ad chanced to look up and
into one of the great mirrors which made a panel upon the wall. There
I had seen the girl, sitting back in her chair, smiling and fresh and
white-shouldered, in a dress of black and gold, her fingers about the
stem of her goblet. Not talking, listening, rather, to the words of a
man at her side, whose eyes were watching her smiling lips somewhat
greedily. He had red hair, I remember, and a moustache brushed up to
hide a long upper lip. And, as I looked, she also had looked up, and
our eyes had met. There and then I had raised my wine and toasted
her--her of the looking-glass. The smile had deepened. Then she had
raised her glass, and drunk to me in return. That was all. And when
Berry had leaned across the table and asked:

"Who's your friend?"

"I wish I knew."

"Pshaw!" said my brother-in-law. "I say it deliberately."

"I drank to a thought," said I. "Believe me." After all, a thought is
a reflection. And now here she was, sitting in the grass by the
wayside.

"She's brown, isn't she?" said I.

"As a berry. I like his breeches."

I bowed. "Thank you. And for you,'picturesque' is the word--one of
the words. Shall I compare you to a summer's day?"

"I'd rather you collected that cow. She's getting too near the river
for my liking. I'm looking after the dears."

"Are you?" said I. "But-"

"But what?"

"'Quis custodiet--'"

The apple she threw passed over my shoulder.

Mountains and valleys, swift rivers and curling roads, here and there a
village shining in the hot sun, and once in a while a castle in the
woods, white-walled, red-roofed, peaceful enough now in its old age,
but hinting at wild oats sown and reaped when it was young. Hinting
broadly, too. At nights shaken with the flare of torches and the clash
of arms, at oaths and laughter and the tinkle of spurs on the worn
steps, at threats and bloodlettings and all the good old ways, now
dead, out of date, and less indebted to memory than imagination. And
then at galleries with creaking floors, at arras and the rustle of a
dress; whisperings, too, and the proud flash of eyes, hands lily-white,
whose fingers men must kiss and in the eyes mirror themselves. But
these things are not dead. Old-fashioned wrath is over--gone to its
long home: love is not even wrinkled. Yet again it was before wrath...

I set out to describe the province of Krain, and now I have strayed
from the highway up one of those