I, now that speech had been summoned to my lips, could not restrain it, and proceeded, scarcely governing the words, quite without ideas; 'For you to be indifferent to rank--yes, you may well be; you have intellect; you are high above me in both--' So on, against good taste and common sense. She cried: 'Oh! no compliments from you to me. I will receive them, if you please, by deputy. Let my Professor hear your immense admiration for his pupil's accomplishments. Hear him then in return! He will beat at me like the rainy West wind on a lily. "See," he will say, when I am broken and bespattered, "she is fair, she is stately, is she not!" And really I feel, at the sound of praise, though I like it, that the opposite, satire, condemnation, has its good right to pelt me. Look; there is the tower, there 's the statue, and under that line of pine- trees the path we ran up;--"dear English boys!" as I remember saying to myself; and what did you say of me?' Her hand was hanging loose. I grasped it. She drew a sudden long breath, and murmured, without fretting to disengage herself, 'My friend, not that!' Her voice carried an unmistakeable command. I kissed above the fingers and released them. 'Are you still able to run?' said she, leading with an easy canter, face averted. She put on fresh speed; I was outstripped. Had she quitted me in anger? Had she parted from me out of view of the villa windows to make it possible for us to meet accidentally again in the shadow of her old protecting Warhead, as we named him from his appearance, gaunt Schwartz? CHAPTER XXIX AN EVENING WITH DR. JULIUS VON KARSTEG