meeting her gaze with some embarrassment.

"I must confess, monsieur," said she, "that you have been carrying it
rather far."

He accepted the rebuke humbly. "If you divined the intensity of my
sufferings, you would be lenient," he murmured. "Nevertheless, it was
dishonest of me to moan so bitterly before seven o'clock, when my claim
to the room legally begins. I entreat your pardon."

"It is accorded freely," said the lady, mollified by his penitence.
"She would be a poor mourner who quarrelled with the affliction of
another."

Again she indulged in a plaintive sigh, and this time the young man's
response was tactfully harmonious.

"Life is a vale of tears, madame," he remarked, with more solicitude
than originality.

"You may indeed say so, monsieur," she assented. "To have lost one who
was beloved--"

"It must be a heavy blow; I can imagine it!"

He had made a curious answer. She stared at him, perplexed.

"You can 'imagine' it?"

"Very well."