now staring before him with glassy eyes.

All this had taken but a few moments, a few heart beats of agony and resentment.

The proposition was absurd—unheard of! He had better leave this raving lunatic alone—tell him most emphatically that he refused. At that moment his eye caught sight of the photograph on the desk. In the benumbed state of his mind he unconsciously looked and made out some writing across the lower part of the card——

“Meinem lieben Papa als Gruss. Seine Helène.”

Immediately before his agitated mind there rose the vision of Bonn, and the old days of his “Burschenschaft.” The happy voices and songs of his student years came back to him and with them the poetry of the German sentimentalist—the lovely sunshine and the cheer of youth.

Mechanically taking up the photograph he looked at