She looked away, with an impulse to smile, and her heart was sufficiently eased of its burden to allow her to do so.
“Shall we go to the hotel now?” she asked after a moment.
“But you have not given me your hand?”
She put her hand in his, and he pressed it warmly, and then drew it within his arm as they turned to retrace their steps.
“I like better to walk alone,” she said, freeing herself.
“You are, perhaps, still angry?” he inquired anxiously.
“No, but I can walk easier alone. And I want you to tell me now why you are not en route North, instead of staying here in Zurich.”
“But I have been North,” he said eagerly; “I have been this day to Aârburg.”
“To Aârburg!—Where is that?”
“Wait, I will make all plain to you,” he looked down upon her with the smile that always proclaimed a complete declaration of peace, “it all went like this: I see so plain that I make you to leave before you like, that I am glad to go away and so make you quite free. It came to my head like this,—I wanted to know something and by looking at your face and saying that I must go to Leipsic for some one there, I see all that I wish to know—”