"One of those German songs? I understand nothing but English."
"They have translated it, and it runs like this:
Silent the streets by night overtaken:
This house my darling's presence did grace;
But she the town has long forsaken,
Yet there stands the house in the selfsame place;
And there stands a man who upward is staring,
His hands hard wringing in outbursts of woe!"
I paused and looked into her face.
"That is not all of it?"
"No: I will tell you the rest some day."
"Did Jack 'wring his hands in outbursts of woe'?"
"Good Heavens, no! I presume we both stood with our hands in our pockets: I was smoking a cigar myself. It is only in poetry that one may be picturesque in one's grief now-a-days."
"Did you think of me when you stood there, Floyd?"
Her little fingers closed on the edge of my coat and she looked up in my eyes. I smiled demurely. I was determined to be quite the master of myself with Georgina. I had suffered too much from her in the past not to be on my guard. Still, it was hard to resist the upturned face—the face with which was associated all the passionate inspiration of my early life—the face I had carried in my mind and heart through all my wanderings, finding none to compare with it—the face which always came with flash and quickness when I felt the warm desire and longing to love somebody which youth must always know.