"Dönninghausen-Tannhagen!" Johanna, too, whispered to herself soon afterwards, as in her own room she stood at the window and looked out into the dark rainy night. Dönninghausen-Tannhagen! What was there in the name to move her so strangely? Was it the thought of the old house that was to be the home of her young happiness? She saw it distinctly in imagination, not only as it was, but as it should be, and as it surely one day would be. And not only the rooms did she see, but the stir of human life within them. Forms came and went, grouped themselves, vanished, and were replaced by others. They spoke, and Johanna understood them without actually hearing their words. It was all dream-like, shadowy, and Johanna felt it to be so. "I must be dreaming already; the day has over-fatigued me," she said to herself. But, whereas she usually fell asleep with her mind dwelling upon Otto, to-night, when she extinguished her candle, she was surrounded anew by these images from Tannhagen. From room to room, up and down the stairs, through court-yard and garden, she passed, always surrounded by changing forms and faces, among them was the angry old woman upon her crutch. She was transformed, she looked young, gay, and happy, and Johanna knew that she had secretly stolen forth from her father's mill among the alders to spend a few minutes with the handsome son of the Tannhagen farmer, whom she loved and could not yet marry. Suddenly she was old again, and, striking her crutch on the floor, repeated that no one who bought Tannhagen should have any joy of it, and the faded harvest-wreaths beneath the ceiling rustled and whispered, as if to say, 'Ah, we have seen much, and could tell much!' This swarm of creatures of her fancy was not new to Johanna, only she had grown unaccustomed to them. As a child, and even as a young girl at Lindenbad, they had continually crowded about her; but then they came in the day-time, often in the midst of tedious lessons and tasks. Sometimes they were mere fleeting, misty phantoms; sometimes they were distinct, brightly-colored figures, playing their parts in the wildest dramas, which the girl would go on weaving for days and weeks. Not until she took occasion to tell these tales did they leave her,--sometimes before she wished them to do so. Then the fantastic swarm would vanish as at the word of a magician. Therefore she could not be depended upon by an audience. Only among the small children at her _pension_ she now and then found a story-loving creature who would listen eagerly to her fragments. The 'big girls' ridiculed her, and Johanna, ashamed, put a check upon her fancy, till at last the 'stupid images' troubled her no more. Why should they now suddenly appear again? Was it to lure her to Tannhagen, or to scare her from it?