I did not see Gretchen again that day; but as I was watching the moon climb up, thinking of her and smoking a few pipes as an incense to her shrine, I heard her voice beneath my window. It was accompanied by the bass voice of the inn-keeper.
"But he is a journalist. Is it safe? Is anything safe from them?" came to my ears in a worried accent, a bass.
So the inn-keeper, too, was a Socialist!
Said an impatient contralto: "So long as I have no fear, why should you?"
"Ach, you will be found out and dragged back!" was the lamentation in a throaty baritone. Anxiety raises a bass voice at least two pitches. "If you would but return to the hills, where there is absolute safety!"
"No; I will not go back there, where everything is so dull and dead. I have lived too long not to read a face at a glance. His eyes are honest."
"Thanks, Gretchen," murmured I from above. I was playing the listener; but, then, she was only a barmaid.
"And it is so long," went on the contralto, "since I have seen a man—a strong one, I wish to see if my power is gone."
"Aha!" thought I; "so you have already laid plans for my capitulation,
Gretchen?"
"But," said the bass voice once more, "supposing some of the military should straggle along? There might be one who has seen you before. Alas! I despair! You will not hide yourself; you will stay here till they find you."