"I will do my best, Mitzi," I replied, "for I love you, love you truly,
you are my better self, you are my good angel."
She laughed. Yes, she laughed at my fervent words.
"How solemn you are, Patrick. How English. You declaim as if you wanted
to appeal to my passions."
"Mitzi, I cannot help worshipping you. No woman can wish to be loved
better than I love you."
I found my words quite nice and the right thing to say. But she went on
laughing.
"I can make any man say that to me. But I doubt whether I can make any
man compose a beautiful opera. Will you?"
"Is my lullaby not to your taste?"
She seemed doubtful.
"One swallow does not make a summer."
I felt it like a bitter pang, as if I were forsaken by her. Artists
are such sensitive plants. Oh, imaginative reader, fancy your Patrick
Cooper as a Mimosa whose leaves have just been touched. My life seemed
pale, my prospects desolate, my hopes dead. And all that because Mitzi
had laughed when my heart had been glowing.
Yet the phenomena of irritability last but one moment in the Mimosa,
and the subtle doom that had struck my love lasted not much longer.
Now, when writing this I see how fearfully weak I was.
A few days later, the holidays at the Opera having begun, Doblana and
Mitzi left for a little place in the Salzkammergut, St. Gilgen, not far
from Salzburg, and I for England, where I was to stay for a few weeks
with my parents.