The Blower of Bubbles. Beverley Baxter

about him, making a circle by joining hands, and dancing extempore, we sang a chorus consisting of constant repetitions of "Hilee-hilo! Hilee-hilo!" That may not be the correct spelling, but then we were singing, not writing it—which is one advantage music has over literature.

      Before we went, Herr Klotz took us into the room where his wife lay ill, and by her eyes—for she was too weak to speak—she thanked us for our part in making the day a festival one for their lonely little household. With an instinctive gentleness that a woman might have shown, Norman spoke of the things she wanted to hear about: how her husband had been missed at the restaurant, of the desire of every one to make a little present to them, of the great future that lay before their son, and of the genius of Herr Klotz that would some day be recognized. With the cheeriest of good-byes, he lightly touched her shoulder with his hand and said he knew she would soon be well again.

      He lied. In half of what he said he lied. He was blowing bubbles that the woman stricken with fever might see in them some little compensation for her life of drudgery.

      With the guttural good wishes of Herr Klotz still in our ears (we had pledged eternal friendship in three foaming mugs of beer), we sought the street, to find that dusk was settling over the city. For some moments neither spoke, but feeling that perhaps I had descended too abruptly from my pedestal, I cleared my throat and ventured on a remark.

      "A decent fellow," I said patronizingly, and felt my dignity reasserting myself; but Norman failed to hear me. He was lost in some memory. Now that I look back, I wonder was it the picture of the sick woman he saw or his vision of the mother with her two sons; or, with his gift of intuition, could he see, less than a year ahead, Klotz, in a German soldier's uniform, marching through Belgium with an army of lust and rapine, gorged like gluttonous, venomous beasts?

      I wonder.

      VIII

      It was from an aunt of mine that I first heard of Norman's attachment to Lilias Oxley.

      Whenever I received a letter from my relative, I had first to realize that its mission was to educate, not to entertain. She was a woman of strong ideas, and, as my mother died very early in my life, she seldom lost an opportunity of impressing a moral—like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland. In her correspondence, and to a large extent in her conversation, my aunt was given to dashes, underlines, and exclamation-marks. It is perhaps unnecessary to state that she was a single woman.

      I received the letter two months after Christmas; it was dated from the Beacon at Hindhead.