How we men love mysteries, which
are given the outward semblance of a Diana or a Venus! By and by, my
journalistic instinct awoke. Who are those who fear the newspapers?
Certainly it is not the guiltless. Of what was Gretchen guilty? The
inn-keeper knew. Was she one of those many conspirators who abound in
the kingdom? She was beautiful enough for anything. And whence came
the remarkable likeness between her and Phyllis? Here was a mystery
indeed. I had a week before me; in that time I might learn something
about Gretchen, even if I could solve nothing. I admit that it is
true, that had Gretchen been plain, it would not have been worth the
trouble. But she had too heavenly a face, too wonderful an eye, too
delicious a mouth, not to note her with concern.
I did not see Gretchen again that day; but as I was watching the moon
climb up, thinking of her and smoking a few pipes as an incense to her
shrine, I heard her voice beneath my window. It was accompanied by the
bass voice of the inn-keeper.
"But he is a journalist. Is it safe? Is anything safe from them?"
came to my ears in a worried accent, a bass.
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