e skirts in the barroom.

"Ah," I thought; "a barmaid. If she is pretty it will be a diversion."

In the course of my wanderings I had seen few barmaids worth looking at
twice.

When the table was cleared I lit a cigar and strolled into the gardens.
The evening air was delicious with the smell of flowers, still wet with
rain. The spirit of the breeze softly whispered among the branches
above me. Far up in the darkening blues a hawk circled. The west was
a thread of yellow flame; the moon rose over the hills in the east;
Diana on the heels of Apollo! And the river! It was as though Nature
had suddenly become lavish in her bounty and had sent a stream of
melting silver trailing over all the land. There is nothing more
beautiful to see than placid water as it reflects a summer's twilight.
The blue Danube! Who has heard that magic name without the remembrance
of a face close to your own, an arm, bare, white, dazzling, resting and
gleaming like marble on your broadcloth sleeve, and above all, the
dreamy, swinging strains of Strauss? There was a face once which had
rested near mine. Heigho! I lingered with my cigar and watched the
night reveal itself. I lay at the foot of a tree, close to the water's
edge, and surrendered to the dream-god. Some of my dreams knew the
bitterness of regret. "Men have died and worms have eaten them, but
not for love." Yet, no man who has loved and lost can go through his
allotted time without the consciousness that he has missed something,
something which leaves each triumph empty and incomplete.

And then, right in the midst of my dreams, a small foot planted itself.
I turned my head and saw a woman. On seeing the bright end of my
cigar, she stopped. She stood so that the light of the moon fell full
upon her face.

My cigar trembled and fell.

"Phyllis!" I cried, springing to my feet, almost dumbfounded, my heart
nigh suffocating me in its desire to leap forth. "Phyllis!--and here?
What does this mean?"

The woman looked at me with a puzzled frown, but did not answer. Then,
as I started toward her with outstretched arms, she turned and fled
into the shadows, leaving with me nothing but the echo of her laughter,
the softest, sweetest laughter! I made no effort to follow her,
because I was not quite sure that I had seen anything.

"Moonlight!" I laughed discordantly.

Phyllis in this deserted place? I saw how impossible that was. I had
been dreaming. The spirit o