luded complete and minute auto-biographies on both sides, reciprocal
analyses of character, a scientifically exhaustive comparison of tastes,
ideas and opinions; a profound study of their respective chins, noses,
eyes, hands, heights, complexions, moles and freckles, with some account
of their several friends.
In this occupation, which was profitably varied by the confession of what
they had each thought and felt and dreamt concerning the other at every
instant since they met, they passed rapidly the days which the persistent
anxiety of General Triscoe interposed before the date of their leaving
Weimar for Paris, where it was arranged that they should spend a month
before sailing for New York. Burnamy had a notion, which Agatha approved,
of trying for something there on the New York-Paris Chronicle; and if he
got it they might not go home at once. His gains from that paper had eked
out his copyright from his book, and had almost paid his expenses in
getting the material which he had contributed to it. They were not so
great, however, but that his gold reserve was reduced to less than a
hundred dollars, counting the silver coinages which had remained to him
in crossing and recrossing frontiers. He was at times dimly conscious of
his finances, but he buoyantly disregarded the facts, as incompatible
with his status as Agatha's betrothed, if not unworthy of his character
as a lover in the abstract.
The afternoon before they were to leave Weimar, they spent mostly in the
garden before the Grand-Ducal Museum, in a conference so important that
when it came on to rain, at one moment, they put up Burnamy's umbrella,
and continued to sit under it rather than interrupt the proceedings even
to let Agatha go back to the hotel and look after her father's packing.
Her own had been finished before dinner, so as to leave her the whole
afternoon for their conference, and to allow her father to remain in
undisturbed possession of his room as long as possible.
What chiefly remained to be put into the general's trunk were his coats
and trousers, hanging in the closet, and August took these down, and
carefully folded and packed them. Then, to make sure that nothing had
been forgotten, Agatha put a chair into the closet when she came in, and
stood on it to examine the shelf which stretched above the hooks.
There seemed at first to be nothing on it, and then there seemed to be
something in the further corner, which when it was tiptoed fo
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