Chapter Ten
IT was September in Munich. They stood together on the Maximilianbrücke, and, looking down into the gray and black turbulence of the Isar, felt themselves to be by contrast most tranquil and even-tempered. The little river rushed beneath them, forming a wealth of tiny whirlpools above its stone-paved way, its waters seeming to clash and struggle in a species of mimic, liquid warfare, and then, of a sudden, victor and vanquished fled wildly on together, giving place to other waves with their other personal scores to settle.
The banks on either side were beginning to show some touches of autumnal scarlet among those masses of vine whose ends trailed in the water below, and among the shrubs of the Promenade the same blood stain betrayed the summer’s death at the hands of the merciless frost king. The Peace Monument was there, piercing heaven with its golden wings; the Lucaskirche towered to the east; above them all sat the lofty Maximilianeum, that open-work crown of Munich, whose perfectly curved approach and double arcaded wings must joy the soul of every artist-nature that lingers near it.
“How old are you?” the man said suddenly.
Rosina jerked her consciousness up out of the bed of the Isar.
“No gentleman at home would ask a lady that,” she told him, thus showing great presence of mind.
He smiled and twisted his moustache.
“But I am not a gentleman at home,” he said pleasantly, “I am a gentleman travelling.”
“How old are you?”
“I have thirty-three years.”