There was a week in which to scurry about for a new home. The days scampered by, tripping over one another in their haste. My sleeping hours were haunted by nightmares of landladies and impossible boarding-house bedrooms. Columns of “To Let, Furnished or Unfurnished” ads filed, advanced, and retreated before my dizzy eyes. My time after office hours was spent in climbing dim stairways, interviewing unenthusiastic females in kimonos, and peering into ugly bedrooms papered with sprawly and impossible patterns and filled with the odors of dead-and-gone dinners. I found one room less impossible than the rest, only to be told that the preference was to be given to a man who had “looked” the day before.

“I d\'ruther take gents only,” explained the ample person who carried the keys to the mansion. “Gents goes early in the morning and comes in late at night, and that\'s all you ever see of \'em, half the time. I\'ve tried ladies, an\' they get me wild, always yellin\' for hot water to wash their hair, or pastin\' handkerchiefs up on the mirr\'r or wantin\' to butt into the kitchen to press this or that. I\'ll let you know if the gent don\'t take it, but I got an idea he will.”

He did. At any rate, no voice summoned me to that haven for gents only. There were other landladies—landladies fat and German; landladies lean and Irish; landladies loquacious (regardless of nationality); landladies reserved; landladies husbandless, wedded, widowed, divorced, and willing; landladies slatternly; landladies prim; and all hinting of past estates wherein there had been much grandeur.

At last, when despair gripped me, and I had horrid visions of my trunk, hat-box and typewriter reposing on the sidewalk while I, homeless, sat perched in the midst of them, I chanced upon a room which commanded a glorious view of the lake. True, it was too expensive for my slim purse; true, the owner of it was sour of feature; true, the room itself was cavernous and unfriendly and cold-looking, but the view of the great, blue lake triumphed over all these, although a cautious inner voice warned me that that lake view would cover a multitude of sins. I remembered, later, how she of the sour visage had dilated upon the subject of the sunrise over the water. I told her at the time that while I was passionately fond of sunrises myself, still I should like them just as well did they not occur so early in the morning. Whereupon she of the vinegar countenance had sniffed. I loathe landladies who sniff.

My trunk and trusty typewriter were sent on to my new home at noon, unchaperoned, for I had no time to spare at that hour of the day. Later I followed them, laden with umbrella, boxes, brown-paper parcels, and other unfashionable moving-day paraphernalia. I bumped and banged my way up the two flights of stairs that led to my lake view and my bed, and my heart went down as my feet went up. By the time the cavernous bedroom was gained I felt decidedly quivery-mouthed, so that I dumped my belongings on the floor in a heap and went to the window to gaze on the lake until my spirits should rise. But it was a gray day, and the lake looked large, and wet and unsociable. You couldn\'t get chummy with it. I turned to my great barn of a room. You couldn\'t get chummy with that, either. I began to unpack, with furious energy. In vain I turned every gas jet blazing high. They only cast dim shadows in the murky vastness of that awful chamber. A whole Fourth of July fireworks display, Roman candles, sky-rockets, pin-wheels, set pieces and all, could not have made that room take on a festive air.

As I unpacked I thought of my cosy room at Knapfs\', and as I thought I took my head out of my trunk and sank down on the floor with a satin blouse in one hand, and a walking boot in the other, and wanted to bellow with loneliness. There came to me dear visions of the friendly old yellow brocade chair, and the lamplight, and the fireplace, and Frau Nirlanger, and the Pfannkuchen. I thought of the aborigines. In my homesick mind their bumpy faces became things of transcendent beauty. I could have put my head on their combined shoulders and wept down their blue satin neckties. In my memory of Frau Knapf it seemed to me that I could discern a dim, misty halo hovering above her tightly wadded hair. My soul went out to her as I recalled the shining cheek-bones, and the apron, and the chickens stewed in butter. I would have given a year out of my life to have heard that good-natured, “Nabben\'.” One aborigine had been wont to emphasize his after-dinner arguments with a toothpick brandished fiercely between thumb and finger. The brandisher had always annoyed me. Now I thought of him with tenderness in my heart and reproached myself for my fastidiousness. I should have wept if I had not had a walking boot in one hand, and a satin blouse in the other. A walking boot is but a cold comfort. And my thriftiness denied my tears the soiling of the blouse. So I sat up on my knees and finished the unpacking.

Just before dinner time I donned a becoming gown to chirk up my courage, groped my way down the long, dim stairs, and telephoned to Von Gerhard. It seemed to me that just to hear his voice would instill in me new courage and hope. I gave the number, and waited.

“Dr. von Gerhard?” repeated a woman\'s voice at the other end of the wire. “He is very busy. Will you leave your name?”

“No,” I snapped. “I\'ll hold the wire. Tell him that Mrs. Orme is waiting to speak to him.”

“I\'ll see.” The voice was grudging.

Another wait; then—“Dawn!” came his voice in glad surprise.

“Hello!” I cried, hysterically. “Hello! Oh, talk! Say something nice, for pity\'s sake! I\'m sorry that I\'ve taken you away from whatever you were doing, but I couldn\'t help it. Just talk please! I\'m dying of loneliness.”

“Child, are you ill?” Von Gerhard\'s voice was so satisfyingly solicitous. “Is anything wrong? Your voice is trembling. I can hear it quite plainly. What has happened? Has Norah written—”

“Norah? No. There was nothing in her letter to upset me. It is only the strangeness of this place. I shall be all right in a day or so.”

“The new home—it is satisfactory? You have found what you wanted? Your room is comfortable?”

“It\'s—it\'s a large room,” I faltered. “And there\'s a—a large view of the lake, too.”

There was a smothered sound at the other end of the wire. Then—“I want you to meet me down-town at seven o\'clock. We will have dinner together,” Von Gerhard said, “I cannot have you moping up there all alone all evening.”

“I can\'t come.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to so very much. And anyway, I\'m much more cheerful now. I am going in to dinner. And after dinner I shall get acquainted with my room. There are six corners and all the space under the bed that I haven\'t explored yet.”

“Dawn!”

“Yes?”

“If you were free to-night, would you marry me? If you knew that the next month would find you mistress of yourself would you—”

“Ernst!”

“Yes?”

“If the gates of Heaven were opened wide to you, and they had \'Welcome!\' done in diamonds over the door, and all the loveliest angel ladies grouped about the doorway to receive you, and just beyond you could see awaiting you all that was beautiful, and most exquisite, and most desirable, would you enter?”

And then I hung up the receiver and went in to dinner. I went in to dinner, but not to dine. Oh, shades of those who have suffered in boarding-houses—that dining room! It must have............