en amiable, this mood
continued awhile, and she would look smilingly into the air, then
smilingly upon the furniture around; it was so now. There was in her
the dying echo of a pleasant and cheerful frame of mind, but her
brother came out of an entirely remote world, having spoken to-day with
no one,--who would have thought it of him?--but his own soul, or more
properly, Manna's soul.

"Ah! don't speak to me of the world," he said; "I wish to forget it,
and that it should also forget me. I know it well, all hollow, waste,
wilted, mere puppet-show. If you have been helping the puppets dance
there awhile, you can lay them away again in the closet of
forgetfulness."

"You seem rather low-spirited," said Bella, placing her hand upon her
brother's shoulder.

"Low-spirited! that's another catchword! How often have I heard it
used, and used it myself! What is meant by low-spirited? nothing. I
have been knocked in pieces, and newly put together again. Ah, sister,
a miracle has been wrought in me, and all miracles are now clear to me.
Ah! I may come back to the words of the world, but I do not see how."

"Excellent! I congratulate you; you seem to have really fallen in
love."

"Fallen in love! For God's sake, don't say that; I am consecrated,
sanctified. I am yet such a poor, timorous, wretched child of the
world, that I am ashamed to make my confession even to you, my only
sister. Ah! I could never have believed that I should feel such
emotion--I don't know what to call it--exaltation, such rapture
thrilling every nerve. O sister, what a maiden!"

"It is not true," said Bella, leaning her head back against the soft
lining of the carriage, "it not true that we women are the enigma of
the world; you men are far more so. Over you, over Otto von Pranken,
the ballet connoisseur, has come such a romantic feeling as this! But
beautiful, excellent, the mightiest power, is the power of illusion."

Pranken was silent; he heard Bella's words as if they were uttered in a
past state of existence. When, where, did they speak and think of the
ballet? And yet, at these words there came dancing before his memory
merry, aerial, short-dressed, roguish, smiling forms. His heart
thumped like a hammer against the book, the book placed there in his
breast-pocket. He was about to tell his sister that for several days he
had no longer known who he was; that he was obliged often to recall to
mind his own name, what he had wished, and what he st