with her cakes and out of the house.

Reinhard poked the fire in the stove, set the dusty ink-stand on the
table, and then sat down and wrote and wrote letters the whole night
long to his mother and Elisabeth.

The remainder of the Christmas cakes lay untouched by his side, but he
had buttoned on Elisabeth's cuffs, and odd they looked on his shaggy
coat of undyed wool. And there he was still sitting when the winter
sun cast its light on the frosted window-panes, and showed him a pale,
grave face reflected in the looking-glass.

* * * * *

HOME

When the Easter vacation came Reinhard journeyed home. On the morning
after his arrival he went to see Elisabeth.

"How tall you've grown," he said, as the pretty, slender girl advanced
with a smile to meet him. She blushed, but made no reply; he had taken
her hand in his own in greeting, and she tried to draw it gently away.
He looked at her doubtingly, for never had she done that before; but
now it was as if some strange thing was coming between them.

The same feeling remained, too, after he had been at home for some
time and came to see her constantly day after day. When they sat alone
together there ensued pauses in the conversation which distressed him,
and which he anxiously did his best to avoid. In order to have a
definite occupation during the holidays, he began to give Elisabeth
some instruction in botany, in which he himself had been keenly
interested during the early months of his university career.

Elisabeth, who was wont to follow him in all things and was moreover
very quick to learn, willingly entered into the proposal. So now
several times in the week they made excursions into the fields or the
moors, and if by midday they brought home their green field-box full
of plants and flowers, Reinhard would come again later in the day and
share with Elisabeth what they had collected in common.

With this same object in view, he entered the room one afternoon while
Elisabeth was standing by the window and sticking some fresh chick-weed
in a gilded birdcage which he had not seen in the place before. In the
cage was a canary, which was flapping its wings and shrilly chirruping
as it pecked at Elisabeth's fingers. Previously to this Reinhard's bird
had hung in that spot.

"Has my poor linnet changed into a goldfinch after its death?" he
asked jovially.

"Linnets are not accustomed to do any such thing," said Elizabeth's