“Is Mrs. March—­she is—­with you—­in Weimar?” Burnamy asked stupidly.

March forbore to take advantage of him.  “Oh, yes.  We saw you out at Belvedere this afternoon.  Mrs. March thought for a moment that you meant not to see us.  A woman likes to exercise her imagination in those little flights.”

“I never dreamed of your being there—­I never saw—­” Burnamy began.

“Of course not.  Neither did Mrs. Etkins, nor Miss Etkins; she was looking very pretty.  Have you been here some time?”

“Not long.  A week or so.  I’ve been at the parade at Wurzburg.”

“At Wurzburg!  Ah, how little the world is, or how large Wurzburg is!  We were there nearly a week, and we pervaded the place.  But there was a great crowd for you to hide in from us.  What had I better take?” A waiter had come up, and was standing at March’s elbow.  “I suppose I mustn’t sit here without ordering something?”

“White wine and selters,” said Burnamy vaguely.

“The very thing!  Why didn’t I think of it?  It’s a divine drink:  it satisfies without filling.  I had it a night or two before we left home, in the Madison Square Roof Garden.  Have you seen ‘Every Other Week’ lately?”

“No,” said Burnamy, with more spirit than he had yet shown.

“We’ve just got our mail from Nuremberg.  The last number has a poem in it that I rather like.”  March laughed to see the young fellow’s face light up with joyful consciousness.  “Come round to my hotel, after you’re tired here, and I’ll let you see it.  There’s no hurry.  Did you notice the little children with their lanterns, as you came along?  It’s the gentlest effect that a warlike memory ever came to.  The French themselves couldn’t have minded those innocents carrying those soft lights on the day of their disaster.  You ought to get something out of that, and I’ve got a subject in trust for you from Rose Adding.  He and his mother were at Wurzburg; I’m sorry to say the poor little chap didn’t seem very well.  They’ve gone to Holland for the sea air.”  March had been talking for quantity in compassion of the embarrassment in which Burnamy seemed bound; but he questioned how far he ought to bring comfort to the young fellow merely because he liked him.  So far as he could make out, Burnamy had been doing rather less than nothing to retrieve himself since they had met; and it was by an impulse that he could not have logically defended to Mrs. March that he resumed.  “We found another friend of yours in Wurzburg:  Mr. Stoller.”

“Mr. Stoller?” Burnamy faintly echoed.

“Yes; he was there to give his daughters a holiday during the manoeuvres; and they made the most of it.  He wanted us to go to the parade with his family but we declined.  The twins were pretty nearly the death of General Triscoe.”

Again Burnamy echoed him.  “General Triscoe?”

“Ah, yes:  I didn’t tell you.  General Triscoe and his daughter had come on with Mrs. Adding and Rose.  Kenby—­you remember Kenby, On the Norumbia?—­Kenby happened to be there, too; we were quite a family party; and Stoller got the general to drive out to the manoeuvres with him and his girls.”