me which still would vanish better to sit by my window and enjoy what remains of the mood and the memory the mood has nearly passed the desire of action is approaching � � � i would give much for another memory but memory may not be beckoned and my mind is dark now dark as that garden the swaying fan like bough by my window is nearly one mass of green the last has fallen asleep i hear nothing � � � i hear a horse trotting in the strand chapter the of i had come a thousand miles � rather more nearly fifteen hundred � in the hope of picking up the thread of a love story that had got entangled some years before and had been broken off abruptly a strange our love story had been for had given a great deal of herself while denying me much so much that at last in despair i fl d from a one sided love affair too one sided to be borne any longer at least by me and it was difficult to fly from her pretty face delightful and as the faces one finds on the of the early german masters one may look for her face and find it on an oak in the gallery painted in pale tints the cheeks faintly touched with in the background of these pictures there are all sorts of curious things very often a gold bower with roses up everywhere who was that master who painted cunning in rose the master of was it not i have forgotten no matter s hair was darker than the hair of those a rich gold hair a mane of hair growing as as the meadows in june and the golden note was op my dead life everywhere in the eyebrows in the pupils of the eyes in the along her little nose so firmly and beautifully about the nostrils never was there a more lovely or affectionate mouth weak and beautiful as a flower and the long hands were curved like lilies there is her portrait dear reader prettily and and faithfully painted by me the portrait of a girl i left one afternoon in london more than seventeen years ago and whom i had lost sight of i feared for ever thought of her yes i thought of her occasionally time went by and i wondered if she were married what her husband was like and why i never wrote it were surely unkind not to write � � reader you know those little regrets perhaps life would be all on the flat without regret regret is like a from which we survey our dead life a on which we pause and and very often looking into the twilight we ask ourselves whether it would be well to send a letter or some token now we had agreed upon one which should be used in case of an � a few bars of s melody the nut bush should be sent and the one who received it should at once hurry to the side of the other and all difference should be healed but this token was never sent by me perhaps i did not know how to the musical phrase pride perhaps kept her from sending it in any case five years are a long while and she seem to have died out of my life altogether but one day the sight of a woman who had known her brought her before my eyes and i asked if the lovers op were married the woman could not tell me she had not seen her for many years they too were and i went home saying to myself must be married what sort of a husband has she chosen is she happy has she a baby oh shameful thought do you remember dear reader how when he had come to the last page of declares that he dare not tell you the end of this adventure one word he says will suffice for the of the ideal was expecting then in a passage that is pleasanter to think about than to read � for when he spoke about art was something of a and i am not sure that the passage is altogether � he tells how the ideas of all the great artists painters and � the ideas they have wrought on and in stone � escaped from their and their frames � all these maidens gathered s bed and wept it would be as disgraceful for to be expecting as it was for and i like to think of all the the the the of ancient legend all her gathering about her bed her condition regarding her as lost to them � were such a thing to happen i should certainly kneel there in spirit with them and feeling just as did about that it was a that should be expecting or even married i wrote however to tell her why i had suddenly resolved to break silence i sent her a little note only a few words that i was sorry of my dead life not to have heard of her for so long a time bat though we had been she had not been forgotten a little commonplace note relieved perhaps by a touch of of regret and this note was sent by a messenger duly instructed to ask for an answer the news the messenger brought back was somewhat the lady was away but the letter would be forwarded to her she is not married i thought were she married her name would be sent to me � perhaps not other thoughts came into my mind and i did not think of her again for the next two days not till a long was put into my hand it had come from her it had come more than a thousand miles regardless of expense i said this must 