sh was that our sail could go on forever.

"Do you know what is ringing in my ears and will not leave my mind?" I
asked.

"Indeed, no! You are a riddle and a mystery to me."

I hummed the splendid air from the Choral Symphony, the _motif_ of the
music to the choruses to "Joy" which follow.

"Ah!" said he, taking up its deep, solemn gladness, "you are right,
May--quite right. There is a joy, if it be 'beyond the starry belt.'"

"I wonder what that town is?" I said, after a pause.

"I am not sure, but I fancy it is Emmerich. I am sure I hope so."

Whatever the town, we were floating straight toward it. I suddenly
thought of my dream long ago, and told it to him, adding:

"I think this must have been the floating wreck to which you and I
seemed clinging; though I thought that all of the dream that was going
to be fulfilled had already come to pass on that Carnival Monday
afternoon."

The boat had got into one of the twisting currents, and was being
propelled directly toward the town.

Eugen looked at me and laughed. I asked why.

"What for a lark! as they say in your country."

"You are quite mistaken. I never heard such an expression. But what is
such a lark?"

"We have no hats; we want something to eat; we must have tickets to get
back to Elberthal, and I have just two thalers in my pocket--oh! and a
two-pfennige piece. I left my little all behind me."

"Hurrah! At last you will be compelled to take back that three thalers
ten."

We both laughed at this _jeu d'esprit_ as if it had been something
exquisitely witty; and I forgot my disheveled condition in watching the
sun rise over the broad river, in feeling our noiseless progression over
it, and, above all, in the divine sense of oneness and harmony with him
at my side--a feeling which I can hardly describe, utterly without the
passionate fitfulness of the orthodox lover's rapture, but as if for a
long time I had been waiting for some quality to make me complete, and
had quietly waked to find it there, and the world understandable--life's
riddle read.

Eugen's caresses were few, his words of endearment quiet; but I knew
what they stood for; a love rooted in feelings deeper than those of
sense, holier than mere earthly love--feelings which had taken root in
adversity, had grown in darkness and "made a sunshine in a shady
place"--feelings which in him had their full and noble growth and beauty
of development, but which it seems to be the aim of the fash