debated the matter: and I am as well informed as when I started."

"But, friend, you talk in riddles."

"Is not that customary when age talks with youth? For I am an old
fellow, in my forties: and you, as I know now, are near
eighteen,--or rather, four months short of being eighteen, for it is
August. Nay, more, it is the August of a year I had not looked ever
to see again; and again Dom Manuel reigns over us, that man of iron
whom I saw die so horribly. All this seems very improbable."

Then Jurgen meditated for a while. He shrugged.

"Well, and what could anybody expect me to do about it? Somehow it
has befallen that I, who am but the shadow of what I was, now walk
among shadows, and we converse with the thin intonations of dead
persons. For, Madame Dorothy, you who are not yet eighteen, in this
same garden there was once a boy who loved a girl, with such love as
it puzzles me to think of now. I believe that she loved him. Yes,
certainly it is a cordial to the tired and battered heart which
nowadays pumps blood for me, to think that for a little while, for a
whole summer, these two were as brave and comely and clean a pair of
sweethearts as the world has known."

Thus Jurgen spoke. But his thought was that this was a girl whose
equal for loveliness and delight was not to be found between two
oceans. Long and long ago that doubtfulness of himself which was
closer to him than his skin had fretted Jurgen into believing the
Dorothy he had loved was but a piece of his imaginings. But
certainly this girl was real. And sweet she was, and innocent she