regarded her seriously.
“If you interest me,” he remarked, “I shall naturally see much of you, because we shall be much together. How long do you stay in Lucerne?”
“Until Monday. I leave on Monday.”
He looked at her in dismay.
“But I do not want to leave on Monday. I have only come the last night. I want to stay two weeks.”
She felt herself forced to bite her lips, even as she replied:
“But you can stay two weeks, monsieur.”
He looked blank.
“And you go?”
“Naturally; but what does that matter? You would not be going where I went anyway.”
“Where do you go?”
“To Zurich.”
“Alone? Do you go alone?”
“I have my maid, of course; and I am to meet a friend there.”
“A friend!” His whole face contracted suddenly. “Ah,” he cried, sharply, “I understand! It is that Englishman.”
“What Englishman?” she asked, utterly at a loss to follow his thought.
“Your friend.”
“But he’s an American.”
“You said he was an Englishman.”
“I never did! How could I? Why, can’t you tell at once that he is an American by the way that he talks?”
“I never have hear him talk.”
She stared afresh, then turned to walk on, saying, “You must be crazy! or aren’t you speaking of the man who presented you to me?”
“Why should I be of any interest as to that man? Naturally it is of the Englishman that I speak.”
“What Englishman?”
“But that Englishman upon the Gotthardbahn, of course; the one you have said was so nice to you.”
She began to laugh.
“Oh, pardon me, but you are so funny, you are really so very funny;” then pressing her handkerchief against her rioting lips, “you will forgive me for laughing, won’t you?”
He did not smile in the least nor reply to her appeal for forgiveness; he only waited until she was quiet, and then went on with increased asperity veiled in his tone.
“You are to see him again, n’est-ce pas?”
“I never expect to.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
He stopped short and offered her his hand.
“Why?” she asked in surprise.
“Your word that you do not hope to meet him again.”
She began to laugh afresh.
Then, still holding out his hand, he repeated insistently.
“Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again.”
They were in one of the steep, narrow streets that lie beyond the bridges and lead up to the city wall. It was still, still as the desert; she looked at him, and his earnestness quelled her sense of humor over the absurdity of the situation.
“What shall I say to you?” she asked.
“Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again.”
“Certainly I do not expect to meet him again; although, of course, I might meet him by chance at any time.”
He looked into her face with an instant’s gravest scrutiny, and then some of his shadow lifted; with the hand that he had held out he suddenly seized hers.
“You are truthfully not caring for him, n’est-ce pas?” he demanded.
Rosina pulled her hand from his grasp.
“Of course not,” she said emphatically. “Why, I never saw the man but just that once.”
“But one may be much interested in once only.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yes, that is true. I know it. Do not laugh, but give me your hand and swear that he does not at all interest you now.”
She did not give him her hand, but she raised her eyes to the narrow strip of blazing sky that glowed above the street and said solemnly:
“I swear upon my word and honor that I do not take the slightest interest in that English gentleman who so kindly raised and lowered my windows when I was on the St. Gotthard last week.”
Von Ibn drew a breath of relief.
“I am so glad,” he said; and then he added, “because really, you know, it had not been very nice in you to interest yourself only for the getting up of your window.”
“He put it down too,” she reminded him.
“That is quite nothing – to put a window down. It is to raise them up that is to every one such labor on the Gotthardbahn. To let them down is not hard; very often mine have fell alone. And much smoke came in.”
Rosina walked on and looked the other way, because she felt a need of so doing for a brief space. Her escort strolled placidly at her side, all his perturbation appearing to have vanished into thin air with the satisfactory disposal of the English problem. They came to the top of the street and saw the old town-wall and its towers before them. The sun was very hot indeed, and the tourists in cabs all had their parasols raised.
“I think we had better return,” she said, pausing in the last patch of shade.
Von Ibn looked at his watch.
“Yes,” he said, “we must; déjeuner is there now.”
So they turned down into the town, taking another of the steep, little streets, so as to vary the scenery of their route. After a little he spoke again.
“And you are sure that you go Monday?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“To Zurich, and then to where?”
“Then to Constance.”
“And then?”
“I do not know where we shall go next.”
He started slightly, and a fresh cloud overspread his face.
“Much pleasure to you,” he said, almost savagely.
She looked up quickly, surprised at his tone, but
