object which he vaguely saw running through the brushwood, and was only prevented from being the death of Hector by Blue-eyes uttering a little cry of alarm and grasping his elbow. Then the whole party walked back along the winding road to Hubertshofen, the boy in front carrying two of the three bucks that had been killed, and occasionally chanting a verse of some popular Black Forest song. But it was not until the evening that the keepers became vocal, when they met in the public room of the Hubertshofen Inn to smoke their long pipes and drink chopins of white wine. Schaller the ancient was at the head of the table, his great black moustache glistening with the wine, his head surrounded by a pale aurora of smoke, and his great killingknife lying beside him on the table, ready for the slicing of brown bread. The yellow light of the candles was just sufficient to show the ruddy-brown faces of his companions against the vague shadows of the great chamber; and then, with a clattering of glasses, with a strong, deep, impressive chorus, which must have rung through the darkness without, they began to sing Im Wald und auf der Haide, Ich bin ein Jäger's Mann, Den Wald und Forst zu hegen, Das ist's was mir gefällt, Das ist's was mir gefällt. Halli, hallo, halli, hallo, das ist's was mir gefällt, 330 "I do not Love You." CHAPTER I. HE was leaning in the window of that cold, comfortless room: she would lean there, though he had tried to draw her away. She was a slight, frail-looking creature; her form and her attitude suggested pliability, and told of longsettled despondency. Twining a scarlet thread round and round her finger, she gazed out with unflinching persistence. There was nothing to see: the dismal evening was falling upon the wet street of a dull country-town after a raw drizzling autumn day. He stood half behind, half beside her, just enough withdrawn to be hidden from passers-by,and watched the pale drooping profile and the restless fingers. His face that of a man no longer young-was proud, passionate, and resolute; so were his words, and the impatient movements by which he now and then changed his posture were evident kickings against and revoltings at the pricks which lay between him and the accomplishment of his will. He looked a man unused to be resisted, and whom nothing could so much chafe as the mere fact of defeat, let the object of the struggle have been what it might. "Give some sign that you, at least, hear me," he said. As he spoke he possessed himself of an end of that scarlet thread, and twitched it from her hold, thinking by this to rouse her. Thus sharply withdrawn, it cut through the delicate skin; but neither of them noticed it. The movements of the small hands continued to be much the same as before its withdrawal. After a pause during which he watched her with an expression of exasperation growing over his face-he put his hands on her shoulders, turning her towards him, drawing her from the window by a more decided cation than he had used before. "Have you heard anything I have said?" he asked, as she lifted her mournful eyes to his with a pleading look, while her wan face told of utter weariness, of heart-ache, of despair. "Yes, all. I have heard all." "You have nothing to say? No answer to make?" Only the same words to say, the old answer to make; the words you have heard so often-the words I hardly dare say to you again—the words that are so true, so dreadfully true, though I have prayed lately-only God knows how fervently-for your sake to be able to believe them false. I do not love you-I do not love you-I do not love you." "Why echo the hateful sound?" he cried, catching her clay-cold hands-which she was wringing as if in an agony of impotence-in one of his. "To hear those words once is punishment enough for a life of sin, and against you at least I have not sinned. Why echo them? Have I not heard them often enough already to make them ring through my life, sleeping and waking?" "Give me no cause to speak them again. Be merciful! Leave my soul free. If you asked me for anything I could give you, were it my life "It is just for that, for your life, that I do ask you." "But you want it in a way I cannot, cannot give it! I have no life to give in that way." "Mere sophistry. You can give me all I ask for: give me yourself. Life must be very precious to you still since you love it so dearly that you will not trust it to my keeping." "I cannot. You want my life, you say, therefore you want my live self-you want my heart, my soul; and I could only give you what is dead; a dead heart, or just an empty shell- -no heart, no soul at all; for," she whispered the last words, "you know that I do not love you, you know even more than that." "Yield your "Leave me to judge of what I want," he answered. will to mine, with what comes after-let come what may-I will never reproach you. Marry me, give me the right to care for you, never speak those hateful words again. I ask no more from you than this-this you can do." "You cannot bear to hear those words just simply spoken now and then by a being you can leave when you weary of her presence. How will you bear to feel them, see them, in all ways, be made conscious of their truth daily, hourly, on and on, for all the time we are both compelled to stay on earth? How will you bear to have my daily life, day by day, telling you, 'I do not love you?'' His grasp of her clasped hands tightened till pain sent a crimson flush. over her face. It passed away quickly, and she gave no other sign. She knew why he frowned as she finished speaking. She did not know why he had smiled so strangely before he frowned. She had said "will" where she should have said "would," and he had built upon this slight founda |