hea seized his hands with gratitude.

"Fine! Then we will go walking to-morrow morning. Where? Oh, it doesn't
make much difference," said Daniel.

"But you must tell me everything, you hear? everything." Dorothea was as
insistent as she had been in the room a short while ago; and she was
more impetuous and impatient.

They agreed upon the place where they would meet.

XIV

At first they took short walks in remote parts of the city; then they
took longer ones. On Mid-Summer Day they strolled out to Kraftshof and
the grove of the Pegnitz shepherds. Daniel made unconscious effort to
avoid the places where he had once walked with Eleanore.

There came moments when Dorothea's exuberance made him pensive and sad;
he felt the weight of his forty years; they were inclined to make him
hypochondriacal. Was it the vengeance of fate that made him slow up when
they came to a hill, while Dorothea ran on ahead and waited for him,
laughing?

She did not see the flowers, the trees, the animals, or the clouds. But
when she saw people a change came over her: she would become more
active; or she would mobilise her resources; or she seemed to strike up
a spiritual liaison with them. It might be only a peasant boy on an
errand or a vagabond going nowhere; she would shake her hips and laugh
one note higher.

"Her youth has gone to her head, like wine," Daniel thought to himself.

Once she took a box of chocolate bon-bons along. Having had enough of
them herself and seeing that Daniel did not care for them, she threw
what was left away. Daniel reproached her for her wastefulness. "Why
drag it along?" she asked with perfect lack of embarrassment, "when you
have enough of a thing you throw it away." She showed her white teeth,
and took in one deep breath of fresh air after another.

Daniel studied her. "She is invulnerable," he said to himself; "her
power to wish is invincible, her fulness of life complete." He felt that
she bore a certain resemblance to his Eva; that she was one of those
elves of light in whose cheerfulness there is occasionally a touch of
the terrible. He decided then and there not to let mischievous chance
have its own way: he was going to put out his hand when he felt it was
advisable.

"When are you going to begin to tell me the stories?" she asked: "I
must, I must know all about you," she added with much warmth of
expression. "There are days and nights when I cannot rest. Te