“Very good, Frau Professor.”

Herr Sung smiled in the Frau Professor’s eyes, and notwithstanding her protests insisted on pouring out a glass of wine for her.  The Frau Professor ate her supper with a good appetite.  But she had triumphed unwisely.  Just before going to bed she called the servant.

“Emil, if Fraulein Cacilie’s box is ready you had better take it downstairs tonight.  The porter will fetch it before breakfast.”

The servant went away and in a moment came back.

“Fraulein Cacilie is not in her room, and her bag has gone.”

With a cry the Frau Professor hurried along:  the box was on the floor, strapped and locked; but there was no bag, and neither hat nor cloak.  The dressing-table was empty.  Breathing heavily, the Frau Professor ran downstairs to the Chinaman’s rooms, she had not moved so quickly for twenty years, and Emil called out after her to beware she did not fall; she did not trouble to knock, but burst in.  The rooms were empty.  The luggage had gone, and the door into the garden, still open, showed how it had been got away.  In an envelope on the table were notes for the money due on the month’s board and an approximate sum for extras.  Groaning, suddenly overcome by her haste, the Frau Professor sank obesely on to a sofa.  There could be no doubt.  The pair had gone off together.  Emil remained stolid and unmoved.

XXXI

Hayward, after saying for a month that he was going South next day and delaying from week to week out of inability to make up his mind to the bother of packing and the tedium of a journey, had at last been driven off just before Christmas by the preparations for that festival.  He could not support the thought of a Teutonic merry-making.  It gave him goose-flesh to think of the season’s aggressive cheerfulness, and in his desire to avoid the obvious he determined to travel on Christmas Eve.

Philip was not sorry to see him off, for he was a downright person and it irritated him that anybody should not know his own mind.  Though much under Hayward’s influence, he would not grant that indecision pointed to a charming sensitiveness; and he resented the shadow of a sneer with which Hayward looked upon his straight ways.  They corresponded.  Hayward was an admirable letter-writer, and knowing his talent took pains with his letters.  His temperament was receptive to the beautiful influences with which he came in contact, and he was able in his letters from Rome to put a subtle fragrance of Italy.  He thought the city of the ancient Romans a little vulgar, finding distinction only in the decadence of the Empire; but the Rome of the Popes appealed to his sympathy, and in his chosen words, quite exquisitely, there appeared a rococo beauty.  He wrote of old church music and the Alban Hills, and of the languor of incense and the charm of the streets by night, in the rain, when the pavements shone and the light