sty step, Pranken went to the shore. Manna stood and laid her
hand upon her brow.

Has all this been only a vision of her own fancy?

Then she heard the stroke of oars in the river, and a voice again
cried:--

"Thou pure, thou blessed one!"

Then all was still.

On the other side a chain rattled, the boat was drawn up to the shore,
and no sound was heard; only the waves of the river, which are not
heard by day, rippled and plashed and murmured in the still night.
Manna thought that she could hear the blood as it flowed through her
heart, so full, so oppressed, and yet so blissful.

CHAPTER VI.

A DAY WITHOUT PEN OR TYPE.

Eric stood on the shore gazing after the boat, from which Roland was
waving at a distance his white handkerchief. To see a person so
attached to us flitting away from us in a vessel, seems as if one
should love a bird which soars freely up into the air where it cannot
be reached; and yet it is different. Human love connects by invisible
ties, and this signalizing from afar is a sign of a thought in
common, of communication of feeling and participation of interest,
notwithstanding all separation by space.

When the boat had disappeared, and only a light streak of vapor floated
along the vine-covered slopes, Eric remained standing upon the hill,
and as the faint mists hovered in the air, so hovered in his soul the
last words of Roland's farewell,--"You and the house do not move from
your place."

What a commotion, what an upheaving and swelling, there is in the soul
of youth, until it comes to some expression, like an opening blossom!

But that which is closed and wrapped up in the bud has an equal beauty
and depth of sentiment, but it is not manifest to us, and does not
breathe upon us with such a fragrant and charming loveliness.

So thought Eric as he looked at an acacia-tree, whose buds were yet
unopened, and which had put forth not even a green leaf.

Eric was now alone at the villa. He inhaled the quiet, the peace, and
the stillness in full draughts, as if, after long days and nights of
travel upon the noisy steam-cars, he should suddenly come into the
silent woods; yes, as if he were lying deep down at the bottom of the
river, and over him were gently rippling the cooling waves. He did not
read, he did not write, he enjoyed only an unfathomable rest.

He did not mean to comply with Clodwig's invitation to visit him, unti