k or to speak: they did
not seek to touch one another, or make sign or gesture, but merely to be
together. Then there were not two persons, there was but one person in
unconscious and perfect content, at peace with itself and with the
world. So it was that, if either of them had been imprisoned at the
further end of the house, the other would by degrees, without intending
it, have moved forward like a bird toward its mate; life to them was a
riddle, the solution of which they could find only in union.

Ottilie was throughout so cheerful and quiet that they were able to feel
perfectly easy about her; she was seldom absent from the society of her
friends: all that she had desired was that she might be allowed to eat
alone, with no one to attend upon her but Nanny.

What habitually befalls any person repeats itself more often than one is
apt to suppose, because his own nature gives the immediate occasion for
it. Character, individuality, inclination, tendency, locality,
circumstance, and habits, form together a whole, in which every man
moves as in an atmosphere, and where only he feels himself at ease in
his proper element.

And so we find men, of whose changeableness so many complaints are
made, after many years, to our surprise, unchanged, and in all their
infinite tendencies, outward and inward, unchangeable.

Thus in the daily life of our friends, almost everything glided on again
in its old smooth track. Ottilie still displayed by many silent
attentions her obliging nature, and the others, like her, continued each
themselves; and then the domestic circle exhibited an image of their
former life, so like it that they might be pardoned if at times they
dreamt that it might all be again as it was.

The autumn days, which were of the same length with those old spring
days, brought the party back into the house out of the air about the
same hour. The gay fruits and flowers which belonged to the season might
have made them fancy it was now the autumn of that first spring, and the
interval dropped out and forgotten; for the flowers which now were
blooming were the same as those which then they had sown, and the fruits
which were now ripening on the trees were those which at that time they
had seen in blossom.

The Major went backward and forward, and Mittler came frequently. The
evenings were generally spent in exactly the same way. Edward usually
read aloud, with more life and feeling than before; much better, and
ev