Goethe's characters you remind me of when you try to be worldly-wise
for my sake?"

"When I try--What an extraordinary irrelevance! I have not read
Goethe lately. Mephistopheles, I suppose. But I did not mean to be
cynical."

"No; not Mephistopheles, but Wagner--with a difference. Wagner
taking Mephistopheles instead of Faust for his model." Seeing by his
face that he did not relish the comparison, she added, "I am paying
you a compliment. Wagner represents a very clever man."

"The saving clause is unnecessary," he said, somewhat sarcastically.
"I know your opinion of me quite well, Lydia."

She looked quickly at him. Detecting the concern in her glance, he
shook his head sadly, saying, "I must go now, Lydia. I leave you in
charge of the housekeeper until Miss Goff arrives."

She gave him her hand, and a dull glow came into his gray jaws as he
took it. Then he buttoned his coat and walked gravely away. As he
went, she watched the sun mirrored in his glossy hat, and drowned in
his respectable coat. She sighed, and took up Goethe again.

But after a little while she began to be tired of sitting still, and
she rose and wandered through the park for nearly an hour, trying to
find the places in which she had played in her childhood during a
visit to her late aunt. She recognized a great toppling Druid's
altar that had formerly reminded her of Mount Sinai threatening to
fall on the head of Christian in "The Pilgrim's Progress." Farther