ighs and bound off as if he meant to take a gate. Had he glanced
behind him he would have fancied that the sun had done its worst. I ran
at full speed down the footpath, mad to think she might have returned
homeward by the lake. The two had parted--why? He this way, she that.
They would not have parted but for a division of the will. I came on
the empty boat. Schwartz lay near it beneath heavy boughs, smoking and
perspiring in peace. Neither of us spoke. And it was now tempered by
a fit of alarm that I renewed my search. So when I beheld her, intense
gratitude broke my passion; when I touched her hand it was trembling for
absolute assurance of her safety. She was leaning against a tree, gazing
on the ground, a white figure in that iron-moted gloom.

'Otto!' she cried, shrinking from the touch; but at sight of me, all
softly as a light in the heavens, her face melted in a suffusion of
wavering smiles, and deep colour shot over them, heavenly to see. She
pressed her bosom while I spoke: a lover's speech, breathless.

'You love me?' she said.

'You have known it!'

'Yes, yes!'

'Forgiven me? Speak, princess.'

'Call me by my name.'

'My own soul! Ottilia!'

She disengaged her arms tenderly.

'I have known it by my knowledge of myself,' she said, breathing with
her lips dissevered. 'My weakness has come upon me. Yes, I love you. It
is spoken. It is too true. Is it a fate that brings us together when I
have just lost my little remaining strength--all power? You hear me! I
pretend to wisdom, and talk of fate!'

She tried to laugh in scorn of herself, and looked at me with almost a
bitter smile on her features, made beautiful by her soft eyes. I feared
from the helpless hanging of her underlip that she would swoon; a
shudder convulsed her; and at the same time I became aware of the
blotting out of sunlight, and a strange bowing and shore-like noising of
the forest.

'Do not heed me,' she said in happy undertones. 'I think I am going to
cry like a girl. One cannot see one's pride die like this, without but
it is not anguish of any kind. Since we are here together, I would have
no other change.'

She spoke till the tears came thick.

I told her of the letters I had received, warning me of a trouble
besetting her. They were, perhaps, the excuse for my conduct, if I had
any.

Schwartz burst on us with his drill-sergeant's shout for the princess.
Standing grey in big rain-drops he was an object of curiosity to us