``What was HE doing here?'' growled Brauner.

``He'd just come in,'' answered Hilda absently. ``He won't
bother us any more.''

``If he comes again, don't speak to him,'' said Brauner in the
commanding voice that sounded so fierce and meant so little.
``Just call me or August.''

Hilda could not thrust him out of her mind. His looks, his
tones, his dramatic melancholy saddened her; and his last words
rang in her ears. She no longer loved him; but she HAD loved
him. She could not think of him as a stranger and an
enemy--there might be truth in his plea that he had in some
mysterious way fallen through love for her. She might be able to
save him.

Almost mechanically she left the shop, went to Sixth Street and
to the ``family entrance'' of Meinert's beer-garden. She went
into the little anteroom and, with her hand on the swinging door
leading to the sitting-room, paused like one waking from a dream.

``I must be crazy,'' she said half aloud. ``He's a scoundrel and
no good can come of my seeing him. What would Otto think of me?
What am I doing here?'' And she hastened away, hoping that no
one had seen her.

Mr. Feuerstein was seated at a table a few feet from where she
had paused and turned back. He had come in half an hour before