there, and remaining the same after William Tell was not. I sat
looking up at the mountains, and he leaned on the rail, looking
down at the lake. Somewhere a woman was singing from Pagliacci,
and I slowly arrived at a consciousness that I had sighed aloud
once or twice, not so much sadly, as of longing to see that
lady, and that my companion had permitted similar sounds to
escape him, but more mournfully. It was then that I asked him,
in earnestness, yet with the manner of making a joke, if he did
not think often of some one in North America.

"Do you believe that could be, and I making the disturbance I
did in Paris?" he returned.

"Yes," I told him, "if you are trying to forget her."

"I should think it might look more as if I were trying to forget
that I wasn't good enough for her and that she knew it!"

He spoke in a voice which he would have made full of ease --
"off-hand," as they say; but he failed to do so.

"That was the case?" I pressed him, you see, but smilingly.

"Looks a good deal like it," he replied, smoking much at once.

"So? But that is good for you, my friend!"

"Probably." He paused, smoking still more, and then said, "It's
a benefit I could get on just as well without."