Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/102

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SHORT STORIES FROM THE BALKANS

He looked at me shyly and blushed. I did not look away.

“With patience,” he replied slowly. “Of course, like all women, she tries to get her own way, and sometimes she succeeds. But of course anyone can see that to a sympathetic person like her, that cold, pedantic treatment is not particularly pleasant.”

“Frau Walter is a woman to be worshiped,” I answered. I said the last words with emphasis. The young man did not answer; he seemed as if buried in thought and his silence continued.

The supper bell rang. The sound of this bell, to which Byron devotes a verse in his “Don Juan,” impresses one, whether it be heard in the peopled palace of a king, in a silent cloister, or here upon a ship in the crystal realm of Neptune.

I went down to the little second class salon, while my new acquaintances ate in the first class salon. At the well set table I drank good Crimean wine, and listened to the Russian conversation of the other occupants of the table, who talked of shipwreck and adventures by sea, and tarried at table until evening. When again I came upon deck, the sky was grey, rain drizzled down and