The threshing machine had been singing its autumn song for many a day. Its monotonous whirr could be heard far beyond the castle court. It carried no message of golden blessings or glowing crystallised sunlight. From morning till late at night it moaned and howled like an Æolian harp in stormbeaten branches; and sometimes soft, long-drawn cries burst from its entrails, as if the sheaves it was torturing and tearing had been endowed with speech.

So much dreamy bliss dwelt again in Lilly's soul that she got nothing but allurement and yearning from this music, which entirely obsessed her in her morning slumber and kept her lying in bed a long time in a drowsy half-sleep the better to listen to its even, unvarying singsong.

All the while she thought of him.

A comrade, a playmate, that was what she had needed all along, some one in whose company to make merry and complain, some one who would confess all his follies, his most secret sins, and then receive laughing absolution. For whatever his crime, he was not the guilty one; his youth was the sinner, the same sweet, mischievous youth which filled her soul with melancholy and her body with shuddering, which dominated them both like a beneficent yet tormenting divinity, who favoured the one and ruined the other.

He had to be saved—saved from his own frivolity, from that fatal condition of his soul which threatened to entangle and choke him in a net of vulgar escapades. Rumours of the low life he was leading kept cropping up not to be silenced, and she needed but to step inside the servants' hall for a stream of gossip to come gushing over her like a jet of dirty water.

Her first intervention was to be only the beginning of the great mission she had to perform in his life. She would be his good genius, walking before him and holding up her hands against every evil temptation, until he had become as pure, as undesirous as herself.

Thus she dreamed to the accompaniment of the threshing machine.

The first ride beyond the castle gates, though taken without permission, had been approved, even commended; and others were to follow. But Lilly hesitated. She wanted to learn a decent canter, she said, before venturing upon new roads. As a matter of fact, she was burning with eagerness for another such hour in Von Prell's company, and merely lacked the courage to bring it about.

The morning after that first ride he was the same cringing riding master as before, outdoing himself in respectfulness and over-polite while rigorous in imparting instruction. Lilly had fully expected he would whisper a familiar word hinting at the day before, a soft "Lilly." There was plenty of opportunity, but nothing of the sort took place.

The next few lessons went in the same fashion. Neither Lilly nor Von Prell thought of leaving the courtyard. But one day the decree went forth from the colonel himself.

"Enough of this hopping about on the gravel. Get out of here and air yourselves in the wind of the fields."

"At your command, Colonel," said Von Prell, touching his cap. He rode his horse up to Lilly's and gently steered both of them out of the gate.

Her heart stood still. She forgot to say good-by to the colonel, she was so preoccupied with anticipation of the pleasure in store for her.

They went the same road that had brought her the great experience of the week before.

The willows dripped with dew and at the slightest touch showered down a rain of drops. Lilly laughed and shook herself. Instead of joining in, he guided his horse to the edge of the road, leaving the middle to her.

"But I want to get wet," she said.

"As my lady says," he replied, stiff as a poker in his stupid, artificial respect.

Then they rode on in silence.

When they reached the spot where the great event had occurred which gave the lie to his present behaviour, she ventured to send him a furtive sidelong glance. But he did not respond, seeming not to have noticed her look. His jockey cap pulled close over his head down to the back of his neck, his thin, tightly-drawn face, sprinkled with dewdrops, his boyish body, all muscle and bone, he sat on his saddle as if he and his horse were one.

"How I love him, in spite of everything, the dear little fellow," she thought, and pictured to herself how horribly abandoned she would feel if ever he were to leave the place. And it became clear as day to her that the gay excitement in her soul, the sense of abundance in her life here where she dwelt, had arisen from nothing else than his always, always being near by.

They rode along at an even gait. The brown ridges bordering the opposite bank of the stream drew nearer and nearer. Von Prell seemed to be making for them, but this did not serve her purpose, because the hour for a frank talk had struck.

To-day or never!

She made a great effort to go over in her mind what she would say to him. But her thoughts were incoherent. She had to keep her attention fixed on the horse; and so long as she remained in the saddle she felt herself too much under Von Prell's control.

Summoning all her courage she asked:

"Can't we dismount?"

He paused to consider, but she had jumped from her horse already, and he had just time enough to grasp the mare's snaffle. He reprimanded her, though in the end he had to yield.

They walked side by side, Von Prell leading both horses.

The path led through a stone pit sparsely grown with oak trees and alders. Golden marigold buttons dotted the marshy spots, and the bur-reed stretched out its bristly fruit on crinkled arms. Reddish dock raised its aging stalk and the floating grass was drawing in its blades in expectation of approaching autumn.

A mountain-ash, felled by a storm, stretched diagonally from the side of the road across the ditch. Its purplish red clusters of berries glowed like flames which by right should have been extinguished long ago, but which a mysterious life-force kept feeding.

"I'd like to sit here," said Lilly

He bowed.

"If you please."

"But you must sit down, too."

"I must hold the horses, my lady."

"You can tie them to a tree."

He considered a while.

"I can," he said, and tied the reins about the stump of the fallen tree.

When he was about to sit down next to her, she moved nearer to the middle of the trunk to make room for him, and she sat with her feet dangling over the ditch water.

He shoved himself after her, swinging his upper body between his arms, which held him like props.

"No further," she said. She did not want him too close to her.

"At my lady's service," he answered, and kicked his heels.

The grotesque stiffness of his speech annoyed her.

"Don't you know a better way of addressing me when we are alone?" she asked, looking him full in the face.

"I do, but I mustn't"

"And last time—how about then?"

"It happened to be my birthday," he replied, "and I wanted a pretty gift, so I presented that to myself."

"And to-day's my birthday," she laughed. "What will you present me with?"

"Whatever my lady wishes."

"Call me comrade."

"Once or always?"

"Always."

"Just say comrade, or be comrade, too?"

"Be, be, be," she cried. "The being is the chief thing."

"Agreed!" he said, cautiously sliding his right hand along the swaying trunk.

"Agreed!" she said, and they shook hands on it.

"There's something else to be passed upon in connection with this," he observed, and cleared his throat.

"What's that?"

"Is this comradeship to be accompanied or not to be accompanied by the use of the first name?"

"Not," rejoined Lilly, thinking she had made a great sacrifice.

He took the prohibition at its face value and said obediently:

"As my comrade wishes."

Now her time had come. Lilly drew in a deep breath and said:

"I have something very serious to say to you, Mr. Von Prell."

He seemed to suspect evil.

"Ouch," he said, and bit his gloved thumb.

Lilly began. She would say absolutely nothing about that affair with Katie, even though it was very dreadful, because what is to be forgiven must also be forgotten. But if he thought the life he had been leading ever since he had come to Lischnitz had remained a secret, he was greatly mistaken. Even the scrubbing women laughed at him behind his back. But he couldn't expect anything else, if he—and she recounted the list of his sins, which, in spite of herself, had reached her ears from the servants' hall.

Lilly was ashamed of what she said. She had meant to speak of entirely different things—of the loftiness of human existence, of the greatness of self-abnegation, of keeping oneself pure for the sake of genuine feelings, of the mysterious spiritual union of the elect on earth, and much more in the same strain. But when she saw him, as he sat there with his back curved and his feet turned inward, causing bulbs to appear and disappear on the soft leather of his riding boots where they covered his big toes, nothing better occurred to her.

He did not interrupt her.

When she had concluded he maintained silence and occupied himself with following the movements of an insect which was wriggling in the dark, slimy water of the ditch.

"Have you nothing to say," she asked, "after I have reproached you with such disgraceful behaviour?"

"What should I have to say?" he asked in turn. "My one claim to celebrity is my being a man utterly devoid of moral fibre. Should I lose that one claim, too?"

"If you have nothing within yourself to hold you up, lean on me," she cried, glowing with eagerness. "Let me be your friend, your adviser, your—"

"Foster-father," he suggested, and swished about the slime with his crop.

She realised that everything she said was lost on him; that he even seized whatever opportunity offered to make merry at her expense.

"Please get up and let me by," she said. "Why should I cast what is best in me before one who is unworthy?"

He made no movement to leave his seat.

"Look, comrade," he said, pointing to the dark, mirror-like surface of the water. "A water spider is gliding about there all the time with its legs up and its head down. If you were to ask it why, it would say it doesn't know how to glide differently. That's its nature. What's to be done?"

"A man can restrain himself," she cried, flaring up and casting indignant glances at him. "A man can look up to heights, to an ideal. He can listen to the advice of a friend who means well by him—that's what he can do."

"And what does his friend advise?" he asked flatteringly, while swinging himself nearer.

But this time she did not answer. She covered her face with her hands and cried, cried so that her body shook with sobs.

"For God's sake, sit still," he exclaimed, stretching his arms about her in a wide circle, for she was in danger of losing her balance on the slim, swaying trunk of the mountain-ash. "Do sit still, Lilly, else you'll fall into the water."

She shuddered. She heard nothing of what he said except that sweet, secret, criminal "Lilly," for which she had been longing the whole week.

Then he promised her everything she wanted of him. He wouldn't run after any more servant girls, he wouldn't spend nights boozing with the inspector and the bookkeeper, he wouldn't—oh, what wouldn't he do, if only she stopped crying.

"Your word of honour?" she said, raising her wet, reddened eyes.

"My word of honour," he replied without an instant's hesitation.

She smiled at him, happy and grateful.

"You won't regret it," she said. "I'll be close at hand, I'll be your friend, I will do whatever I can."

"And whatever the two High Mightinesses permit," he added.

This time the epithet "High Mightinesses" did not annoy her. She shrugged her shoulders and said: "Oh, they—yes, of course."

Then they both laughed till they came near falling into the ditch after all.