ies; and then, refusing
further hospitality, Otto and Seraphina once more proceeded to descend
the glen, which now began to open and to be invaded by the taller trees.

"I owed that man a reparation," said the Prince; "for when we met I was
in the wrong and put a sore affront upon him. I judge by myself,
perhaps; but I begin to think that no one is the better for a
humiliation."

"But some have to be taught so," she replied.

"Well, well," he said, with a painful embarrassment. "Well, well. But
let us think of safety. My miller is all very good, but I do not pin my
faith to him. To follow down this stream will bring us, but after
innumerable windings, to my house. Here, up this glade, there lies a
cross-cut--the world's end for solitude--the very deer scarce visit it.
Are you too tired, or could you pass that way?"

"Choose the path, Otto. I will follow you," she said.

"No," he replied, with a singular imbecility of manner and appearance,
"but I meant the path was rough. It lies, all the way, by glade and
dingle, and the dingles are both deep and thorny."

"Lead on," she said. "Are you not Otto the Hunter?"

They had now burst across a veil of underwood, and were come into a lawn
among the forest, very green and innocent, and solemnly surrounded by
trees. Otto paused on the margin, looking about him with delight; then
his glance returned to Seraphina, as she stood framed in that silvan
pleasantness and looking at her husband with undecipherable eyes. A
weakness both of the body and mind fell on him like beginnings of sleep;
the cords of his activity were relaxed, his eyes clung to her. "Let us
rest," he said; and he made her sit down, and himself sat down beside
her on the slope of an inconsiderable mound.

She sat with her eyes downcast, her slim hand dabbling in grass, like a
maid waiting for love's summons. The sound of the wind in the forest
swelled and sank, and drew near them with a running rush, and died away
and away in the distance into fainting whispers. Nearer hand, a bird out
of the deep covert uttered broken and anxious notes. All this seemed but
a halting prelude to speech. To Otto it seemed as if the whole frame of
nature were waiting for his words; and yet his pride kept him silent.
The longer he watched that slender and pale hand plucking at the
grasses, the harder and rougher grew the fight between pride and its
kindly adversary.

"Seraphina," he said at last, "it is right you should know on