I jump up and tug at the guiding riband. The harp capsises.... I fall into emptiness ... the sword above me ... it penetrates my body ... I fall ... I fall....

"Yes, yes," says my mother, "why do you call so fearfully? I am awake."

Calmly she took the knitting-needle from behind her ear, stuck it into the wool and wrapped the unfinished stocking about it.

Chapter III.

Six years pa.s.sed. Then Thea met me again. She had been gracious enough to leave her home in the island valley of Avilion, to play the soubrette parts in the theatre of the university town in which I was fencing and drinking for the improvement of my mind.

Upon her little red shoes she tripped across the stage. She let her abbreviated skirts wave in the boldest curves. She wore black silk stockings which flowed about her delicate ankles in ravishing lines and disappeared all too soon, just above the knee, under the hem of her skirt. She plaited herself two thick braids of hair the blue ribands of which she loved to chew when the modesty that belonged to her part overwhelmed her. She sucked her thumb, she stuck out her tongue, she squeaked and shrieked and turned up her little nose. And, oh, how she laughed. It was that sweet, sophisticated, vicious soubrette laughter which begins with the musical scale and ends in a long coo.

Show me the man among us whom she cannot madden into love with all the traditional tricks of her trade. Show me the student who did not keep glowing odes deep-buried in his lecture notes--deep-buried as the gigantic grief of some heroic soul....

And one afternoon she appeared at the skating rink. She wore a gleaming plush jacket trimmed with sealskin, and a fur cap which sat jauntily over her left ear. The h.o.a.r frost clung like diamond dust to the reddish hair that framed her cheeks, and her pink little nose sniffed up the cold air.

After she had made a scene with the attendant who helped her on with her shoes, during which such expressions as "idiot," had escaped her sweet lips, she began to skate. A child, just learning to walk, could have done better.

We foolish boys stood about and stared at her.

The desire to help her waxed in us to the intensity of madness. But when pouting she stretched out her helpless arms at us, we recoiled as before an evil spirit. Not one of us found the courage simply to accept the superhuman bliss for which he had been hungering by day and night for months.

Then suddenly--at an awful curve--she caught her foot, stumbled, wavered first forward and then backward and finally fell into the arms of the most diffident and impa.s.sioned of us all.

And that was I.

Yes, that was I. To this day my fists are clenched with rage at the thought that it might have been another.

Among those who remained behind as I led her away in triumph there was not one who could not have slain me with a calm smile.

Under the impact of the words which she wasted upon my unworthy self, I cast down my eyes, smiling and blushing. Then I taught her how to set her feet and showed off my boldest manoeuvres. I also told her that I was a student in my second semester and that it was my ambition to be a poet.

"Isn't that sweet?" she exclaimed. "I suppose you write poetry already?"

I certainly did. I even had a play in hand which treated of the fate of the troubadour Bernard de Ventadours in rhymeless, irregular verse.

"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 pa.s.sed 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.

Suddenly I hear the booming of the tower clock.

"Can't I get it a little cheaper?" I ask half-throttled.

"Well, did you ever?" she says, obviously hurt. "There are ten roses in the bunch; they cost a mark a piece at this time. We throw in the riband."

I am disconsolate and am about to leave the shop. But the old saleswoman who knows her customers and has perceived the tale of love lurking under my whispering and my hesitation, feels a human sympathy.

"You might have a few roses taken out," she says. "How much would you care to expend, young man?"

"Eight marks and seventy pfennigs," I am about to answer in my folly.

Fortunately it occurs to me that I must keep out a tip for her maid.

The ladies of the theatre always have maids. And I might leave late.

"Seven marks," I answer therefore.