In the night March woke and saw the moon standing over the garden, and silvering its leafy tops.

This was really as it should be in the town where the idolized poet of his youth was born; the poet whom of all others he had adored, and who had once seemed like a living friend; who had been witness of his first love, and had helped him to speak it.

His wife used to laugh at him for his Heine-worship in those days; but she had since come to share it, and she, even more than he, had insisted upon this pilgrimage.

He thought long thoughts of the past, as he looked into the garden across the way, with an ache for his perished self and the dead companionship of his youth, all ghosts together in the silvered shadow.

The trees shuddered in the night breeze, and its chill penetrated to him where he stood.
His wife called to him from her room, "What are you doing ?" "Oh, sentimentalizing," he answered boldly.
"Well, you will be sick," she said, and he crept back into bed again.
They had sat up late, talking in a glad excitement.