The little Helene was going about her house duties silently and distantly when I came down from my turret room on the forenoon of the morrow.  She did not come forward to be kissed, as had been her wont every morning ever since I carried her, a little forlorn maid, up to mine own bed that chill winter’s night.

“A good-morrow, Little Playmate!” I bade her, gayly.  For my heart was singing a good tune, well pleased with itself and willing to be at amity with every one else—­counting indeed, as is the wont of brisk hearts, a gloomy face little less than a personal insult.

But the maid did not answer, neither indeed did she seem to have heard me.

“I bade you fair good-morning, Helene,” said I, again, stopping in my walk across to my breakfast platter.

But still she was silent, casting sand upon the tiled floor and sweeping it up with great vigor, all her fair body swaying and yielding to the grace, of movement at every stroke.  Strange, it seemed she was now just about the age when I developed those nodosities of knee and elbow which troubled me so sore, but yet there was nothing of the kind about her, only delicate slimness and featly rounded grace.

I went over to her, and would have set my palm affectionately on her shoulder.  But she escaped, just as a bird does when you try to put your hand upon it.  It does not seem to fly off.  It simply is not there when your hand reaches the place.

“Let be,” she said, looking upon me haughtily.  “By what right do you seek to touch me, sir?”

“Sweetheart,” said I, following her, and much astonished, “because I have always done it and you never objected before.”

“When I was a child, and when you loved me as a child, it was well.  But now, when I am neither a child nor yet do you love me, I would have you cease to treat me as you have done.”

“You are indeed no longer a child, but the fairest of sweet maids,” I made answer.  “I will do nothing you do not wish me to do.  For, hearken to me, Helene, my heart is bound up in you, as indeed you know.  But as to the second word of accusation—­that I do not love you anymore—­”

“You do not—­you cannot!” she interrupted, “or you would not go out with Michael Texel all night to drinking-places, and worse, keeping your father and those that do love awake, hurting their hearts here” (she put her hand on her side), “and all for what—­that you may drink and revel and run into danger with your true friends?”

“Sweetheart,” I began—­penitently.

The Little Playmate made a gesture of infinite impatience.

“Do not call me that,” she said; “you have no right.  I am not your sweetheart.  You have no heart at all to love any one with, or you would not behave as you have done lately.  You are naught but a silly, selfish boy, that cares for nothing but his own applause and thinks that he has nothing to do but to come home when his high mightiness is ready and find us all on our knees before him, saying:  ’Put your foot, great sir, on our necks—­so shall we be happy and honored.’”