r, she was like a young tree
whose branches had never been touched by the ruthless hand of man. Such
delicacy!" She sighed and turned up her eyes.

"Of course it is difficult for you English to understand when you are
always exposing your legs on cricket-fields, and breeding dogs in your
back gardens. The pity of it! Youth should be like a wild rose. For
myself I do not understand how your women ever get married at all."

She shook her head so violently that I shook mine too, and a gloom
settled round my heart. It seemed we were really in a very bad way.
Did the spirit of romance spread her rose wings only over aristocratic
Germany?

I went to my room, bound a pink scarf about my hair, and took a volume
of Morike's lyrics into the garden. A great bush of purple lilac grew
behind the summer-house. There I sat down, finding a sad significance
in the delicate suggestion of half mourning. I began to write a poem
myself.

"They sway and languish dreamily, And we, close pressed, are kissing
there."

It ended! "Close pressed" did not sound at all fascinating. Savoured of
wardrobes. Did my wild rose then already trail in the dust? I chewed a
leaf and hugged my knees. Then--magic moment--I heard voices from the
summer-house, the sister of the Baroness and the student from Bonn.

Second-hand was better than nothing; I pricked up my ears.

"What small hands you have," said the student from Bonn. "They are like
white lilies lying in the pool of your black dress." This certainly
sounded the real thing. Her high-born reply was what interested me.
Sympathetic murmur only.

"May I hold one?"

I heard two sighs--presumed they held--he had rifled those dark waters
of a noble blossom.

"Look at my great fingers beside yours."

"But they are beautifully kept," said the sister of the Baroness shyly.

The minx! Was love then a question of manicure?

"How I should adore to kiss you," murmured the student. "But you know I
am suffering from severe nasal catarrh, and I dare not risk giving it
to you. Sixteen times last night did I count myself sneezing. And three
different handkerchiefs."

I threw Morike into the lilac bush, and went back to the house. A great
automobile snorted at the front door. In the salon great commotion. The
Baroness was paying a surprise visit to her little daughter. Clad in a
yellow mackintosh she stood in the middle of the room questioning the
manager. And every guest the pension contained was grouped