duce an
effect, but the sister of a Baroness demanded more than these.

Absorbing days followed. Had she been one whit less beautifully born we
could not have endured the continual conversation about her, the songs
in her praise, the detailed account of her movements. But she graciously
suffered our worship and we were more than content.

The poet she took into her confidence. He carried her books when we
went walking, he jumped the afflicted one on his knee--poetic licence,
this--and one morning brought his notebook into the salon and read to
us.

"The sister of the Baroness has assured me she is going into a convent,"
he said. (That made the student from Bonn sit up.) "I have written these
few lines last night from my window in the sweet night air--"

"Oh, your DELICATE chest," commented the Frau Doktor.

He fixed a stony eye on her, and she blushed.

"I have written these lines:

"'Ah, will you to a convent fly, So young, so fresh, so fair?
Spring like a doe upon the fields
And find your beauty there.'"

Nine verses equally lovely commanded her to equally violent action. I am
certain that had she followed his advice not even the remainder of her
life in a convent would have given her time to recover her breath.

"I have presented her with a copy," he said. "And to-day we are going to
look for wild flowers in the wood."

The student from Bonn got up and left the room. I begged the poet to
repeat the verses once more. At the end of the sixth verse I saw from
the window the sister of the Baroness and the scarred youth disappearing
through the front gate, which enabled me to thank the poet so charmingly
that he offered to write me out a copy.

But we were living at too high pressure in those days. Swinging from our
humble pension to the high walls of palaces, how could we help but fall?
Late one afternoon the Frau Doktor came upon me in the writing-room and
took me to her bosom.

"She has been telling me all about her life," whispered the Frau Doktor.
"She came to my bedroom and offered to massage my arm. You know, I am
the greatest martyr to rheumatism. And, fancy now, she has already had
six proposals of marriage. Such beautiful offers that I assure you I
wept--and every one of noble birth. My dear, the most beautiful was
in the wood. Not that I do not think a proposal should take place in
a drawing-room--it is more fitting to have four walls--but this was
a private wood. He said, the young office