She spoke no more after that, but took up her knitting, and watched Bernardine playing with the kittens.  She was playing with the kittens, and she was thinking; and all the time she felt conscious that this peasant woman, stricken in mind and body, was pitying her because that great happiness of loving and being loved had not come into her life.  It had seemed something apart from her; she had never even wanted it.  She had wished to stand alone, like a little rock out at sea.

And now?

In a few minutes the Disagreeable Man and she sat down to their meal.  In spite of her excitement, Liza managed to prepare everything nicely; though when she was making the omelette aux fines herbes, she had to be kept guarded lest she might run off to have another look at the silver watch and the photographs of herself in her finest frock!

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 Fraeulein 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?”