As Kurt stepped out into the open air, and the huge drops were driven into his face by the wind, he hesitated a moment. There was no possibility of meeting Celia in the forest in such a storm. Still, suppose she should persist in taking her ride? It was possible; no, it was impossible; nevertheless, Kurt would not fail to be upon the appointed--no, it had never been appointed--spot in the forest; he could then tell her the next day that he had been there in spite of the storm and rain, that he had not, indeed, expected her, but that he had thought of her. He knew that she would laugh at him and tease him about his walk in the rain, but he so liked to hear her laugh, she was so wonderfully charming in her gayety. In spite of the increasing rain that soon penetrated his light summer dress, the way did not seem long; he thought of her, and perhaps because he had no hope of seeing her that day her image was all the more present to his mind. During the past ten days a very peculiar relation had been developed between Kurt and Celia. While Kurt sauntered along the forest road beside Pluto they talked together like brother and sister. Celia was never tired of hearing all that Kurt could tell her of America and the life he had led there, and his conversation had opened to her an entire new world of thought and emotion. Brought up in a narrow home-circle, whence all strangers were excluded, the girl had had no idea that people of culture could entertain any views and opinions save those shared by her father, by Arno, and by the old pastor her tutor. It was, for example, one of her articles of faith that across the boundary, just beyond that strip of meadow in Prussia, evil reigned triumphant. Prussian! The word stood for all that was contemptible,--rapacity, low ambition, greed of gain, and arrogant conceit. Like a good Saxon, Celia hated the Prussians from her very soul, and worst and most to be hated among them all was Bismarck, whose name her father never uttered without coupling it with some opprobrious epithet. Kurt was the first to present to her mind other views with regard to the state of affairs in Germany, and she listened to him with profound interest. It was exquisite enjoyment to Kurt to talk with Celia, and to note her rapt attention to all that he said, her quick espousal of any cause advocated by him. He loved her, and he knew that he loved her, but not for the world would he have addressed to her one word of love; it would have been a sin against her childlike innocence. His experience of life, spite of his youth, had been so wide and varied that he could not but be aware what risk there was for Celia in these daily interviews with a young man in the solitude of the forest; and could he have seen her anywhere else, could he but have sought her at Hohenwald, he would have abstained from his daily walks for Celia's sake. But they offered him his only opportunity for meeting the girl, and he had not the strength to refuse to embrace it.