n the open
air for a moment. Would you come with me as far as the railway station
and back?"

"Very well, then, knock on my door when you're ready."

Thus the modern soul and I found ourselves together under the stars.

"What a night!" she said. "Do you know that poem of Sappho about
her hands in the stars... I am curiously sapphic. And this is so
remarkable--not only am I sapphic, I find in all the works of all the
greatest writers, especially in their unedited letters, some touch, some
sign of myself--some resemblance, some part of myself, like a thousand
reflections of my own hands in a dark mirror."

"But what a bother," said I.

"I do not know what you mean by 'bother'; is it rather the curse of my
genius..." She paused suddenly, staring at me. "Do you know my tragedy?"
she asked.

I shook my head.

"My tragedy is my mother. Living with her I live with the coffin of my
unborn aspirations. You heard that about the safety-pin to-night. It may
seem to you a little thing, but it ruined my three first gestures. They
were--"

"Impaled on a safety-pin," I suggested.

"Yes, exactly that. And when we are in Vienna I am the victim of moods,
you know. I long to do wild, passionate things. And mamma says, 'Please
pour out my mixture first.' Once I remember I flew into a rage and threw
a washstand jug out of the window. Do you know what she said? 'Sonia, it
is not so much throwing things out of windows, if only you would--'"

"Choose something smaller?" said I.

"No...'tell me about it beforehand.' Humiliating! And I do not see any
possible light out of this darkness."

"Why don't you join a touring company and leave your mother in Vienna?"

"What! Leave my poor, little, sick, widowed mother in Vienna! Sooner
than that I would drown myself. I love my mother as I love nobody else
in the world--nobody and nothing! Do you think it is impossible to love
one's tragedy? 'Out of my great sorrows I make my little songs,' that is
Heine or myself."

"Oh, well, that's all right," I said cheerfully.

"'But it is not all right!"

I suggested we should turn back. We turned.

"Sometimes I think the solution lies in marriage," said Fraulein Sonia.
"If I find a simple, peaceful man who adores me and will look after
mamma--a man who would be for me a pillow--for genius cannot hope to
mate--I shall marry him... You know the Herr Professor has paid me very
marked attentions."

"Oh, Fraulein Sonia," I said, very pleased with