or a
glimpse of the omnibus in which her proteges were now rolling away
together. As they were quite out of sight in the omnibus, which was
itself out of sight, she failed, but as she fell back against her seat
she treated the recent incident with a complexity and simultaneity of
which no report can give an idea. At the end one fatal conviction
remained: that in everything she had said she had failed to explain to
Miss Triscoe how Burnamy happened to be in Weimar and how he happened to
be there with them in the station. She required March to say how she had
overlooked the very things which she ought to have mentioned first, and
which she had on the point of her tongue the whole time. She went over
the entire ground again to see if she could discover the reason why she
had made such an unaccountable break, and it appeared that she was led to
it by his rushing after her with Burnamy before she had had a chance to
say a word about him; of course she could not say anything in his
presence. This gave her some comfort, and there was consolation in the
fact that she had left them together without the least intention or
connivance, and now, no matter what happened, she could not accuse
herself, and he could not accuse her of match-making.

He said that his own sense of guilt was so great that he should not dream
of accusing her of anything except of regret that now she could never
claim the credit of bringing the lovers together under circumstances so
favorable. As soon as they were engaged they could join in renouncing her
with a good conscience, and they would probably make this the basis of
their efforts to propitiate the general.

She said she did not care, and with the mere removal of the lovers in
space, her interest in them began to abate. They began to be of a minor
importance in the anxieties of the change of trains at Halle, and in the
excitement of settling into the express from Frankfort there were moments
when they were altogether forgotten. The car was of almost American
length, and it ran with almost American smoothness; when the conductor
came and collected an extra fare for their seats, the Marches felt that
if the charge had been two dollars instead of two marks they would have
had every advantage of American travel.

On the way to Berlin the country was now fertile and flat, and now
sterile and flat; near the capital the level sandy waste spread almost to
its gates. The train ran quickly through the narrow