as a railway tunnel. Have some?" He shook the bag at me.

"I prefer watching you eat them."

"Ah, ha!" He crossed his legs, sticking the cherry bag between his knees,
to leave both hands free. "Psychologically I understood your refusal. It
is your innate feminine delicacy in preferring etherealised sensations...Or
perhaps you do not care to eat the worms. All cherries contain worms.
Once I made a very interesting experiment with a colleague of mine at the
university. We bit into four pounds of the best cherries and did not find
one specimen without a worm. But what would you? As I remarked to him
afterwards--dear friend, it amounts to this: if one wishes to satisfy the
desires of nature one must be strong enough to ignore the facts of
nature...The conversation is not out of your depth? I have so seldom the
time or opportunity to open my heart to a woman that I am apt to forget."

I looked at him brightly.

"See what a fat one!" cried the Herr Professor. "That is almost a mouthful
in itself; it is beautiful enough to hang from a watch-chain." He chewed
it up and spat the stone an incredible distance--over the garden path into
the flower bed. He was proud of the feat. I saw it. "The quantity of
fruit I have eaten on this bench," he sighed; "apricots, peaches and
cherries. One day that garden bed will become an orchard grove, and I
shall allow you to pick as much as you please, without paying me anything."

I was grateful, without showing undue excitement.

"Which reminds me"--he hit the side of his nose with one finger--"the
manager of the pension handed me my weekly bill after dinner this evening.