ished
with gold locks and ornamented with a portrait of Luther. I had
borrowed the book from the Royal Library.

I poured out some wine. I gathered a rose and fastened it in the golden
thicket of her hair. My lips touched the glass raised to drink to her
health, to our love. I knelt down before her and worshipped her.

"How beautiful you are!"

For the first time she saw me as a lover. She was delighted. She took
my head between her hands, kissed it and smoothed with her fingers the
tangled strains of my unruly hair.

Her beauty filled me with respect. I looked at her with veneration, as
one looks at the statue of a saint. She was enchanted to see me without
the hated mask; my words intoxicated her, and she was filled with
delirious joy when she found that my love for her was at once tender,
respectful and full of ardour.

I kissed her shoes, blackening my lips; I embraced her knees without
touching the hem of her dress; I loved her just as she was, fully
dressed, chaste as an angel, as if she had been born clothed, with
wings outside her dress.

Suddenly the tears came into my eyes, I could not have said why.

"Are you crying?" she asked. "What is the matter?"

"I don't know. I'm too happy, that's all."

"You, capable of tears! You, the man of iron!"

"Alas! I know tears only too well!"

Being a woman of experience, she imagined that she possessed the secret
remedy for my secret sorrow.

She rose from the sofa and pretended to be interested in the papers
scattered about on the floor.

"You seemed to be stretched out on the grass when I came in," she said,
smiling archly. "What fun to make hay in the middle of the winter!"

She sat down on a pile of papers; I threw myself down beside her.
Another hailstorm of kisses, the goddess stooped towards me, ready to
surrender.

Gradually I drew her closer to me, holding her captive with my lips, so
as not to give her time to break the spell my eyes had cast over her,
and free herself. We sat on the "grass" like lovers, yielding to our
passion like fully dressed angels, an