"And now, Anton, good-night."  

"Good-night, Nina."  

"When shall I see you again?"  

"When you please, and as often. Have I not said that you are light and heat to me? Can the sun rise too often for those who love it?" Then she held her hand up to be kissed, and kissed his in return, and went silently down the stairs into the street. He had said once in the course of the conversation — nay, twice, as she came to remember in thinking over it — that she might do as she would about telling her friends; and she had been almost craftily careful to say nothing herself, and to draw nothing from him, which could be held as militating against this authority, or as subsequently negativing the permission so given. She would undoubtedly tell her father — and her aunt; and would as certainly demand from her uncle those documents of which Anton Trendellsohn had spoken to her.      

CHAPTER II

Nina, as she returned home from the Jews' quarter to her father's house in the Kleinseite, paused for a while on the bridge to make some resolution — some resolution that should be fixed — as to her immediate conduct. Should she first tell her story to her father, or first to her aunt Sophie? There were reasons for and against either plan. And if to her father first, then should she tell it to-night? She was nervously anxious to rush at once at her difficulties, and to be known to all who belonged to her as the girl who had given herself to the Jew. It was now late in the evening, and the moon was shining brightly on the palace over against her. The colonnades seemed to be so close to her that there could hardly be room for any portion of the city to cluster itself between them and the river. She stood looking up at the great building, and fell again into her trick of counting the windows, thereby saving herself a while from the difficult task of following out the train of her thoughts. But what were the windows of the palace to her? So she walked on again till she reached a spot on the bridge at which she almost always paused a moment to perform a little act of devotion. There, having a place in the long row of huge statues which adorn the bridge, is the figure of the martyr St John Nepomucene, who at this spot was thrown into the river because he would not betray the secrets of a queen's confession, and was drowned, and who has ever been, from that period downwards, the favourite saint of Prague — and of bridges. On the balustrade, near the figure, there is a small plate inserted in the stone-work and good Catholics, as they pass 

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