AN AMERICAN CONSUL The nights in Dreiberg during September are often chill.

The heavy mists from the mountain slip down the granite clifts and spread over the city, melting all sharp outlines, enfeebling the gas-lamps, and changing the moon, if there happens to be one, into something less than a moon and something more than a pewter disk.

And so it was this night.
Carmichael, in order to finish his cigar on the little balcony fronting his window, found it necessary to put on his light overcoat, though he perfectly knew that he was in no manner forced to smoke on the balcony.
But the truth was he wanted a clear vision of the palace and the lighted windows thereof, and of one in particular.

He had no more sense than Tom-fool, the abetter of follies.

She was as far removed from him as the most alien of the planets; but the magnet shall ever draw the needle, and a woman shall ever draw a man.