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gravely and as quickly as if she had understood more than he had said. And like lovers whose steps are hastened by passion, they hurried arm and arm through the evening streets towards his house.

When they had arrived and he had made a light in the study, Katharina glanced all around her and observed the pictures and books with curiosity.

"Do you like it here?" he asked.

She nodded. "But it's really quite an old house, isn't it?"

"Three hundred years, certainly."

"But how new everything looks!"

He gladly offered to show her the remaining rooms, where the furnishings and arrangement met her approval; but as she entered the room of his departed sister with him, she looked at him with astonishment and said:

"You aren't married after all, are you? And your wife . . . out of town?"

At first he smiled, then ran his hand across his forehead, and explained to her in an undertone that this newly furnished room had been intended for his sister, who had died in the south but a few months before. Katharina looked him in the eye, as though to prove his sincerity; then she stepped up closer to him, took his hand, and stroked it caressingly with hers—which made him feel better. He turned off the light and they went into the dining-room, and not until then could Katharina be persuaded to take off her hat and coat. After that, however, she quickly made herself at home. When he was preparing to set the table, she would not allow it, contending that that was her province. At her sportive command he sat in a chair at some distance from the table, and watched her contentedly as she made all the preparations for supper in true matronly fashion and found her way about, not only there, but also out in the kitchen and in the pantry, with as much skill as though she had been keeping house for him always. Finally they both sat down at the table; she served, he poured, and then they ate and drank. She chatted rapturously about the evening just passed, and was amazed to hear from Doctor Graesler that he seldom went to theatres; they meant to her the quintessence of all earthly joy. He explained to her that his manner of living rarely permitted him amusements of that sort, that he lived in some new place every six months, that he was just returning from a small German watering-place, and that he would