The Dresden of my day was different from the Dresden of twenty years after. I never saw an English person the whole time I was there. After settling into my new rooms, I wrote out for myself a severe Stundenplan, which I pinned over my head next to my alarm- clock. At 6 every morning I woke up and dashed into the kitchen to have coffee with the solitary slavey; after that I practised the fiddle or piano till 8.30, when we had the pension breakfast; and the rest of the day was taken up by literature, drawing and other lessons. I went to concerts or the opera by myself every night.
One day Frau von Mach came to me greatly disdressed by a letter she had received from my mother begging her to take in no men lodgers while I was in the pension, as some of her friends in England had told her that I might elope with a foreigner. To this hour I do not know whether my mother was serious; but I wrote and told her that Frau von Mach's life depended on her lodgers, that there was only one permanent lodger—an old American called Loring, who never spoke to me—and that I had no time to elope. Many and futile were the efforts to make me return home; but, though I wrote to England regularly, I never alluded to any of them, as they appeared childish to me.
I made great friends with Frau von Mach and in loose moments sat on her kitchen-table smoking cigarettes and eating black cherries; we discussed Shakespeare, Wagner, Brahms, Middlemarch, Bach and Hegel, and the time flew.
One night I arrived early at the Opera House and was looking about while the fiddles were tuning up. I wore my pearls and a scarlet crepe-de-chine dress and a black cloth cape with a hood on it, which I put on over my head when I walked home in the rain. I was having a frank stare at the audience, when I observed just opposite me an officer in a white uniform. As the Saxon soldiers wore pale blue, I wondered what army he could belong to.
He was a fine-looking young man, with tailor-made shoulders, a small waist and silver and black on his sword-belt. When he turned to the stage, I looked at him through my opera-glasses. On closer inspection, he was even handsomer than I had thought. A lady joined him in the box and he took off her cloak, while she stood up gazing down at the stalls, pulling up her long black gloves. She wore a row of huge pearls, which fell below her waist, and a black jet decollete dress. Few people wore low dresses at the opera and I saw half the audience fixing her with their glasses. She was evidently famous. Her hair was fox-red and pinned back on each side of her temples with Spanish combs of gold and pearls; she surveyed the stalls with cavernous eyes set in a snow-white face; and in her hand she held a bouquet of lilac orchids. She was the best-looking woman I saw all the time I was in Germany and I could not take my eyes off her. The white officer began to look about the opera-house when my red dress caught his eye. He put up his glasses, and I instantly put mine down. Although the lights were lowered for the overture, I saw him looking at me for some time.
I had been in the habit of walking about in the entr'actes and, when the curtain dropped at the end of the first act, I left the box. It did not take me long to identify the white officer. He was not accompanied by his lady, but stood leaning against the wall smoking a cigar and talking to a man; as I passed him I had to stop for a moment for fear of treading on his outstretched toes. He pulled himself erect to get out of my way; I looked up and our eyes met; I don't think I blush easily, but something in his gaze may have made me blush. I lowered my eyelids and walked on.
The Meistersinger was my favourite opera and so it appeared to be of the Dresdeners; Wagner, having quarrelled with the authorities, refused to allow the Ring to be played in the Dresden Opera House; and every one was tired of the swans and doves of Lohengrin and Tannhauser.
There was a great crowd that night and, as it was raining when we came out, I hung about, hoping to get a cab; I saw my white officer with his lady, but he did not see me; I heard him before he got into the brougham give elaborate orders to the coachman to put him down at some club.
After waiting for some time, as no cab turned up, I pulled the hood of my cloak over my head and started to walk home; when the crowd scattered I found myself alone and I turned into a little street which led into Luttichau-strasse. Suddenly I became aware that I was being followed; I heard the even steps and the click of spurs of some one walking behind me; I should not have noticed this had I not halted under a lamp to pull on my hood, which the wind had blown off. When I stopped, the steps also stopped. I walked on, wondering if it had been my imagination, and again I heard the click of spurs coming nearer. The street being deserted, I was unable to endure it any longer; I turned round and there was the officer. His black cloak hanging loosely over his shoulders showed me the white uniform and silver belt. He saluted me and asked me in a curious Belgian French if he might accompany me home. I said:
"Oh, certainly! But I am not at all nervous in the dark."