in a room with red roses and still be traurig."

How well he knew! And how truly impossible to be sad when red roses are
glowing for one, and filling the air with their fragrance!

The interruption was fatal to book-writing. My thoughts were a chaos
of red roses, and anemic little maids with glowing eyes, and thoughtful
young doctors with a marvelous understanding of feminine moods. So
I turned out all the lights, undressed by moonlight, and, throwing a
kimono about me, carried my jar of roses to the window and sat down
beside them so that their exquisite scent caressed me.

The moonlight had put a spell of white magic upon the lake. It was a
light-flooded world that lay below my window. Summer, finger on lip,
had stolen in upon the heels of spring. Dim, shadowy figures dotted the
benches of the park across the way. Just beyond lay the silver lake, a
dazzling bar of moonlight on its breast. Motors rushed along the roadway
with a roar and a whir and were gone, leaving a trail of laughter behind
them. From the open window of the room below came the slip-slap of
cards on the polished table surface, and the low buzz of occasional
conversation as the players held postmortems. Under the street light
the popcorn vender's cart made a blot on the mystic beauty of the scene
below. But the perfume of my red roses came to me, and their velvet
caressed my check, and beyond the noise and lights of the street lay
that glorious lake with the bar of moonlight on its soft breast. I gazed
and forgave the sour-faced landlady her dining room; forgave the elderly
parties their shawls and barley soup; forgot for a moment my weary
thoughts of Peter Orme; forgot everything except that it was June, and
moonlight and good to be alive.

All the changes and events of that strange, eventful year came crowding
to my mind as I crouched there at the window. Four new friends, tried
and true! I conned them over joyously in my heart. What a strange
contrast they made! Blackie, of the elastic morals, and the still more
elastic heart; Frau Nirlanger, of the smiling lips and the lilting voice
and the tragic eyes--she who had stooped from a great height to pluck
the flower of love blooming below, only to find a worthless weed
sullying her hand; Alma Pflugel, with the unquenchable light of
gratefulness in her honest face; Von Gerhard, ready to act as buffer
between myself and the world, tender as a woman, gravely thoughtful,
with the light of devotion glow