e Alps always in sight. We visited
Ludwig's castles together, attended peasants' festivals in the
mountains, lunching in some dilapidated old garden of a Gasthaus. And of
course we went constantly to the opera. It was positive heaven for a
time, and as romantic as the heart of any romantic idiot could wish. I
was so happy I could not even think, even when I was alone. I simply sat
like one in a trance and gazed into space, vague rose-colored dreams
turning the slow wheel of my brain. No one paid any attention to us.
Everybody in the pension was studying something; we avoided the American
church and consulate and even the Baroness L. We were determined to have
our blissful dream unvulgarized by gossip.

"There is no doubt that for a time my young enthusiasm gave him back a
flicker of the romance of his own youth, but of course it couldn't last.
I hardly know when it was I began to realize that the whole base of his
nature was honeycombed with ennui, and that any structure reared upon it
might topple at a moment's notice. I had been steeped to the eyes in the
present. I had no wish to marry. Marriage was prosaic. Life was a fairy
tale, why materialize it? I soon discovered that man's capacity for
living on air is limited, and I had almost yielded to his entreaties to
cross to England where we could marry without tiresome formalities, when
one day--this was perhaps a month after we had met--he was late at a
tryst. I lived a lifetime in five minutes. When he arrived he was so
apologetic and so charming that if I had been an older woman I should
have known that something was wrong. The next day, as it happened, I had
to go to bed with influenza, and wrote him that I might not get out for
a week. He wrote twice a day and sent me flowers. On the fourth morning
I felt so much better that I sent him a note by a _dinstmann_ telling
him that I should lunch on the terrace of the Neue Buerse restaurant. He
was not awaiting me; nor did he come at all. Later I saw him driving
with an astonishingly handsome woman; who looked as if she had been born
without crudities or illusions.

"There are no words to express the tortures of jealousy and disgust that
I endured that afternoon. But at five came a note stating that he had
been out of town on a lonely voyage of discovery, and begging me to come
for a cup of chocolate at the Cafe Luitpold--where we had gone so often
to watch the motley crowd. I went, wrath and horror struggling in my
hea