foam, flinging the spray afar into the dark, flowing stream, catching
it again; playing with it, half sportive, half fierce, like some
monster alive.

As the wheel turns, the sound of its teeth grinding is steady and
rhythmical, like a theme in the bass; and the river splashes the
accompaniment, gurgling and sighing in a minor key, as if in complaint.

It was Johannestag.[1]

The citizens of Ehrestadt were walking on the promenade, dressed in
their best; the men strutting, the women hanging on their arms, the
children toddling behind. In the square a band was playing; the nut
trees were in full leaf, and the air was warm and sweet with the scent
of the rose buds. The wheel of the mill had stopped.

Just under the peak of the roof was a small window gabled, with a broad
sill, and casements that opened outwards, overlooking the promenade.
The sill was scarlet with geraniums, and the window itself was grown
partly over and half smothered in a veiling of ivy. Behind the window
was a garret, small like a cell; the roof sloping to the eaves.

There was nothing in the garret excepting a pallet-bed in the corner,
under the eaves, and in the opposite corner a box on which stood a
pitcher and basin; the basin was cracked; the pitcher was without a
handle. On the wall hung a few articles of clothing on pegs; and the
slope of the roof was grey and misty with cob-webs. Otherwise the
garret was bare.

Sitting by the window with her elbows on the sill, framed by the ivy
and the geraniums, was a girl. Her head was propped in her hands, and
her hair glittered gold in the warm sun-light against the green and the
scarlet. She was gazing eagerly over the throngs on the promenade, and
her blue eyes were alert as if searching for some one.

She was young and slim, and her gown was shabby, turned back at the
throat as if she suffered from the heat; and her hair was cropped,
lying in little tendrils of gold on her neck, curling thickly about her
ears and her brow. Her cheeks were quite pale, and there was a pinched
look about the lips, dark shadows under the eyes. She gazed steadily.

"If I could only see him," she murmured to herself, half aloud, "just
once--if I could see him!" Her lip trembled a little and she caught it
between her teeth: "It is seventeen weeks--a hundred and nineteen
days--since we parted," she said, "At daybreak on Thursday it will be a
third of a year--a third of a year!"

She moved her head uneasil