rposes
framing which I walked home, was one to obtain a grant of that bit of
land where we had sat together, and build a temple on it. The fear that
it might be trodden by feet of men before I had enclosed it beset me with
anguish. The most absolute pain I suffered sprang from a bewildering
incapacity to conjure up a vision of Ottilia free of the glittering
accessories of her high birth; and that was the pain of shame; but it
came only at intervals, when pride stood too loftily and the shadow of
possible mischance threatened it with the axe.

She did not condemn me to long waiting. Her favourite Aennchen brought me
her first letter. The girl's face beamed, and had a look as if she
commended me for a worthy deed.

'An answer, Aennchen?' I asked her.

'Yes, yes!' said she anxiously; 'but it will take more time than I can
spare.' She appointed a meeting near the palace garden-gates at night.

I chose a roof of limes to read under.

'Noblest and best beloved!' the princess addressed me in her own tongue,
doubting, I perceived, as her training had taught her, that my English
eyes would tolerate apostrophes of open-hearted affection. The rest was
her English confided to a critic who would have good reason to be
merciful:

'The night has come that writes the chapter of the day. My father has had
his interview with his head-forester to learn what has befallen from the
storm in the forest. All has not been told him! That shall not be delayed
beyond to-morrow.

'I am hurried to it. And I had the thought that it hung perhaps at the
very end of my life among the coloured leaves, the strokes of
sunset--that then it would be known! or if earlier, distant from this
strange imperative Now. But we have our personal freedom now, and I have
learnt from minutes what I did mean to seek from years, and from our
forest what I hoped that change of scene, travel, experience, would teach
me. Yet I was right in my intention. It was a discreet and a just meaning
I had. For things will not go smoothly for him at once: he will have his
hard battle. He is proved: he has passed his most brave ordeal. But I!
Shall I see him put to it and not certainly know myself? Even thus I
reasoned. One cannot study without knowing that our human nature is most
frail. Daily the body changes, daily the mind--why not the heart? I did
design to travel and converse with various persons.

'Pardon it to one who knew that she would require super-feminine power of