Presently the stranger rose and bowed to the Marches for good-by; and as he walked down the aisle of trees in which they had been fitting together, he seemed to be retreating farther and farther from such Americanism as they had in common.  He had reverted to an entirely German effect of dress and figure; his walk was slow and Teutonic; he must be a type of thousands who have returned to the fatherland without wishing to own themselves its children again, and yet out of heart with the only country left them.

“He was rather pathetic, my dear,” said March, in the discomfort he knew his wife must be feeling as well as himself.  “How odd to have the lid lifted here, and see the same old problems seething and bubbling in the witch’s caldron we call civilization as we left simmering away at home!  And how hard to have our tariff reach out and snatch the bread from the mouths of those poor glass-workers!”

“I thought that was hard,” she sighed.  “It must have been his bread, too.”

“Let’s hope it was not his cake, anyway.  I suppose,” he added, dreamily, “that what we used to like in Italy was the absence of all the modern activities.  The Italians didn’t repel us by assuming to be of our epoch in the presence of their monuments; they knew how to behave as pensive memories.  I wonder if they’re still as charming.”

“Oh, no,” she returned, “nothing is as charming as it used to be.  And now we need the charm more than ever.”

He laughed at her despair, in the tacit understanding they had lived into that only one of them was to be desperate at a time, and that they were to take turns in cheering each other up.  “Well, perhaps we don’t deserve it.  And I’m not sure that we need it so much as we did when we were young.  We’ve got tougher; we can stand the cold facts better now.  They made me shiver once, but now they give me a sort of agreeable thrill.  Besides, if, life kept up its pretty illusions, if it insisted upon being as charming as it used to be, how could we ever bear to die?  We’ve got that to consider.”  He yielded to the temptation of his paradox, but he did not fail altogether of the purpose with which he began, and they took the trolley back to their hotel cheerful in the intrepid fancy that they had confronted fate when they had only had the hardihood to face a phrase.

They agreed that now he ought really to find out something about the contemporary life of Nuremberg, and the next morning he went out before breakfast, and strolled through some of the simpler streets, in the hope of intimate impressions.  The peasant women, serving portions of milk from house to house out of the cans in the little wagons which they drew themselves, were a touch of pleasing domestic comedy; a certain effect of tragedy imparted itself from the lamentations of the sucking-pigs jolted over the pavements in handcarts; a certain majesty from the long procession of yellow mail-wagons, with drivers in the royal Bavarian blue,