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 officer, 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 Mörike’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?