"Is there a part for me in it?" she asked. "No," I answered, "but it doesn't matter. I'll put one in." "Oh, how sweet that is of you!" she cried. "And do you know? You must read me the play. I can help you with my practical knowledge of the stage." A wave of bliss under which I almost suffocated, poured itself out over me. "I have also written poems--to you!" I stammered. The wave carried me away. "Think of that," she said quite kindly instead of boxing my ears. "You must send them to me." "Surely."... And then I escorted her to the door while my friends followed us at a seemly distance like a pack of wolves. The first half of the night I passed ogling beneath her window; the second half at my table, for I wanted to enrich the packet to be sent her by some further lyric pearls. At the peep of dawn I pushed the envelope, tight as a drum with its contents, into the pillar box and went to cool my burning head on the ramparts. On that very afternoon came a violet-tinted little letter which had an exceedingly heady fragrance and bore instead of a seal a golden lyre transfixed by a torch. It contained the following lines: "DEAR POET: "Your verses aren't half bad; only too fiery. I'm really in a hurry to hear your play. My old chaperone is going out this evening. I will be at home alone and will, therefore, be bored. So come to tea at seven. But you must give me your word of honour that you do not give away this secret. Otherwise I won't care for you the least bit. "Your THEA." Thus did she write, I swear it--she, my faery, my Muse, my Egeria, she to whom I desired to look up in adoration to the last drawing of my breath. Swiftly I revised and corrected and recited several scenes of my play. I struck out half a dozen superfluous characters and added a dozen others. At half past six I set out on my way. A thick, icy fog lay in the air. Each person that I met was covered by a cloud of icy breath. I stopped in front of a florist's shop. All the treasures of May lay exposed there on little terraces of black velvet. There were whole beds of violets and bushes of snow-drops. There was a great bunch of long-stemmed roses, carelessly held together by a riband of violet silk. I sighed deeply. I knew why I sighed. And then I counted my available capital: Eight marks and seventy pfennigs. Seven beer checks I have in addition. But these, alas, are good only at my inn--for fifteen pfennigs worth of beer a piece. At last I take courage and step into the shop. "What is the price of that bunch of roses?" I whisper. I dare not speak aloud, partly by reason of the great secret and partly through diffidence. "Ten marks," says the fat old saleswoman. She lets the palm leaves that lie on her lap slip easily into an earthen vessel and proceeds to the window to fetch the roses. I am pale with fright. My first thought is: Run to the inn and try to exchange your checks for cash. You can't borrow anything two days before the first of the month.