A hand gripped my shoulder. I looked up, startled, into two blue eyes blazing down into mine. Von Gerhard’s face was a painful red. I think that the hand on my shoulder even shook me a little, there on that bleak and deserted lake drive. I tried to wrench my shoulder free with a jerk. “You are hurting me!” I cried. A quiver of pain passed over the face that I had thought so calmly unemotional. “You talk of hurts! You, who set out deliberately and maliciously to make me suffer! How dare you then talk to me like this! You stab with a hundred knives—you, who know how I—” “I’m sorry,” I put in, contritely. “Please don’t be so dreadful about it. After all, you asked me, didn’t you? Perhaps I’ve hurt your vanity. There, I didn’t mean that, either. Oh, dear, let’s talk about something impersonal. We get along wretchedly of late.” The angry red ebbed away from Von Gerhard’s face. The blaze of wrath in his eyes gave way to a deeper, brighter light that held me fascinated, and there came to his lips a smile of rare sweetness. The hand that had grasped my shoulder slipped down, down, until it met my hand and gripped it. “Na, ’s ist schon recht, Kindchen. Those that we most care for we would hurt always. When I have told you of my love for you, although already you know it, then you will tell me. Hush! Do not deny this thing. There shall be no more lies between us. There shall be only the truth, and no more about plump, blonde German wives who run with Zeitung and slippers. After all, it is no secret. Three months ago I told Norah. It was not news to her. But she trusted me.” I felt my face to be as white and as tense as his own. “Norah—knows!” “It is better to speak these things. Then there need be no shifting of the eyes, no evasive words, no tricks, no subterfuge.” We had faced about and were retracing our steps, past the rows of peculiarly home-like houses that line Milwaukee’s magnificent lake shore. Windows were hung with holiday scarlet and holly, and here and there a face was visible at a window, looking out at the man and woman walking swiftly along the wind-swept heights that rose far above the lake. A wretched revolt seized me as I gazed at the substantial comfort of those normal, happy homes. “Why did you tell me! What good can that do? At least we were make-believe friends before. Suppose I were to tell you that I care, then what.” “I do not ask you to tell me,” Von Gerhard replied, quietly. “You need not. You know. You knew long, long ago. You know I love the big quietness of you, and your sureness, and the German way you have of twisting your sentences about, and the steady grip of your great firm hands, and the rareness of your laugh, and the simplicity of you. Why I love the very cleanliness of your ruddy skin, and the way your hair grows away from your forehead, and your walk, and your voice and—Oh, what is the use of it all?”