wondering rather confusedly, as one wonders when first one wakes
from a dream and sees familiar things again and doesn't quite
understand.

Kloster got up and came and took the Strad from me. I could see his
face in the dusk, and thought it looked queer. He lifted up my hands
one after the other, and kissed them.

But Bernd got up from where he was sitting away from the others, and
took me in his arms and kissed my eyes.

And that's how we were engaged. I think they said something. I don't
know what it was, but there was a murmur, but I seemed very far away
and very safe; and he turned round when they murmured, and took my
hand, and said, "This is my wife." And he looked at me and said, "Is
it not so?" And I said "Yes." And I don't remember what happened next,
and perhaps it was all a dream. I'm so tired,--so tired and heavy with
happiness that I could drop in a heap on the floor and go to sleep like
that. Beloved mother--bless your Chris.

_Koseritz, Monday, July 20_.

My own darling mother,

I'm too happy,--too happy to write, or think, or remember, or do
anything except be happy. You'll forgive me, my own ever-understanding
mother, because the minutes I have to take for other things seem so
snatched away and lost, snatched from the real thing, the one real
thing, which is my lover. Oh, I expect I'm shameless, and I don't
care. Ought I to simper, and pretend I don't feel particularly much?
Be ladylike, and hide how I adore him? Telegraph to me--telegraph your
blessing. I must be blessed by you. Till I have been, it's like not
having had my crown put on, and standing waiting, all ready in my
beautiful clothes of happiness except for that. I don't care if I'm
silly. I don't care about anything. I don't know what they think of
our engagement here. I imagine they deplore it on Bernd's
account,--he's an officer and a Junker and an only son and a person of
promise, and altogether heaps of important things besides the important
thing, which is that he's Bernd. And you see, little mother, I'm only
a woman who is going to have a profession, and that's an impossible
thing from the Junker point of view. It's queer how nothing matters,
no criticism or disapproval, how one can't be touched directly one
loves somebody and is loved back. It is like being inside a magic ring
of safety. Why, I don't think that there's anything that could hurt me
so long as we love each other. We've had a wonderful m