It became an uncommon name now.
"Whatever your true name may be, I shall never call you anything but Gretchen." "Ah, Jack!" She laughed, and the lurking echoes clasped the music of that laughter in their wanton arms and hurried it across the river.
"Sing to me," said I.
Then imagine my surprise--I, who had heard nothing but German fall from her lips ?--when in a heavenly contralto she sang a chanson from "La Fille de Madame Angot," an opera forgotten these ten years! "_Elle est tellement innocente!_" She had risen, and she stood there before me with a halo of moonshine above her head.

The hot blood rushed to my ears.

Barmaid, Socialist, or whatever she might be, she was lovable.

In a moment I was kissing her hand, the hand so small, so white, and yet so firm.

A thousand inarticulate words came to my lips--from my heart! Did the hand tremble?
I thought so.