t I returned to Berlin seriously ill she had just left
boarding-school, and it is difficult to describe the impression she made
when I saw her for the first time; yet I found in the opening rose all
that had lent the bud so great a charm.

I am not writing a romance, and shall not permit the heart to beautify or
transfigure the image memory retains, yet I can assert that Nenny lacked
nothing which art and poesy attribute to the women who allegorically
personate the magic of Nature or the fairest emotions and ideals of the
human soul. In this guise poet, sculptor, or artist might have
represented Imagination, the Fairy Tale, Lyric Poetry, the Dream, or
Compassion.

The wealth of raven hair, the delicate lines of the profile, the scarlet
lips, the pearly teeth, the large, long-lashed blue eyes, whose colour
formed a startling contrast to the dark hair, the slender little hands
and dainty feet, united to form a beauty whose equal Nature rarely
produces. And this fair body contained a tender, loving, pure, childlike
heart, which longed for higher gifts than human life can bestow.

Thus she appeared before me like an apparition from a world opened only
to the poet. She came often, for she loved my mother, and rarely
approached my couch without a flower, a picture which pleased her, or a
book containing a poem which she valued.

When she entered I felt as if happiness came with her. Doubtless my eyes
betrayed this distinctly enough, though I forced my lips to silence; for
what love had she, before whom life was opening like a path through a
blooming garden, to bestow on the invalid cousin who was probably
destined to an early death, and certainly to many a year of illness? At
our first meeting I felt that I loved her, but for that very reason I
desired to conceal it.

I had grown modest. It was enough for me to gaze at her, hear her dear
voice, and sometimes--she was my cousin--clasp her little hand.

Science was now the object of my devotion. My intellect, passion, and
fire were all hers. A kind fortune seemed to send me Nenny in order to
bestow a gift also upon the heart, the soul, the sense of beauty.

This state of affairs could not last; for no duty commanded her to share
the conflict raging within me, and a day came when I learned from her own
lips that she loved me, that her heart had been mine when she was a
little school-girl, that during my illness she had never wearied of
praying for me, and had wept all nig