The peaceful golden light of a Sunday morning in June pierced the railroad station's sooty glass roof.

Such an amount of blush brightness was gathered under the three great arches where they led into the open, that as the train glided beneath them you thought you were dipping into a sunny sea.

The gay ribbons of the dressed-up girls fluttered against the decent Sunday suits of the attentive youths, each of whom felt himself to be an indispensable master of ceremonies.

There were athletic clubs and rowing clubs and smoking clubs and singing societies, and an entire department store.

In the midst of the jolly, noisy throng a quiet, happy couple walked along looking about cautiously and keeping at a certain distance from each other, so that nobody could be sure whether or not they belonged together. They made for one of the front coaches.

Lilly walked ahead. Again she saw the faces of persons coming toward her grow rigid with a sort of solemn tenseness—a mute homage which she well knew, but which she had never accepted with so much joy as then, since the one man in the world whom she wanted to please was witnessing her triumph.

In his honour she had clad herself completely in festive white—a linen crash suit, an embroidered linen blouse, and a white straw hat with a white veil about it. She wore the hat low on her forehead, and beneath it her shining brown hair rolled in large waves. She carried a white zephyr shawl on her arm against the evening coolness, since they had arranged not to try to catch a certain train home, but remain in the country until they wearied.

They sat in opposite corners of the third-class compartment smiling slyly and saying not a word.

They were riding into the unknown.

"Follow me," he had said. "I'll give you a surprise. We will go on a voyage of discovery. I myself am by no means certain of my goal. Otherwise it wouldn't be a voyage of discovery."

The feeling of giving herself up without question was new and delicious.

About an hour must have passed and the compartment had long been empty, when he nodded to her to get out.

"Where are we?"

"What difference does it make where we are?"

Oh, he was right! Lilly never so much as glanced at the name of the station.

They walked along the uneven street of a bare little town. The sunshine lay on the yellow house fronts like a soporific. The shop doors were locked and sheets were stretched across the lower halves of the display windows to proclaim the Sunday.

Organ tones came from around the street corners like a dull breeze. A turkey cock strutted up from out of a gateway and gobbled at them—no more organ tones.

The houses grew less frequent. From the fields came a whiff of ripening grain, but the heavy fragrance of the yellow lupine overwhelmed it. Meadows of clover spread their white-dotted rugs, and in the background black firs rose from the summits of sand-coloured hills.

They stepped merrily along the unshaded road, on which little eddies of silvery white dust chased ahead of them.

Konrad knew and saw everything—how the falcon flapping its wings stood still in the air—how the wild rabbit lifting its little white rump leapt away in droll haste—every minute there was something new.

Since the days at Lischnitz Lilly had never walked out in the blossoming spring.

"Oh, if I had had a guide like him," she thought, "it would all have been so different."

In the pine woods, which gave out a hot breath, a squirrel ran past them almost over their feet, shot up a tree trunk, and at about a man's height from the ground stood still as if turned to stone.

Lilly and Konrad looked at each other mindful of the moment they had first met.

Lilly moved up to within a few feet of the squirrel, but it did not budge.

"I feel as if we were enchanted," she said. "If it were to speak to us, I shouldn't be a bit surprised."

Heaving a sigh of bliss she threw herself on the grey, crackling moss.

Konrad followed her example. Shading their eyes with their hands they lay on their backs and blinked up at the sun which flickered down on them through the sparse fir boughs.

They had both nearly forgotten the squirrel's presence, when a sudden chip sounded close over their heads. They looked up and saw the little fellow scampering up the trunk. Until that moment he had stared at them too frightened to stir.

"There you have it," said Konrad, "if we shoot our human language at them, they'll take good care not to speak to us."

"We're enchanted at any rate," laughed Lilly. "I at least have never in my life been stretched out so comfortably and had the sun shine on me so. Have you?"

"Oh yes," he rejoined. "I recall one time at least quite definitely."

"How? When?" Lilly inquired, all jealousy. She was jealous of every happy moment in his life which she had not created for him.

"Oh, there's not much to tell. It was in Ravello, a rocky nest not far from Amalfi, high over the sea. A perfect fairyland. Full of old, Moorish palaces, partly inhabited, partly in ruins. There are marble courtyards with trellised iron railings, ruined fountains with myrtle and laurel growing around in rank profusion and little white climbing roses covering everything. There was one place in particular which I would have given my life to be able to enter. It had a small, mysterious gallery which stood out against the deep blue sky like a silver web. An iron gate as high as a house separated me from that gallery. Since there was nobody about to see the street Arab escapade—only a few peasant labourers in the olive plantations live there—I actually climbed over that gate one day."

"Glorious!" cried Lilly.

"Yes, I got in. After making a professional inspection of the beautiful, strange motifs, I lay a long time on the warm stone steps, and let the sun shine down on me just as we are doing now under these Brandenburg firs. And—think of it! the little bluish-green lizards that you love so came gliding up slowly, cautiously, and ran straight over me."

"Oh, heavenly!" said Lilly rapturously.

"Lying there that way with the old marble fountain making music in my ears, I fell asleep—a thing one had better not indulge in, because one may get a sunstroke that way even in midwinter. I'm sure I should have, if some tourists hadn't come along and thrown sticks and stones at me. When I awoke I felt dizzy and I saw red. I couldn't dream of climbing over the gate again. The tourists had to fetch the gate key from the sindaco, and to cap the climax I had to appear before him for a hearing—Who are you? Don't you know trespassing in the garden is forbidden? But thank the Lord, he didn't send me to jail, because all the people tapped their heads and said: 'È matto, he's crazy.'"

"No harm," laughed Lilly. "You got what you wanted; you entered the forbidden garden. Other people have to be content with standing outside the railing."

"A pleasure we shall probably enjoy to-day," he observed, and Lilly choked down her curiosity.

"At any rate," he continued, "it doesn't hurt if one practices standing outside now and then. Heaven knows, the very happiness toward which you crane your neck usually is a forbidden garden."

Lilly looked at him.

What did he mean by that?

Their eyes met in shy understanding.

That hopeful disquiet, which she did not venture to call by its name, quivered through her like a fit of fever.

"Come," she said, jumping to her feet and hurrying on without looking back at him.

The woods grew thinner. They now walked along a thicketed swamp where birches gaily shot up their slender white columns from mossy pediments.

The warm noon air vibrated in wavelets. From somewhere came the sound of a church bell, but no farmyard was visible far or near, and suddenly they struck a cross-road, and did not know which way to go.

"We are called upon to decide," he said, and listened a while in the direction from which the sound of the bell came. Then he turned to the right.

"I wish," he went on, "I wish there were a bell to sound the way for me in life."

Then he told her he was standing at a cross-road. He had been offered a position, which in view of his youth was not of slight importance. But before accepting it, he had to make sure whether at the same time he could continue with his life-work.

"It must be a very high position, isn't it?" Lilly asked proudly. Had the world felt impelled to make him Minister of Fine Arts, or Emperor of China, she would not have been a bit surprised.

But he hesitated to reply, and finally said:

"I'd rather tell you about it when it's all settled."

She had to be content.

Roofs gleaming red crept over the tops of the bushes. On the edge of the horizon sparkled a lake, nothing more at that distance than a fine silver thread.

"Is that it?" asked Lilly.

"Possibly."

"Oh, don't put on such a mysterious air," she rebuked him teasingly. "Up to now I've been very good and haven't asked a single question. But do at last tell what you have up your sleeve."

"Afterwards, when we're there," he laughed. "I know you. I shouldn't like to make you jealous before the time's ripe."

Oh, if a woman was in the case!

Another woman!

She gave no outer signs of her emotion, but as she walked along she felt quite ill, partly from hunger, partly from distress.

The lake in its light blue summer beauty now lay before them with its greyish-green girdle of reeds and its glistening play of light.

Not far from the bank, on an eminence encircled with bushes, stood an inn, a reddish-yellow atrocity, built in that barbarous style for frame houses half-way between a palace and a barn.

But three or four wide-spreading ancient lindens surrounded the inn, and the white benches beneath offered pleasant seats according with Lilly's and Konrad's mood.

To the left the lake stretched into the hazy distance; to the right, beyond the reeds, in the cove, lay a peasant village, with its mossy green thatched roofs and its blunt, weather-beaten spire half hidden in the bushes and reeds.

And nearby, only a few hundred feet away, rose the mighty trees of a park, from the interior of which here and there came a gleam of columns and bridges and white, vine-clad walls.

Probably the "forbidden garden," in front of whose railing she was to stand that day.

How beautiful and how mysterious.

Anglers came up from the lake, red as lobsters and panting with thirst, the sole guests, it seemed, besides Lilly and Konrad. The stream of Sunday excursionists had not yet flowed into that quiet corner.

But the bill of fare offered a dizzying abundance of good things—too bad they had come all at once. The landlady who handed them the card with smiling obsequiousness, was an artful city product.

Konrad wanted Lilly to arrange the menu, but she refused. The thought of the woman in the case oppressed her sorely, and, as through a dark veil, she looked on the laughing world, which willingly threw its early summer treasures at their feet.

"At last we're here," she said sighing. "Now do confess: what sort of a woman is she?"

He burst out laughing.

"So you know there's a woman in the case?"

"What else would make me jealous?"

"She has the right to make you jealous, I must say, I've never seen anything more beautiful in my life. It's a pity she's of marble."

Oh, if that was all.

"I am and always will be a goose," laughed Lilly, and he kissed her hand in apology.

While awaiting the fish they had ordered, he told her the history that led up to their present pilgrimage.

In Rome he had once noticed an antique bust of a woman in an art dealer's show window. The head was badly mutilated, but of such lofty sombre beauty that he kept returning to the window to feast his eyes upon it. One day he found the dealer and a German gentleman engaged in an eager conversation, which, however, never progressed, because the two did not understand each other. He offered his services as interpreter, and to his dismay learned that his beloved was being bargained for. The German was a baron, courteous and evidently a man of some culture. In defiance of his own feelings Konrad tried his best to arrange the sale, and for his pains received an invitation to view the bust in the baron's park—he was to convince himself that the beautiful head was destined for no unworthy setting.

"Why, then, it's not a forbidden garden after all," cried Lilly, blissfully stretching her arms toward the mysterious green walls. "We have the right to enter it."

But Konrad looked thoughtful.

"It's not so simple as all that. Remember—as what shall I introduce you? You're not my wife. I can't say you're my sister, as you and I pretend, and we're both too young for any other relationship."

A sudden bitterness welled up within her. Again she felt scorned, outlawed, expelled from the community of the virtuous.

"You should have left me at home," she burst out. "I'm nothing but a burden to you."

"Oh, Lilly," he said, "what do I care for all the marble women in the world! I'd rather stand outside with you than be shown the honours of the entire place."

Reconciled and grateful, she stroked his hand hanging at his side.

At this point—at last! the carp was served.

Two hours later they were walking along an endless wall about nine feet high with never a break in it to peep through.

But at the corner of the park to the right the wall came to an end giving place to a high mossy wooden fence, which allowed them a view some distance into the interior.

Ancient plane trees arched over shady nooks with lindens and elms forcing themselves between. Large-leafed vines with great violet eyes draped the open grassy places. In the background on a hillock about which towered sombre spruces stood a small, solemn round temple with Tuscan columns and a gleaming green roof.

"She must be in there," said Konrad. But the temple was empty.

So they continued their search. Not a single opening in the foliage escaped them. Here something gleamed and there and there—a Ceres, a satyr blowing his pipe of Pan. In a cypress thicket they caught a glimpse of a wayside shrine of Our Lady, but the woman's head they were seeking was nowhere to be seen.

They walked on. A stream flowing from within the park crossed the road. An unsightly plank bridge, such as is to be seen on every highway, led across.

But a few hundred feet away, inside the park, another bridge boldly yet gracefully threw its shining white arch over the running water.

"The bridges in Venice look like that," he said.

"That is the way the gods went to Walhalla," she said.

With a sigh they stopped and pictured the delights of crossing that bridge.

Still nothing to be seen of their marble bust.

Beyond the plank bridge, where the village began, the park receded some distance from the road. A row of tall serious Weymouth pines ran along the other side of the fence.

The village street was gay with Sunday life. The sound of a piano and a fiddle came from a dancing hall, interrupted every now and then by the roll of bowling balls.

Lilly and her friend passed without giving heed to these things. Their wishes were still fastened upon the forbidden garden. Each moment increased their longing.

Hidden between the village lindens crouched crumbling stone posts to which the decaying fence pales clung with difficulty.

Here the foliage in the interior was impenetrable to the eye. Ivy and clematis serpentined from trunk to trunk, and lilacs and spirÆas grew in rank profusion between.

The lord of the garden seemed to have drawn an inner living hedge about himself and his companions to conceal them in laughing seclusion.

Once more they walked along in vain endeavouring to get a peep into the interior.

Presently they came upon an ancient, three-winged gate, which with its vases and columns, its cracked belfry, and its wrought-iron lace work, was half sunk in blooming acacias.

Here at last they could get a good view of the park.

In sombre solemnity tall pines led straight to the castle. But even here they were unable to obtain a glimpse of the buildings, which probably stood off to one side hidden behind trees and bushes. The only architectural bit their searching eyes discerned was a columned terrace, where cherubs fluttered their snowy white wings.

"Oh, how beautiful!" sighed Lilly, and pressing her face between the iron bars she jestingly whined and begged to be let in.

"That's just the way I stood outside the gate in Ravello. Now you know what it's like."

His words brought to Lilly the realisation that she had long known what "it was like." She was familiar with the feeling. She had often stood in the very same position.

But where, where?

Where had cold iron pressed her cheeks just as now?

Oh, yes. Many and many a time she had stood at the iron grating of the door leading to Mrs. Dehnicke's staircase, that proud, laurel-shaded staircase which her desecrated feet were never to tread.

That, too, was a forbidden garden!

Forbidden gardens everywhere!

"Shouldn't we go?" she asked softly. "It will simply depress us to remain here."

Hand in hand they returned the entire distance they had come, keeping as close as possible to the enclosure and speaking of anything but their hearts' desire.

Nevertheless, their eyes remained fastened on the goal of their aspirations; and the yearning they both felt, though neither of them would express it for fear of hinting reproaches, threw a fairy film of gold over the universe.

Evening came.

Violet shadows lay upon the meadows, the coppery pine trunks glowed like torches. As the sinking sun dipped into the reeds, the lake lost its cool blue silvery sheen and adorned itself with a net of reddish gold. It looked as if it had sportively drawn to itself the fulfilment of all earthly promises.

The two could no longer bear it on land.

Down at the bathing pavilion, where a merry lot of people were splashing about in the evening coolness, there was a boat to be hired for very little.

Konrad took the oars and Lilly seated herself at the tiller.

Water plants plashed lightly against the sides of the boat, and the bow cut through a waving carpet of pollen.

Among this year's tender green reeds stood the yellowish-grey weather-beaten remnants of last year's growth. Dark bulrushes edged the shores, and the water-flag planted its golden tents between.

Over the reeds and bulrushes they could see the massed park trees rising toward the heavens like purple walls.

When Lilly told him to look there, he observed indifferently:

"Oh, no use, it's out of the question."

Nevertheless he continued to cast sidelong glances that way.

Lilly in her slight experience with boats did not know how to manage the tiller, and after trying a while she threw the rope down and spread her white shawl on the bottom of the boat to make a cosy nest for herself.

She lay crouched at Konrad's feet with her back to the seat in the stern, and with her eyes lost in the blue depths she began to plan a different future, some way of saving herself by a desperate leap into the land of the virtuous.

She would give music lessons—her knowledge sufficed for beginners—and with her savings prepare for the stage, for which her talents eminently fitted her—or, better still, take up scientific studies, because she must keep intellectual pace with him. She must be a suitable friend so long as he needed her friendship.

Or—not to wound the sensibilities of others—she would leave Germany, earn her living as a teacher of German, and when he should summon her, return a new, purified being.

Or—oh dear, "or!"

To lie and dream and drink the cup of her present joy to the dregs. Discovery and death—the one involved the other—would come soon enough.

The sun dissolved behind a blood-red curtain. Violet vapours closed down, enveloping things far and near. The entire world seemed to have thinned into light and air. The reeds alone, with their slender black stalks standing out against the evening glow like a dainty railing of wrought iron, retained their corporeal aspect.

The foliage of the park slowly melted into a mass of darkness.

Now the park seemed to be doubly a forbidden garden, filled to the brim with thrills and mysteries, sunk forever in the realm of the unattainable.

As the boat glided slowly along the edge of the reeds a blue cove suddenly opened up, making a wedge-shaped cut into the land on the park side. It seemed to continue inward without end.

For a few moments Konrad remained motionless, his oars suspended. Then he jumped to his feet with an exclamation of joy.

"What's the matter? What's the matter?"

"You remember the stream flowing out on the other side of the park?"

"Certainly."

"It must have flowed in somewhere—eh?"

"Of course."

He pointed to the gleaming tip of the cove.

"There it is."

"You think we shall after all—?"

The thought was too bold for utterance.

"Now, by water, in this boat, we shall cross that whole dark region from one side to the other."

In her rapture she jumped up with a little outcry of delight, and fell upon his neck, naturally, as if they had never exchanged vows and pledges.

The boat gradually slipped into the current and floated between meadows set with willows where the evening mist lay like white swathes. Beyond stood gleaming peasant huts; and fishing nets draped the fences.

Then, at a bend in the stream, a mighty arch of foliage opened up before them.

"O Lord!" cried Lilly.

"Psst! We must keep very quiet now," he said, "else we'll be turned out after all."

He dipped his oars so lightly that the sound might have been taken for the splash of a leaping fish.

He rowed through the gate of leaves under branches joined overhead in a mazy thicket. It was dark as night in this spot, though here and there on the right a gleam of the summer twilight pierced through the foliage.

They also caught a glimpse of lights and heard talk and laughter and the sound of clinking glasses and, intermittently, a chord, as if someone in the midst of conversation carelessly ran his hand over the keys.

Here the trees and bushes were wider apart, and they had an unobstructed view of the castle—a broad, two-storey building. Its ponderous simplicity pointed to the time when the grandees of Brandenburg had not yet possessed a feeling for art. But on the terrace were the cherubs who had greeted them from a distance in the afternoon.

Between their white bodies at a long table in the flickering lamplight sat a chattering, laughing, singing company, apparently drinking in the intoxication of the summer evening with their wine.

"He, too, might be sitting there, if I weren't a mill-stone about his neck," thought Lilly, and she felt as if she ought to beg his pardon.

The current carried the boat on. The banquet scene vanished like the vision of a moment.

Passing that end of the castle in which the kitchen and pantries lay, where ministering spirits ran busily to and fro, they dipped once more into silence and darkness.

To the right of them back of the many-windowed edifice, was a lawn with old statues and ivy-draped urns—to the left a world buried in darkness. A line of lindens, hundreds of years old, bordered the stream and stifled every ray of light in its dark halls.

Perhaps this was where the marble bust was hidden. Lilly peered into every recess, though furtively, so as to reserve the pleasure of discovery for him.

They now approached the daintily arched bridge they had seen from afar in the daytime.

It did not lead to Walhalla, but from a spirÆa bush to a hemp bush, and beneath it slept a pair of swans, who awoke at the stroke of the oars and with outspread wings swam behind the boat begging for bread.

"Swans! The one thing lacking!" Lilly rejoiced softly, and sought in vain for a crumb. She turned to look after the swans and her neck touched his knees.

"May I stay this way?" she asked a little anxiously.

"If you're comfortable," he answered. There was a yielding tone in his voice which ran warm through her body.

She unpinned her hat, and laid it on the back seat. Now she was free to lean her head lightly against him. With sweet alarm she felt his hand quietly stroke her head.

But he seemed taciturn and self-absorbed, as if a burden were weighing upon him which he was not strong enough to shoulder.

And again she felt, as ofttimes, that a veil hung between them, a veil seldom lifted aside, which obscured the true features of his being, no matter how closely her love drew her to him.

"Oh, if only he were gay!"

The park came to an end.

The red evening glow, no longer shadowed by a mass of foliage, shone upon them insistently. The magic spell threatened to be broken. The world took on its ordinary aspect.

"Come, turn," she asked softly.

He rowed back again into the blissful night.

Now he had to strive against the current, and could not avoid the sound of splashing.

"If only they don't catch us," he said.

"Oh, they are too happy," rejoined Lilly, "they wouldn't do anything to a happy person."

"It seems almost like an enchanted castle, but who can tell—it may be a delusion."

"Why?"

"Oh, the most grievous wound may be hidden under powers, and many a man hides himself behind beauty because he has buried his powers."

The doubt displeased Lilly.

"But they should be happy," she exclaimed softly. "Those who can spare so much as they have given us to-day have enough left for themselves."

"Illogical conclusion, darling," he replied. "You can enrich a beggar and still remain as poor as a church-mouse."

"Are we beggars?" she asked, raising herself up to him tenderly.

"No, by God, we are not beggars," he replied drawing a deep breath.

There was silence for a time. Then it seemed to Lilly something warm and moist fell upon her forehead.

For God's sake! He was crying! Crying with happiness. How had she deserved it—she, Lilly Czepanek—she—?

To hide her own tears she crouched down again. It was in overflowing measure—unendurable. She wanted to sob, cry aloud, kiss his hands. Yet she was forced to clench her fists and stuff her gloves between her teeth, to keep him from seeing what was going on within her. It was a God-send that as they slowly approached the castle again, the sound of a woman's singing reached them. Full ringing tones, which in the ascending notes struck her heart like a lash.

What was she singing? Wasn't it from Tristan? Lilly had never heard the opera, but it could only be from Tristan.

She raised her head questioningly.

"Isolde's Liebestod," Konrad whispered in her ear.

He turned the boat toward the shore in the deepest darkness. They must not lose a note.

Up there on the terrace the laughing and talking had ceased. The nightingale alone, in the linden thicket, would not be silenced, and mingled its sweet ecstasy with the exultation in death of the woman who like no other creation of God or man teaches us that the desire not to be is the most exalted affirmation of to be.

Lilly, her whole body quivering, put her hand over her shoulder to grasp his. She had to hold on to him. Otherwise she felt she would sink into the void. She did not grow easier until she felt his warm fingers between hers.

The song ended. The mighty arpeggios of the accompaniment died away. There was no applause. Each of the merry guests had realised his indebtedness to the occasion.

Konrad pressed her hand and withdrew his, and took up the oars again.

The forbidden garden began to disappear.

The reddish dusk of night lay upon the meadows. Not sound far or near. Nevertheless the world seemed filled with the music of harps and ringing songs.

"We haven't seen your marble woman," Lilly whispered, stroking his knees, "but I keep thinking that was her voice."

"I, too," he burst out passionately. "And she wasn't singing for the good folk up there, but just for us."

"Oh, if only I could sing it like her," sighed Lilly.

"Try."

She remembered bits here and there, but was unable to gather them into a whole. Besides something else forced its way between, which now gushed up mightier than all else.

With the Song of Songs of the greatest and richest her own poor Song of Songs mingled, undesired, uncalled.

And she sang into the deep silence:

She stopped.

"What is that?" he asked. "I don't know it at all."

"It is—my—Song of Songs," she rejoined fetching a deep breath.

Never before had she uttered the name to a human being.

"Your Song of Songs?" he asked, bewildered.

Lilly realised an hour like this would never come again. It was the moment to confide to him the secret of her youth.

"Drop the oars and listen. I will tell you something. It may sound silly and stupid to you, but to me it was always like something sacred."

Without speaking he laid the oars down.

"You must sit next to me," she said, "so I can look at you."

He cast a searching glance in all directions.

The boat had long been quietly drifting again on the mirror-like lake, upon which all the light of the summer night had gathered in scintillating blue and purple spots. Nowhere the slightest sign of danger.

Then he did as she had asked.

They nestled on the boat bottom pressed close against each other with their heads leaning against the bench on which Konrad had been sitting.

And she told her tale.

Told of the legacy her vanished father had left, what power had always emanated from it; how it had completely filled her girlhood years, though later it had acquired a far loftier and more mysterious significance, becoming a symbol of her deeds. When her life sank into chaos and nothingness it remained dumb, often for years. But if her soul began to soar, when her hopes and activities harmonised then all of a sudden it reappeared, and with its soft song drowned the world's evil. It had not been able to guard her against guilt or disgrace, but it had kept her free inwardly and susceptible to the influence of the One who would some day come to her.

And now that he actually had come, she felt that this hour of fulfilment had struck both for her and her Song of Songs. It must now go forth into the world and conquer all hearts and bring purification and upliftment to its creator and herself.

In her enthusiasm she forgot the time and the place and the whole world.

The one thought obsessed her: to throw more of her inward self, of what was most holy to her, at his feet. But she had said everything, more than she had ever deemed herself likely to tell a living soul, more than she had known of herself up to that hour.

He now held in his hands whatever there was of good and lofty and hopeful still within her. The other—the lazy, the impure, that which had ruined her heart and life—no longer existed. It no longer concerned her.

While speaking, though she would have liked to look at him, she had not dared to; but now that she was finished she ventured to turn toward him.

She saw his eyes resting upon her with a singularly confused and drunken look, such as she had never before seen in him. He usually held his feelings as it were in his clenched fists.

Her heart began to throb, and the hopeful disquiet for which she had no name and no object became so strong that she felt she should have to run to the other end of the boat to keep from stifling at his side.

Then she saw him close his eyes and throw his head back hard against the bench.

"You'll hurt yourself," she whispered. And so far from fleeing him, she laid her arm like a pillow between his neck and the cutting edge of the bench.

His head rested on her bosom, and he breathed heavily.

"Shall I sing some more of it?" she asked, bending over him tenderly.

"Yes, yes, yes," he burst out.

So she sang in a low caressing voice, as if they were lullabies, all those arias and odes which no mortal ear had heard from her lips since the day when her mother's soul had gone down into eternal night.

She sang of the "lily of the valley" and the "rose of Sharon" and the verse in which all the witchery of spring is concentrated:

She sang more and still more. If she asked him "Enough?" he merely shook his head, and nestled closer.

Once she gave a fleeting glance upward, and noticed they were wedged in among the reeds, and night had completely descended.

But what cared she? Somehow or other they would manage to get home.

There was little more of it to sing. "Set me as a seal upon thy heart" and "How beautiful are thy steps in sandals, O prince's daughter." And then the verse the beginning of which so well suited the day:

But when it came to

she could scarcely go on.

She was unable to continue. Her breath began to give out.

"Why don't you sing?" she heard him ask.

A buzzing of bees, a ringing of bells all about.

"Be brave!" her soul cried, "Else you will lose him."

She felt two twitching lips grope for hers.

A swift end to all bravery.

It was long past midnight when they landed. The bathing pavilion stood there dark and deserted; but lights were still shining in the hotel.

Very timidly they rang the bell.

"We always keep a room for belated young married couples," said the obsequious, smiling hostess.