As if to conceal herself from herself, she buried her face in a
flowering shrub. She left the park; she saw in the court outside the
dove cooing about his mate. The beautiful mate was so coy, picked up
its food so quietly, hardly paying any attention to the tender
gurgling, and then flew away to the house-top, where she trimmed her
feathers. The dove flew after his mate, but she shook her head again
and took flight.

Then as Bella was gazing with a fixed look, she saw a servant yoking
some oxen. He first placed a pad upon the head of the beast, and over
that a wooden yoke.

"This is the world! This is the world," said a voice within her. "A pad
between yoke and head, a pad of thoughts, of got-up feelings."

The servant was astounded to see the gracious lady staring so fixedly,
and now she asked him:--

"Does it not hurt them?" He did not understand what she meant, and she
was obliged to repeat the question; he now replied:--

"The ox don't know anything different, he's made for just this. Since
the gracious Herr has let the double yoke be taken off, and each ox has
now his own yoke to himself, they're harder to manage, but they draw a
deal easier than when they were double-yoked."

Bella shivered.

"Double yoke--single yoke," was sounding in her ears, and suddenly it
seemed to her as if it were night, and she herself only a ghost
wandering around. This house, these gardens, this world, all is but a
realm of shadows that vanishes away.

It was terribly sultry, and Bella felt as if she should suffocate. Then
a fresh current of air streamed over the height, a thunderstorm
unexpectedly came up, and Bella had hardly reached the house before
there came thunder, lightning, and a driving rain.

Bella stood at the window and stared out into the distance, and then up
at an old ash-tree, whose branches were dashing about in every
direction, and whose trunk was bending from the gale. The tree inclined
itself towards the house, as if it must there get help. Bella thought
to herself,--For years and years this tree has been rooting itself here
and thriving, and no tempest can wrench it away and lop off its boughs.
Does it know that this storm will pass over, and serve only to give it
new strength? I am such a tree also, and I stand firm. Come tempest,
come lightning and thunder, come beating rain, neither shall you uproot
me, nor lop off my boughs!

"Eric!" she suddenly exclaimed aloud to herself. Clodwig now entered,