out any embarrassment; he said it every moment, and repeated it continually. Compliments, which almost gave Poldik the cramp to pronounce, Francis turned off as easily as a tennis-ball. What a piece of work there was before Poldik had said, “He hoped they would make a pair.” And lo! here the jolly waterman had said it the first time she sat in his boat, “What a pity Poldik anticipated me, else we might have made a pair.”
And Francis repeated it to-day when Malka stepped into the skiff.
“But, of course, now we shall not make a pair”, Malka answered, meaning, however, by this that she and Poldik would not make a pair.
“Is it possible?” looked Francis.
And thereupon Malka recounted what had taken place in the ale-house.
Francis, however, in place of one consolation had ten at least, and each one was such that it would have been sufficient by its unaided self. When Francis and Malka parted to-day they clasped hands, and Malka must consent to be on the beach early next Sunday morning. Malka gave her consent, looked forward to Sunday morning with intense longing, and when Sunday came, was standing on the beach at the trysting-place, long before the appointed hour.
And then Francis came, light-hearted and versatile—like his own skiff, full of smiles and bedizened in the style of our Prague dandies which every one recognizes at the first glance. And to-day his skiff was much the same as he. Light and pliant and bedizened—with pennons and ribbons streaming—dressed out in silken kerchiefs and divers garlands—the skiff was a dandy like his owner. Malka must have been without eyes and with little good taste, if she had not been at once captivated by the whole affair. For, for whose sake was all this ornamentation? Malka was not one of those who would be unaffected by these considerations.
Fair dames and gentlemen! If any of you have already passed judgment upon Francis as a dangerous and fickle fellow, perhaps even a Don Juan, and in like manner upon Malka as perhaps little better than his victim, I pray you be not too hasty in your decision.
Surely it was past all conception natural that Malka should at once prefer the lively eddying Moldau to the long monotonous streets of Prague. And Poldik was an embodiment of those streets of Prague, and Francis was an embodiment of the water
