und them, and they recognized each other's purity and
truthfulness of soul; and in proportion as Manna had hitherto closed
her heart to Eric, the whole fountain of her love now welled up and
overflowed.

As they stood with hands clasped, Eric said,--

"O Manna, how I wish you could be so happy as to see your own look."

"And you yours. Everyone who sees and knows you must love you. How then
can I help it, who see and know you as nobody else can?"

They kissed each other with closed eyes, and over them the trees
rustled in the gentle breeze of evening.

On that bench where he had once sat with Bella, Eric now sat by Manna's
side, and a thrill passed through him as he thought of that time. He
shrank from the recollection. With love's penetrating glance Manna
noticed the passing emotion, and asked:--

"Have you too had to wrestle and struggle so sorely, before you saw and
acknowledged that it must be?"

"Ah, let us not recall it; care and trouble, conflict and struggle,
will be sure to come. Now is the marriage of our spirits; there must be
no other thought, no discordant tone. We are blessed, twice blessed. I
know that you are mine as I am yours. It must be so."

They embraced; and as she cried, "O, Eric, I. could bear you in my arms
over all the mountains!" He saw subdued in her a wild, lawless,
passionate strength of nature, such as a daughter of Sonnenkamp must
inherit.

No one who had seen the modest, humble, gentle child of the morning
could have believed that she could become so impassioned. Eric felt
himself taken possession of by a stronger power.

"Ah, yes," she exclaimed, as if she read his soul. "You think I am a
passionate child, do you not? You've no idea how untamed I am; but you
shall never see it again, never, rely upon that." She sat by his side,
stroking his hand, and with an arch glance she said:--

"Ah, dear Eric, you don't know what a foolish child I am, and you are
so learned and wise. Now tell me truly without any reserve--you can
tell me what you please, for I am yours now--tell me truly, do you
honestly believe that I am worthy of you? I am so ignorant and
insignificant compared with you!"

"Ignorant and insignificant? You can freely, fearlessly, and without
any qualification, match yourself with any one else in sincere
aspiration, in pure self-devotion, and in disinterested affection. No
one can surpass you here; everything else is of no account. Knowledge,
beauty, wealthy--these d