omantic creatures. They are proud of such a lover--as a lover; but a
husband they choose out of other stuff. He must be reliable--a good,
solid member of society." Herr Kosch had had some experience; and he
decided to be simply polite.

So they walked along together. The grass was fragrantly springing in
all its green abundance from the soil, and waved a perfume in the May
breeze soft as silk. The leaves of the beech-trees at the edge of the
wood were still folded together like tender green butterflies on
the branches. The trees out in the open had their full outlines. The
lime-trees were like their own leaves, standing up like great green
hearts. All this Herr Kosch pointed out.

"Yes, like hearts," she answered, smiling. "I've often noticed that
each tree is like its own leaf. Have you ever heard the tops of the
trees whispering to each other. They often make gestures like old
women, bowing with discretion and dignity; again, one sees them talking
together like children, and other times like serious men."

"You're a child of the country," he said--"a child of the country! Be
glad of it."

Now, he thought, she would begin to tell him something of her life, of
her parents, of her childhood--that she was tired of the country, or
that she loved it. "They all do that; they talk of themselves and their
memories as soon as they begin to get a little tamer. They're shut up
within themselves, in a narrow circle. Nothing has grown but their
selves. A man doesn't speak of his growing-process; he speaks of what
he has become, what the world is to get from him. No, these womenfolks
are a bore!"

To his astonishment, his dissatisfied astonishment, she was rather
silent and did not talk about herself. "I have been trying to
understand," she said after awhile, "how it happens that you are full
of thoughts, and all the other people I know and I myself have none."

"Oh," he said, "dear Mamsell, it is simply because you have not loved
life warmly enough."

"Not warmly enough--?" she said thoughtfully.

"Yes," he said, "that's the explanation. You people take everything in
such a cool, such a proper way. You never come to the boiling-point,
and so there are no thoughts. When you are young, you are just
young--without the bliss, the glow, the blessed consuming
consciousness. Young people ought to be positively drunk with happy
thoughts! If I were a girl and had such a wonderful head of red hair,
and limbs of perfect, rounded bea