,
lies naught but the yawning maw of the insatiable universe. This very
lake, with its countenance covered with rippling smiles, is only a
cruel monster waiting to devour. Everything, even the most beautiful,
typifies the inexorable laws of Fate and the futility of man's
struggle with the forces he knows not."

He looked far off, wistfully, to the great pile of the Buergenstock,
the one place in the whole world that for him was most r