“Miss Burns,” he cried, seating himself beside her, “you see in me a man who has been dismissed from prison, from a reformatory, from an insane asylum.  Congratulate me!  I am at last a free and independent agent again.”  He was blissful, exultant.  “I have the appetite of three men, the humour of six men, and good spirits enough to cheer Timon of Athens out of the blues.  I am totally indifferent to the future.  So much is certain—­no Circe has power over me any more.”

Miss Burns congratulated him and laughed heartily.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I will tell you all about the tragi-comedy in the City Hall some other time.  First I have to prepare you for dreadful news.  Set your teeth, Miss Eva, and listen—­you are going to lose me.”

“I, you!” she laughed.  Yet she was somewhat taken aback, and a dark red came and went on her face.

“Yes, you are going to lose me,” Frederick repeated.  “I just sent a telegram to Peter Schmidt in Meriden, and to-morrow morning at the latest I shall leave you.  I shall leave New York, go to the country, and turn farmer.”

“Oh, I really am sorry if you are going away,” said Miss Burns, turning serious, though without the least trace of sentimentality in her voice.

“Why should you be sorry?” Frederick cried gaily.  “You will come out to see me.  The man you have until now known me to be has been nothing but a dish-rag.  Perhaps, when you come to visit me in the country, you will discover that I am good for something after all.  I really think I see land in the distance now.  I feel I still have sound bones in my body.  To take an illustration from chemistry.  A salt solution vigorously stirred by the spoon of God Almighty begins to crystallise.  Something in me is struggling to crystallise.  Who knows whether, when the clouds that surround and penetrate the solution precipitate, the result of all the storms in the glass will not be a new, solid piece of architecture.  Perhaps the evolution of a Teuton does not stop at the age of thirty.  In that case the crisis may come just before the attainment of settled manhood, the crisis which, to all appearances, I have just safely passed through, and which, in any circumstances, I should have had to pass through.”

Frederick now gave a brief account of the audience in the City Hall, the comic clash of two worlds in Garry’s and Lilienfeld’s speeches, which he called tant de bruit pour une omelette.

“The Mayor’s decision,” he said, “in opening up to Ingigerd the career for which she was so anxious, has opened up to me the way to a new life, a life all my own.  It was almost like a physical sensation to realise that the Mayor’s verdict decided my case, too.”

He described Garry and told how, despite the opposition in their views, the descendant of Cromwell’s followers, whom Charles I persecuted and executed, had impressed him and made him think.  Undoubtedly his harsh, severe dealings had been dictated by purely humanitarian sentiment for Ingigerd’s welfare, because of the frailty of her body and still more the frailty of her soul, all in accordance with the narrow-minded principles of a traditional belief, of which he was a credulous follower.  As for Lilienfeld, did not victory in the struggle to possess Ingigerd body and soul mean money to him?