ght. The stately bridal apartment awaits its guests. Music is
heard, very faint at first, as if approaching through long corridors.
Preceded by pages with lights, there enter by different doors a train
of women leading Elsa, a train of nobles and the King leading the
Knight.

The epithalamium is sung to its end. After grave and charming ceremony,
with blessings and good wishes, all withdraw, leaving the bride and
groom alone. Elsa's face is altogether clear again of its clouds;
all is forgotten save the immeasurable happiness which, as soon
as the doors discreetly close, impels her to his arms; clasped
together, seated upon the edge of a day-bed, they listen in silence
to their wedding-music dying slowly away. When all is still at
last, in the dear joy of being "alone, for the first time alone
together since first we saw each other," life seems to begin for
each upon new and so incredibly sweeter terms. The stranger knight,
whom mystery enwraps, shows himself, despite certain sweet loftiness
which never leaves him, most convincingly human. In the simplest
warm way, a way old-fashioned as love, we hear him rejoice: "Now we
are escaped and hidden from the whole world. None can overhear the
exchange of greetings between our hearts. Elsa, my wife! You sweet
white bride! You shall tell me now whether you are happy!"--"How
cold must I be to call myself merely happy," she satisfies him
liberally, "when I possess the whole joy of Heaven! In the sweet
glowing toward you of my heart, I know such rapture as God can
alone bestow!" He meets her gratitude with an equal and just a
little over. "If, of your graciousness, you call yourself happy,
do you not give to me too the very happiness of Heaven? In the
sweet glowing toward you of my heart, I know indeed such rapture as
God can alone bestow!" He falls naturally, happy-lover-like, into
talking of their first meeting and beginning love: "How wondrous do
I see to be the nature of our love! We had never seen, but yet had
divined, each other! Choice had been made of me for your champion,
but it was love showed me my way to you. I read your innocence in
your eyes, by a glance you impressed me into the service of your
grace!"--"I too," she eagerly follows, "had seen you already, you
had come to me in a beatific dream. Then when wide-awake I saw you
standing before me, I knew that you were there by God's behest. I
would have wished to dissolve beneath your eyes and flow about your
feet l