sibhe never knew.
up at my window with a look I had not then understood—not till
the very last. Now I know that I have often recalled all this. But
not as if it were something real, only as it it were a picture which,
hang,s “quietly and at peace on a wall' at home.
We sat to-day side by side on the beach, and talked to each other
like Etrangers. The boy played with the sand and pebbles at our
fect. No one would have thought there was anything on our minds;
we Inehaved like people who siguify nothing to one another, and
whom the haphazard changes of life at the seaside have thrown
together for a brief period ;weursed of the weather, the neighbour-
hood, the visitors, of music, and one or two new books. White I
sat beside her I found it quite pleasant, but directly she stood up
and went, it became suddenly intolerable. I would have like to
call after her: "Refer to it just once," but she would not even
have understood, and when I reflect on it, how could I expect any-
thing else? At our first meeting her friendliness obviously arose
from surprise, or perhaps from the ordinary pleasure one feels at
meeting an old acquaintance in a strange place. Now, however,
she has had time to recollect everything, as I have, and what she
had hoped to forget for ever has finished out rividly from her past.
I cannot gauge at all what she may have suffered for my sake, nor
what she may perhaps still be suffering. The four-year-old boy is a
living testimony that she did not leave him, and that they have
become reconciled once more. Yet it is possible to be recon-
ciled without forgiving, and possible to forgive without forgetting,
I ought to go; it would be better for us both.
The whole of that year Hises before me with a singularGnelancholy
charm, and I live it all over again. I remember the autumn morn-
ing when, lccompanied by my father, I first came to the little town
where I was to complete my gymnasial course. small details occur
to me, and I see quite beinly the school building ising before me
in the middle of the park with its tall trees. I remember my quiet
work, done in the beautiful specious room, the miendly intercourse
with my professor, and conversation with him at table concerning
my future, to which Friederika wastened, smiling; my walks with
college comrades along the high road to the next village. All these
trifles in retrospect move me as confoundly as if they had been of
the greatest significance to my youth. But most probably all those
uneventful days would have remained buried in the limbo of oblivion
if that one last hour had notmonvested them with a mysterious
reflected lustre. And the remarkable thing is, that since I have
met Friederika again those days seem even nearer than the recent
'days in May during which I was in love with the young woman who
married the watchmaker.
This morning, when I went to my wordow and looked down on
the big terrace, I saw her sitting at a table with the boy; they were
thelicst breakfasters. Her table was exactly under my (iindow,-