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 coat with expectant buttonhole, dark, finely-striped trousers, shining top hat, brown English gloves, and high, stand-up collar.

Yes, my dear boy, if it rests with me, you shall soon be made beautiful. Just wait! There cannot be two opinions that our dinner to-day was quite gay. Even his majesty, cross papa, was graciously pleased to be in decent humour. He had quite an attack of tenderness for me—this showed itself by his pinching my cheek with two long fingers and with a glimmer of a smile behind the glasses, when he said, 'Well, so the professor's daughter need no longer sit alone in the drawing-room, humming the song she had learnt by heart.'

The dinner was very good, and we had lots of red Italian wine, a relic of father's gay Roman nights. Erik was wonderful. He talked and talked as if it was really a happy party. Father laughed and gurgled till it sounded as if water was running through a stopped-up pipe, when Erik told him of the exhibition of symbolistic painting in Vienna. After all Erik is more acute than I thought. Did he not sit there and curry favour with my academical father by running down the young art, which, after all, is very sacred to him. Well, I suppose all is fair in love and war.

With our coffee, we drank real old Benedictine which in our house is a sign that good fellowship has reached its height.

A little later, I found myself sitting alone with Erik on the sofa in the drawing-room. I thought