The gardens were full of roses all in bloom, and their perfumes hung heavy on the moist air.  And within a stone’s throw of the rear the Danube noiselessly slid along its green banks.  All I knew about the inn was that it had been by a whim of nature the birthplace of that beautiful, erratic and irresponsible young person, her Serene Highness the Princess Hildegarde.  It was here I thought to find Hillars; though it was idle curiosity as much as anything which led me to the place.

The village was five miles below.  I could see the turrets of the castle which belonged to the Princess.  She was very wealthy, and owned as many as three strongholds in the petty principality of Hohenphalia.  Capricious indeed must have been the woman who was ready to relinquish them for freedom.

The innkeeper was a pleasant, ruddy-cheeked old man, who had seen service.  He greeted me with some surprise; tourists, he said, seldom made this forgotten, out-of-the-way village an objective point.  I received a room which commanded a fine view of the river and a stretch of the broad highway.  I was the only guest.  This very loneliness pleased me.  My travel-stained suit I exchanged for knickerbockers and a belted jacket.  I went down to supper; it was a simple affair, and I was made to feel at home.  From the dining-room I caught a momentary flash of white skirts in the barroom.

“Ah,” I thought; “a barmaid.  If she is pretty it will be a diversion.”

In the course of my wanderings I had seen few barmaids worth looking at twice.

When the table was cleared I lit a cigar and strolled into the gardens.  The evening air was delicious with the smell of flowers, still wet with rain.  The spirit of the breeze softly whispered among the branches above me.  Far up in the darkening blues a hawk circled.  The west was a thread of yellow flame; the moon rose over the hills in the east; Diana on the heels of Apollo!  And the river!  It was as though Nature had suddenly become lavish in her bounty and had sent a stream of melting silver trailing over all the land.  There is nothing more beautiful to see than placid water as it reflects a summer’s twilight.  The blue Danube!  Who has heard that magic name without the remembrance of a face close to your own, an arm, bare, white, dazzling, resting and gleaming like marble on your broadcloth sleeve, and above all, the dreamy, swinging strains of Strauss?  There was a face once which had rested near mine.  Heigho!  I lingered with my cigar and watched the night reveal itself.  I lay at the foot of a tree, close to the water’s edge, and surrendered to the dream-god.  Some of my dreams knew the bitterness of regret.  “Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”  Yet, no man who has loved and lost can go through his allotted time without the consciousness that he has missed something, something which leaves each triumph empty and incomplete.