"N—no. I generally try to get a little sport some time during the year."
"Naturally you know your own intentions best. I only happen to remember that you said, yesterday morning, you hoped not to leave Rhinefields till the middle of next month."
"Did I say that? I must have been dreaming?"
"Very likely you were. Or perhaps you're dreaming now."
"Not at all; in fact, I'm particularly wide awake. I see things so clearly that I've looked in to tell you some of them. You must get out of this stifling hole and go back to Rhinefields at once."
"I don't like that way of speaking of a place I've become attached to. It isn't a stifling hole; it's a clean little inn, where the service is the very law of kindness. The art may be of a period somewhat earlier than the primitive," she laughed, looking round at the highly colored chromos of lake and mountain scenery hanging on the walls, "and the furniture may not be strictly in the style of Louis Quinze, but the host and hostess treat me as a daughter, and every garçon is my slave."
"I can quite understand that; but all the same it's no fit place for you."
"I suppose the fittest place for any one is the place in which he feels at home."
"Don't say that," he begged, with sudden emotion in his voice.
"I think I ought to say it," she insisted, "first of all because it's true; and then because you would feel more at ease about me if you knew just how it's true."