Then Bernardine and Robert Allitsen drank to the health of Hans and Liza: and then came the time of reckoning. When he was paying the bill, Frau Steinhart, having given him the change, said coaxingly: "Last time, you and Fräulein each paid a share: to-day you pay all. Then perhaps you are betrothed at last, dear Herr Allitsen? Ach, how the old Hausfrau wishes you happiness! Who deserves to be happy, if it is not our dear Herr Allitsen?" "You have given me twenty centimes too much," he said quietly. "You have your head so full of other things that you cannot reckon properly." But seeing that she looked troubled lest she might have offended him, he added quickly: "When I am betrothed, good little old housemother, you shall be the first to know." And she had to be content with that. She asked no more questions of either of them: but she was terribly disappointed. There was something a little comical in her disappointment; but Robert Allitsen was not amused at it, as he had been on a former occasion. As he leaned back in the sledge, with the same girl for his companion, he recalled his feelings. He had been astonished and amused, and perhaps a little shy, and a great deal relieved that she had been sensible enough to be amused too. And now? They had been constantly together for many months: he who had never cared before for companionship, had found himself turning more and more to her. _And now he was going to lose her_. He looked up once or twice to make sure that she was still by his side: she sat there so quietly. At last he spoke in his usual gruff way. "Have you exhausted all your eloquence in your oration about learned women?" he asked. "No, I am reserving it for a better audience," she answered, trying to be bright. But she was not bright. "I believe you came out to the country to day to seek for cheerfulness," he said after a pause. "Have you found it?" "I do not know," she said. "It takes me some time to recover from shocks; and Mr. Reffold's death was a sorrow to me. What do you think about death? Have you any theories about life and death, and the bridge between them? Could you say anything to help one?" "Nothing," he answered. "Who could? And by what means?" "Has there been no value in philosophy," she asked, "and the meditations of learnèd men?" "Philosophy!" he sneered. "What has it done for us? It has taught us some processes of the mind's working; taught us a few wonderful things which interest the few; but the centuries have come and gone, and the only thing which the whole human race pants to know, remains unknown: our beloved ones, shall we meet them, and how?--the great secret of the universe. We ask for bread, and these philosophers give us a stone. What help could come from them: or from any one? Death is simply one of the hard facts of life." "And the greatest evil," she said.