are so intense, my imagination is so lively, that I don't trust my own impressions. They have misled me more than once!" And she gave a little tragic shudder.
I promised to come and compare notes with her, and we bade her farewell at her carriage door. Pickering and I remained awhile, walking up and down the long glazed gallery of the Kursaal. I had not taken many steps before I became aware that I was beside a man in the very extremity of love. "Is n't she wonderful?" he asked, with an implicit confidence in my sympathy which it cost me some ingenuity to elude. If he was really in love, well and good! For although, now that I had seen her, I stood ready to confess to large possibilities of fascination on Madame Blumenthal's part, and even to certain possibilities of sincerity of which I reserved the precise admeasurement, yet it seemed to me less ominous to have him give the reins to his imagination than it would have been to see him stand off and cultivate an "admiration" which should pique itself on being discriminating. It was on his fundamental simplicity that I counted for a happy termination of his experiment, and the former of these alternatives seemed to me to prove most in its favor. I resolved to hold my tongue and let him run his course. He had a great deal to say about his happiness, about the days passing like hours, the hours like minutes, and about Madame Blumenthal being a "rev-
