the romance and charm of this one summer of life should be untouched.
And Franz was not anxious at all on this score. His father, a shrewd
business man, had early seen that his son was a poet and a dreamer. "It
is not the boy's fault," he said to his partner, "he gets it from his
grandfather, who was always more out of this world than in it."

So he wisely allowed Franz to follow his natural tastes, and contented
himself with carefully investing his fortune in such real estate and
securities as he believed would insure a safe, if a slow increase. He
had bought wisely, and Franz's income was a certain and handsome one,
with a tendency rather to increase than decrease, and quite sufficient
to maintain Christine in all the luxury to which she had been
accustomed.

So when he returned to the city he intended to speak to Mr. Stromberg.
All he had should be Christine's and her father should settle the matter
just as he thought best for his daughter. In a general way this was
understood by all parties, and everyone seemed inclined to sympathize
with the happy feeling which led the lovers to deprecate during these
enchanted days any allusion which tended to dispel the exquisite charm
of their young lives' idyl.

Perhaps it would have been better if they had remembered the ancient
superstition and themselves done something to mar their perfect
happiness. Polycrates offered his ring to avert the calamity sure to
follow unmitigated pleasure or success, and Franz ought, perhaps, to
have also made an effort to propitiate his envious Fate.

But he did not, and toward the very end of the season, when the October
days had thrown a kind of still melancholy over the world that had been