was a purposed silence in the melody, the silence hung on and on until it
was clear she was struggling with herself; but again the strain arose
without a tremor, and so she finished. "Oh, no, no," she replied, to our
solicitation, with the grateful emphasis of one who declines a third
glass, "se sooneh I stop, se betteh for ever'body," meaning specially
herself, I fancy, speaking, as she rose, in a tone of such happy decision,
and yet so melodiously, that two or three strings in the piano replied.

Her hostess took her hands and said there was one thing she could and
must do; she and her husband must spend the night with us. There was a
bed-chamber connected with the room where the Baron was still at work, and,
really--this and that, and that and this--until in the heat of argument
they called each other "My dear," and presently the ayes had it. The last
word I heard from our fair guest was to her hostess at the door of her
chamber, the farthest down the hall. It was as to shutting or not shutting
the windows. "No," she said, "I sink sare vill be no storm, because sare
is yet no sunder vis se lightening." And so it turned out. But at the same
time----



IX


My room adjoined the Baron's in frontas his wife's did farther back. A
door of his and window of mine stood wide open on the one balcony, from
which a flight of narrow steps led down into the side garden. Thus, for
some time after I was in bed I heard him stirring; but by and by, with no
sound to betoken it except the shutting of this door, it was plain he had
lain down.