I waited a second or so, as we stood there looking across an opening of the woodland. Then I added,—"For his sake, if not for—for such a newcomer's sake as—mine. But I begin to believe that your heart does not so easily stir really, warmly, as... as I supposed. At least, not for me. Possibly for nobody, my dear N...! Odd—for you have so many friends. I confess I don't see now just why. You are a strange fellow, Imre. Such a row of contradictions!"

One, two... one, two... again was Imre walking along in silence, exactly as on the evening when we came over the long Suspension Bridge in town together. And once more was he whistling softly, as if either wholly careless or buried in thought, those same two or three melancholy notes of what I had discovered was a little Bakony peasant-song, "O, jaj! az álom nelkül"—! ("Alas, I am sleepless,—I fear to dream!")

So passed more than an hour. We spoke less and less. My moods of self-forgetfulness, of philosophy, passed with it. I could not recover either.

We had made a detour around the lonelier portion of the park. The sun was fairly setting as we came out before the open lawn, wide, and uncropped save by two cows and a couple of farm-horses. There were trees on either border. At farther range, was the long, low mansion, three stories high, with countless white-painted croisées, and lime-blanched chimneys; an odd Austro-Magyar-style dwelling, of a long-past fashion, standing up solid and sharp against that silver-saffron sky. Not a sign of life, save those slow-moving beasts, far off in the middle of the lawn. No smoke from the yet more removed old homestead. Not a sound, except a gentle wind... melancholy and fitful. We two might have been remote, near a village in the Siebenbürgen; not within twenty minutes of a great commercial city.

Instead of going on toward the avenue which led to the exit—the hour being yet early—we sat down on a stone bench, much beaten by weather. A few steps away, rose the monument I have mentioned... "To the Unforgettable Memory" of Lorand and Egon Z...

Neither Imre nor I spoke immediately; each of us was a trifle leg-weary, I once more was sad and... angry. As we sat there, I read over for yet another time... the last time?... those carved words which reminded a reader, whether to his gladness of soul or dolour, that love, a love indeed strong as death, between two manly souls was no mere ideal; but instead, a possible crown of existence, a glory of life, a realizable unity that certain fortunate sons of men attained! A jewel that others must yearn for, in disappointment and folly, and with the taste of aloes, and the white of the egg, for the pomegranate and the honeycomb! I sighed.

"Oh, courage, courage, my well beloved friend!" exclaimed Imre, hearing the sigh and apparently quite misreading my innermost thoughts. "Don't be downhearted again as to leaving Szent-Istvánhely tomorrow; not to speak of being cheerful even if you must part from your most obedient servant. Such is life!... unless we are born sultans and kaisers... and if we are that, we must die to slow music in the course of time."

I vouchsafed no comment. Could this be Imre von N...? Certainly I had made the acquaintance of a new and extremely uncongenial Imre; in exactly the least appropriate circumstances to lose sight of the sympathetic, gentler-natured friend, whom I had begun to consider as one well understood, and had found responsive to a word, a look. Did all his closer friends meet, sooner or later, with this under-half of his temperament—this brusqueness which I had hitherto seen in his bearing with only his outside associates? Did they admire it... if caring for him? Bitterness came over me in a wave, it rose to my lips in a burst.

"It is just as well that one of us should show some feeling.... a trifle... when our parting is so near."

A pause. Then Imre: