en in doubt about before.

Her zeal for these made such favor with him that he did not spare them a
portrait of all those which March hoped to escape; he passed them
over, scarcely able to stand, to the gardener, who was to show them the
open-air theatre where Goethe used to take part in the plays.

The Natur-Theater was of a classic ideal, realized in the trained vines
and clipped trees which formed the coulisses. There was a grassy space
for the chorus and the commoner audience, and then a few semicircular
gradines cut in the turf, one alcove another, where the more honored
spectators sat. Behind the seats were plinths bearing the busts of
Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and Herder. It was all very pretty, and if
ever the weather in Weimar was dry enough to permit a performance, it
must have been charming to see a play in that open day to which the
drama is native, though in the late hours it now keeps in the thick air
of modern theatres it has long forgotten the fact. It would be difficult
to be Greek under a German sky, even when it was not actually raining,
but March held that with Goethe's help it might have been done at
Weimar, and his wife and he proved themselves such enthusiasts for
the Natur-Theater that the walnut-faced old gardener who showed it put
together a sheaf of the flowers that grew nearest it and gave them to
Mrs. March for a souvenir.

They went for a cup of tea to the cafe which looks, as from another
eyebrow of the hill, out over lovely little Weimar in the plain below.
In a moment of sunshine the prospect was very smiling; but their spirits
sank over their tea when it came; they were at least sorry they had
not asked for coffee. Most of the people about them were taking beer,
including the pretty girls of a young ladies' school, who were there
with their books and needle-work, in the care of one of the teachers,
apparently for the afternoon.

Mrs. March perceived that they were not so much engaged with their
books or their needle-work but they had eyes for other things, and she
followed the glances of the girls till they rested upon the people at a
table somewhat obliquely to the left. These were apparently a mother and
daughter, and they were listening to a young man who sat with his back
to Mrs. March, and leaned low over the table talking to them. They were
both smiling radiantly, and as the girl smiled she kept turning herself
from the waist up, and slanting her face from this side to that, a