An hour afterward she returned, stood in the doorway, and beckoned to me. "Listen," she said. "Would you be sorry if I died?" "What ideas you have to-day!" I exclaimed. "I imagine that I shall die soon. Sometimes it seems to me as if everything about me was taking leave of me. It is better to die than to live as---- Ah, don't look at me so. Indeed I am not a hypocrite. I shall be afraid of you again." "Have you ever been afraid of me?" "If I am unlike other people, the fault is not mine," she answered. "Already, you see, I cannot laugh any more." She was melancholy and depressed until evening. Something was passing in her that I could not understand. Her eyes often rested on me, and every time they did so I felt my heart chilled by their strange expression. She was quiet--and yet whenever I looked at her it seemed to me that I must beg her to be calm. Her appearance fascinated me; I found the greatest charm in her pale features, in her slow, aimless movements; but she fancied--I do not know why--that I was in ill humor. "Listen," she said to me a little while before my departure. "The thought haunts me that you think me frivolous. In future you must believe everything that I tell you, and you must be frank with me. I will always tell you the truth, I give you my word of honor." This "word of honor" made me laugh. "Oh, do not laugh," she broke in with eagerness, "or else I must say to you to-day what you said to me yesterday: 'Why do you laugh so much?'" And after a short silence she continued: "Do you remember, yesterday we were talking of wings? My wings are grown--but where shall I fly?" "What are you saying!" I replied. "To you all ways are open." Assja looked in my eyes long and keenly. "You have a bad opinion of me today," she said, and drew her eyebrows together. "I have a bad opinion? Of you!" "What is the matter with you two to-day?" Gagin interrupted me. "Shall I play a waltz for you as I did yesterday?" "No, no," exclaimed Assja, clasping her hands together--"not for the world to-day." "I won't insist--be easy." "Not for the world," she repeated, and her cheeks grew pale. * * * * * Does she love me? I thought, as I came to the Rhine, whose waves rolled swiftly by. Does she love me? I asked myself when I awoke the next morning. I did not wish to look into my own heart. I felt that her image--the image of the "girl with the bold laugh"--had impressed itself upon my soul, and that I could not easily get rid of it. I went to L---- and remained there the whole day; but I had only one glimpse of Assja. She was not well; her head ached. She came down stairs for a few moments with her head bound up, her eyes half closed, pale and weak; she smiled feebly, said, "It will pass; it is nothing; everything passes, does it not?" and went away. I was depressed and had a painful sense of blankness, but I would not go home till very late, without, however, seeing her again.