e clear to him only when, as he was taking leave, she
said in a tone of humility: "Pardon my vehemence, Mr. Seraphin! Don't
think me a bad girl."

"There is nothing to be forgiven, Mechtild. You were indignant against
godless wretches, and they who are not indignant against evil cannot
themselves be good."

"We are most heartily thankful for this visit," spoke Holt. "I need not
say that we will consider it a great happiness as often as you will be
pleased to come."

"Good-night!" returned the young man, and he walked away.

Deeply immersed in his thoughts, Seraphin went back to town. What he
was thinking about, his diary does not record. But the excitement under
which he had rushed forth was gone--dispelled by the magic of a rural
sorceress. He walked on quietly like a man who seems filled with
confidence in his own future. The recent painful impressions seemed to
his mind to lie far back in the past; their place was taken up by
beautiful anticipations which, like the aurora, shed soft and pleasing
light upon his path. He halted frequently in a dream-like reverie to
indulge the happiness with which his soul was flooded. The full moon,
just peering over the hills, shed around him a mystic brightness that
harmonized perfectly with the indefinable contentment of his heart, and
seemed to be gazing quizzingly into the countenance of the young man,
who almost feared to confess to himself that he had found an invaluable
treasure.

As he stopped before the Palais Greifmann, all the bright spirits that
had hovered round about him on the way back from the little whitewashed
cottage, fled. He awoke from his dream, and, ascending the stairs with
a feeling of discomfort, he entered his apartment, where his father sat
awaiting him.

"At last," spoke Mr. Conrad, looking up from a book. "You have kept me
waiting a long time, my son."

"I was in need of a good long walk, father, to get over what I
witnessed this morning. The country air has dispelled all those
horrible impressions. There is only one thing more required to make me
feel perfectly well, dear father, which is that you will not insist on
my allying myself to people who are utterly opposed to my way of
thinking and feeling."

"I understand and approve of your request, Seraphin. The impressions
made on me, too, are exceedingly disagreeable. The advancement of which
this town boasts is stupid, immoral, detestable. How this state of
society has come about, is inexplic