"I have disturbed you, Miss Lottka," said I. "Forgive me, I will go away at once. I happened to be passing by--and as the night was so beautiful--as since yesterday you--Would you be so kind as to give me a glass of bishop, Miss Lottka?" Strange that my usually reckless eloquence should so regularly fail me in the presence of this quiet creature! "What have you been reading?" I began again after a pause, walking the while up and down the shop. "A book from the lending library? Such a torn shabby copy is not fit for your small white hands. Allow me--I have a quantity of charming books at home--romances too--" "Pardon me," she quietly rejoined. "I have no time to read romances. This is a French Grammar." "You are studying by yourself then?" "I already speak it a little, I wish to understand it more thoroughly." She relapsed into silence, and began to arrange the plates and spoons. "Miss Lottka," said I after an interval, during which I had regained courage from a contemplation of the gruff old Bluecher in the smaller room. "Are you happy in the position that you occupy at present?" She looked at me out of her large weary eyes with the amazement of a child in a fairy-tale when suddenly addressed by a bird. "How come you to put such a question?" she enquired. "Pray do not attribute it to heartless curiosity," I went on, in my excitement upsetting a small pyramid of biscuits. "Believe that I feel a genuinely warm interest in you-- If you need a friend--if anything has happened to you--you understand me-- Life is so sad, Miss Lottka--and just in our youth--" I was floundering deeper and deeper, and the drops stood on my brow. I would have given a good deal if that old Bluecher had not encouraged me to make this speech. However I was spared further humiliation. The door leading from the interior of the house opened, and the person to whom the shop belonged made her appearance. She seemed a good-natured square woman, with a thick cap-border, who explained to me as civilly as she could, that I had already remained a quarter of an hour beyond the usual time of shutting up, for that she was in the habit of putting out the gas at half-past ten. Accordingly I paid in all haste for my half-emptied glass, threw an expressive and half-reproachful glance at the silent girl, and went my way. That night my couch was not one of roses. I made a serious attempt to finish my German essay:--"Comparison between the Antigone of Sophocles and the Iphigenia of Goethe," but what were either of these Hecubas to me? I began to scribble verses on the margin of the book, and their melody had so lulling an effect that not long after midnight I fell asleep in my chair, and in spite of the uncomfortable position never woke till morning, though in my verses I had confessed myself once more in love; and what of all the untoward circumstances of the case was the darkest, in love with the heart's choice of my best friend!