laugh, and said in an ironical tone of sympathy:
"I would give anything in reason to know what sorrows of the heart have driven you to take so very romantic a walk as this."
I was silent, and knit my brows.
"Souls that pine in loneliness," he went on, as sarcastic as before, "ought to comfort each other, I think: don't you?"
There was a pause, as we walked side by side.
"But why knit those fair eyebrows so? Oh, really, you frighten me. … Such malignant eyes! Come, come, I shall do you no harm; why be so cantankerous?"
In a rage and turning my back on him, I walked swiftly away. He made no attempt to follow. On arriving at the gate, where I was safe at last, I looked round. He was standing where he had stood before, and from afar waving me with bared head a graceful farewell.
The incident mortified and abashed me. I had behaved like a silly goose, narrow-minded and ill-tempered; I had spoiled a situation that might have had pleasant or cu-
