of our partners at the last ball the Realschüler had given us at the Hotel Bismarck, but Trudchen only shook her dark, rough head and danced more ecstatically, and at last, delighted so thoroughly to have mystified me, she threw her arms round my neck with a tremendous hug and called out triumphantly, "Herr Meyer, Herr Meyer, Herr Meyer!"

The words rang in my head as if they would never cease vibrating there; I saw the door move and open gently, and Herr Meyer's face appear smiling there--he had been waiting outside all the time peeping in; something rose strangling in my throat, I tried to laugh, and when Trudchen relaxed her arms to rush and fling them round her betrothed, darkness closed about me, and I thought I should have fallen to the floor; but I would not give way; I caught the window-sill and got the window open, and the cold air revived me. I felt faint and sick, and must have looked white enough to frighten less pre-occupied people, but I thought Herr Meyer had not seen, and I made shift to smile and wish them happiness. And if the embrace I gave Trudchen at parting was stiff and cool, it was only that the least tenderness must have overmastered my faltering self-control.

When the two were gone I sat there like a stone, working at his last handkerchief till it grew too dark to see, and then I sat on the window-sill in a dull stupor, staring up at the gold-green sky and the faint stars with dry aching eyes that could not weep. Oh! Trudchen, Trudchen! I never envied you the happiness you seemed to take so lightly; the love I thought you could not understand-madcap child that you were!

But I could not stay on in the old place. I kept up heart, I know not how-only I think strength comes when our need is very sore-and I marked all Trudchen's handkerchiefs for her trousseau, and went with the rest to the wedding; and then, on the plea that the school work was too much for me, I gave up my place and took another in a private family on a country farm thirty miles inland. There I used to long and pine for the seajust for a sight of the blue, sparkling Baltic, with its broken wavelets all dancing in the spring sunshine, as I remembered it on that terrible day; just for one breath of that keen salt air. But I stayed where I was, thinking I should never be happy again, though I did my best to work and play as the turn of each came round, and the very effort did me good. My former pupil wrote to me now and then at first, and then I completely lost sight of all my old friends, and clinging to my resolve never to go back, I spent my holidays where I was, and set myself to study German in earnest, living only in the moment-a strange cramped lifenot able to look forward, not daring to look back; scarcely wishing myself dead, yet caring not at all to live.

At last, after two years, the parents of my pupils asked me if I would be willing to take them to town (as we called it) and stay there

with them a week or ten days, while they were under the hands of the dentist. I never thought of saying no, and we went. had rooms at the Hotel Zum Kronprinzen, and I took the children to the dentist, and to visit their friends in the town, and shopped with them, walking along the familiar ways like one in a dream of other days. When they were in bed I used to throw a shawl round me and hurry out, thankful to be alone, and would go down to the harbour and walk up and down the quays in the spring twilight listening to the waves and the wind, and longing vainly for peace after my sore disquiet and unrest. I was walking so one evening up and down the windy quay, looking at nothing and thinking of nothing, but with that live-long torment keeping out the light and peace from my soul, when all at once he was there -Herr Meyer-holding out both hands for mine with a strange look in his eyes, half sorrowful reproach, half glad surprise.

"Ach, Jeanie!" he said, with a long sigh as of relief, turning to pace beside me, "I thought I-we-were never to see you again."

We walked up and down, up and down, till it grew dark; he asking me a thousand questions, and I answering with short, stupid sentences and long silences between. I could not talk to him somehow, and he felt it at last and grew silent too, and then I said I must go. I struggled with myself as we went up into the town, and when he was leaving me at the door of the hotel, I found courage to say falteringly:

"To-morrow is my last day-I-I-I will try, Herr MeyerTrudchen" but my foolish voice was beyond control, and failed for an instant, I was so nervous and unstrung, but I tried again. "To-morrow I should like to go and see

"Yes, yes," he interrupted, quickly understanding my stammering words, and then he added low, "Let me come for you; when do you think you will be ready?"

I had to take the children to a coffee-party in the afternoon, and then I knew I would be free to do as I pleased, so I fixed five o'clock, and he came for me the next evening just as the chimes were ringing.

All the morning a soft still rain had been falling, but the sun was shining then, and the blackbirds sang in the Bürgergarten and in the budding horse-chestnuts on the boulevard as we went along. I had never been in his house since his marriage, and did not even know where it was, so I left the way to him, and knowing his odd moods of old, I did not wonder at his silence. Besides, my heart was full, for all the trouble had passed away, and I felt I could be brave to face the rest of my life, and not be unhappy and hard and thankless any more. I sometimes think that was the happiest hour of my whole life; even now the memory of it is blessed to me; but at the time it left no room for other thought or sight or sound, and when at last his voice broke the

silence which had wrapped us both, it was as if I had been wakened from a deep dream.

I looked up at him a little bewildered, and saw his eyes full of tears; mine fell again and rested on a grave at our feet. We were in the cemetery, with cypresses and leafless willows and graves all round us, and Trudchen and her baby lay buried there under the grass and the ivy, and this was the second spring that had seen the snowdrops nodding on her grave. The floodgates of my tears, fast locked these two years long, were broken down and swept away on the storm tide of overwhelming pity and sorrow, and with a cry I fell down, my arms across the grave and my face upon them in an agony of weeping.

It was not till then that he saw I had never heard of it, and realized what a shock it was to me, who had just been expecting to see her full of life as of old.

He let me cry-I don't know how long-but at last he raised me and made me come away. We walked once or twice up and down the cypress alleys while I tried to stifle my sobs, and he told me quietly and sadly the little there was to tell, and then he took me back into the town.

So I went away home to the country with the children, sad at times, and yet happier than I had been all the last two years, because I knew I had conquered myself. The lessons no longer seemed dreary, nor the play a burden. I think the children felt a difference, for they made more demand upon my leisure, and called me away from my books to many a romp in the farm-yard, and hide-and-seek among the straw heaps and in and out of barn and byre. "We never knew you could run so fast, Miss Dalrymple," they gasped breathlessly one evening, when I had caught them one after another, and we had all flung ourselves down panting in the straw, "but we shall take care you do not catch us again." "We shall see," I returned laughing, as I twisted up my dishevelled hair, and they ran off and hid, and the chase began again. We all ran our very hardest, laughing and screaming, and I was aware, as I flew along, that Frau Schütt had come out to watch us from the seat under the lindens before the door. Little Marie bolted round the corner of the barn, and I ran through to catch her as she passed the further door, and rushed straight into the arms of some one who seemed to rise from the ground solely for the purpose of discomfiting me. I retired a step, pouring out German apologies, but I was answered in English, in the bad accent I knew so well, and there was Herr Meyer laughing at me.

"Oh!" I panted, conscious now of my untidy hair and the little bits of straw that littered me from head to foot. "Oh, Herr Meyer!"

But I supposed he divined that I was glad at the sight of him, for he took my hands without any preamble, quite heedless

of the nearing shouts of the children, and said, "Jeanie, I can't do without you. I have come to ask you if you can love me and be my wife. Oh! answer nothing but the very truth."

He might well say so to me, knowing as he had known now these two years that I had said words to him that were not true, and gone near to make shipwreck of his life and mine. And Í knew it too, now, though in his loyalty to the dead he never breathed one word of explanation to me. He would have asked me that day to be his wife; he married Trudchen because he believed I had never cared and could never care for him, and because his good heart ached for the poor motherless, wayward, lovable child in her wretched home.

I could not speak, but I looked up in his face and saw it shining in the sunset, yet with a light that never any sunset shed, and he knew all I could not say, and was quite content.

Ah! if only we two could have passed then beyond the reach of time and earth's mischance!

And yet I know not that I would have it so, for in sorrow of heart and loneliness I have found depths and heights all unknown to smoother ways. Love once born can never die; many waters cannot quench it; neither time nor tears can touch it. Ask me not how long we walked together on this beautiful earth-this earth we call unhappy because we will not see the blessed gifts of GOD around us-for in truth I cannot tell; love is its own eternity, and knows nor change, nor parting, nor death, and when he passed onward with the dawn-light of the eternal morning on his face he bade me bless GOD for the happy sunshine of the day gone by and walk patiently among the lengthening shadows until the twilight merges into that eternal dawn.

And now when the wild March wind beats about the doors, or the blackbirds sing at sunset after the rain, the lonely years slip and shrink together and roll away, and my spirit carries me back beside the barren Baltic shores, shining now all transfigured and beautiful through the mist of many tears, in the sunlight of immortal love.

WHEN THOU ART GONE.

WHEN thou art gone, what will be life to me?
Oh, less than yonder empty shell that lies,
Flung by the motion of the restless sea,

Broken upon the shore. My spirit cries
To thee, and nestles in thy sheltering breast,
Serene and tranquil as the days glide on;
But ah, my love, where shall it find its rest
When thou art gone?

To thee I owe the gladness of the days,
The glory of the nights-the melody
Of bird-songs dedicated to thy praise;

For all sweet things of earth seem part of thee.
I have been joyous as the laughing flowers,
Making thy heart my tribunal and throne.
Whose hand shall guide-whose voice enchant the hours
When thou art gone?

Yet thou, that art my universe-in whom
Health, life, hope, joy, for me embodied live-
Be still my star, resplendent through the gloom,
Lighting the way whereon I toil and strive.
Direct and conquer my rebellious will,

Bend down those eyes that on my youth have shone,
Lend me the grace of thy protection still

When thou art gone.

MARIE CONNOR.