blowing across his sober garb.  He was conscious of holding himself in a very tight rein.  He wondered how long men were usually about their love-making.  He wished to make love that very instant, but he feared lest the girl might be lost by such impetuosity.  In all likelihood, the thought of love in connection with himself had never entered her mind.  Why should it?  Karl in love was very modest and saw himself as a very insignificant figure.  Probably this flower-like young creature had never thought of love at all.  She had lived her sweet simple village life.  She had obeyed her grandmother and her aunts, done her household tasks and embroidered.  He remembered the grimy bit of linen which he had picked up and he could not see the very slightest connection between that sort of thing and love and romance.  Of course, she had read a few love stories and the reasoning by analogy develops in all minds.  She might have built a few timid air castles for herself upon the foundations of the love stories in fiction, and this brought him around to the fatal subject again almost inevitably.

“Do you know, Miss Eustace,” he said, “that I am wishing a very queer thing about you?”

“What, Mr. von Rosen?”

“I am wishing, you know that I would not esteem you more highly, it is not that, but I am wishing that you also had written a book, a really good sort of love story, novel, you know.”

Annie gasped.

“I don’t mean because Mrs. Edes wrote The Poor Lady.  It is not that.  I am quite sure that you could have written a book every whit as good as hers but what I do mean is—­I feel that a woman writer if she writes the best sort of book must obtain a certain insight concerning human nature which requires a long time for most women.”  Von Rosen was rather mixed, but Annie did not grasp it.  She was very glad that they were nearing her own home.  She could not endure much more.

“Is The Poor Lady a love story?” inquired Von Rosen.

“There is a little love in it,” replied Annie faintly.

“I shall certainly read it,” said Von Rosen.  He shook hands with Annie at her gate and wanted to kiss her.  She looked up in his face like an adorably timid, trustful little child and it seemed almost his duty to kiss her, but he did not.  He said good-night and again mentioned his collection of curios.

“I hope you will feel inclined to come and see them,” he said, “with—­your aunts.”

“Thank you,” replied Annie, “I shall be very glad to come, if both Aunt Harriet and Aunt Susan do not.  That would of course oblige me to stay with grandmother.”

“Of course,” assented Von Rosen, but he said inwardly, “Hang Grandmother.”

In his inmost self, Von Rosen was not a model clergyman.  He, however, had no reason whatever to hang grandmother, but quite the reverse, although he did not so conclude, as he considered the matter on his way home.  It seemed to him that this darling of a girl was fairly hedged in by a barbed wire fence of feminine relatives.