and I joined him because I was strangely young, light,
and happy to be alive.

"You walk and enjoy walking, yes?" asked Von Gerhard,
scanning my face. "Your cheeks they are like--well, as
unlike the cheeks of the German girls as Diana's are
unlike a dairy maid's. And the nerfs? They no longer
jump, eh?"

"Oh, they jump, but not with weariness. They jump to
get into action again. From a life of too much
excitement I have gone to the other extreme. I shall be
dead of ennui in another six months."

"Ennui?" mused he, "and you are--how is it?--
twenty-eight years, yes? H'm!"

There was a world of exasperation in the last
exclamation.

"I am a thousand years old," it made me exclaim, "a
million!"

"I will prove to you that you are sixteen," declared
Von Gerhard, calmly.

We had come to a fork in the road. At the right the
narrower road ran between two rows of great maples that
made an arch of golden splendor. The frost had kissed
them into a gorgeous radiance.