"Tired—with you?" he murmurs. "That could never be!"
And his wife stands broken-hearted by the side of their little dead child!
CHAPTER XV
The body faints sore,
It is tired in the race.
Do you know Erlsbach?
Very likely not. You won't find it in any map or guide-book, or directions to fashionable spas and watering-places. You won't find it by this name either, for its people call it differently. It is just a little dusky spot on the confines of the Austrian Tyrol, a little village shut in by pine forests washed by silvery waters; quaint, old world, unremarkable, but beautiful exceedingly.
In the warm June weather Erlsbach is at its best. So green, and fragrant, and cool, with soft airs blowing from the pine forests, and the gleam of snow on the mountain heights, and the emerald waters of the river shining in vivid brightness where the sunrays slant amidst the greenness of the boughs. It boasts of but one hotel does Erlsbach, a little old-fashioned hostelry, with nothing to recommend it save that it is very clean and picturesque, and its people are honest as the day.
To Erlsbach, and, as a matter of course, to the Kaiser Hof, come one June evening a party of two ladies and two maids, a courier, and luggage en attendance. Their arrival is expected, their rooms are taken; the best rooms, with a balcony overlooking the river, and that far-off view of the mountain heights beyond, where the purple light of evening is melting on the whiteness of eternal snows. When the bustle of arrival is over, one of the two ladies comes out on the balcony and stands there for long, looking out at the pretty, peaceful scene. A voice from a room within speaks after a time:
"Do you like it, Lauraine?"