For a long time he looked after it. Everything seemed to him like a dream. He felt so exultantly glad that he was almost overpowered by happiness. “How have I deserved all this?” he asked himself; and then he began brooding over what the first trouble would be which would drag him down from this bliss. When the twins announced to him that the carriage stood ready for the drive to church he felt sad and depressed. In the vicarage garden, where syringa and lilac were in bloom, and where the sunbeams glittered on the lawn, stood two little groups of human beings apart from each other--one black, the other white. The former were the boys, the latter the girls. Elsbeth, in her snowy muslin dress with a lace handkerchief crossed over her bosom, looked white and graceful as a hawthorn blossom. Her cheeks were very pale, and she kept her eyes lowered, and played alternately with her hymn-book and a twig of lilac, both of which she held in her hand. Paul looked at her for a long time, but she did not see him. She would not be disturbed in her devotion by any worldly thought. And then the vicar came; the bells pealed, the organ resounded, and the procession, ranged in couples, advanced slowly towards the altar. Paul walked close behind the two Erdmanns, who in their long black coats looked very solemn and demure. Suddenly the consciousness of his guilt overcame him more forcibly than ever. He bent forward a little, touched them softly on the shoulder, and whispered, with moist eyes, “Forgive me, I have behaved so badly to you.” They nudged each other and smiled maliciously. One of them half turned round, and whispered, with a face of pathetic misery and a look of injured innocence, “My son, we forgive you.” Paul felt very well that they were mocking him, but his heart was so full of devotion and love that no mocking could affect him. The children ranged themselves on both sides of the altar. Paul sent a shy glance into the body of the church, which was crammed with people, but he could not distinguish anybody. The hour for the sermon was past. He gazed down before him. All seemed like a dream. A little later he felt his knees resting on a soft cushion and the hand of the vicar on his head. What he said to him he did not hear. He saw Elsbeth on the other side, crying quietly with her handkerchief to her eyes, and thought, “Ah, cry away, cry away, you will soon laugh again.” And then he asked himself why people always laughed so much, while on the whole there were so few laughable things in the world. The organ now intoned the hymn, “Praise ye the Lord, the mighty King of Glory.” The chorus of the congregation sounded jubilant, and his gaze wandered up to the sunbeams which fell in iridescent light through the painted church windows like a rainbow.