He stood before her without being able to utter a single word. If the earth had opened and swallowed him up, it would have been a relief to him. In the tumult of his ideas, he tried in vain to make her words agree with all that he had seen and heard within the last few days; had he ventured to look at her, he might have had some suspicion of the struggle in her soul, while she was uttering those annihilating words. "The rain is over;" she said after a pause, in a tone of complete indifference, "I must go." He prepared to follow her. "I can find my way without you;" she said; "now that I know that the plank is safe. Good-bye, Walter, you can send the basket by one of the boys." She stopped on the threshold of the hut. "See how suddenly all the leaves have burst their buds," she said, and her voice had completely recovered its tranquil tone. "Everything in nature has its season; we can change nothing, and prevent nothing. Give me your hand, dear boy. I am not going to leave you to mope by yourself, because you have just given me another proof that you are but a child, and a dreamer of childish dreams. I am not a bit angry with you now; so let us make haste and forget all those ugly passionate words we said. By-and-by you will laugh at them as I do now. And when you come home this evening, I hope you will bring us your own bright face again, and the best resolutions henceforth, to honour and obey your own little mother, that your days may be--as the fourth commandment says. Bless you, my son." She looked back affectionately at him, and waved her hand to say good-bye, and then she walked steadily over the plank, with her light elastic step, and turned into one of the paths that led through the wood on the other side. As long as she was to be seen, Walter looked after her; then he flung himself on the grass, with his face to the ground, in an agony of shame and grief, and self-reproach. He did not know that as soon as she was out of sight, her brave heart failed her; she stopped, and leaning her head against the stem of a young tree, she too relieved herself by a flood of tears. * * * * * The day was fading into twilight; in the Meister's room it had grown too dark for him to do anything until the lamp was brought. Putting by the watercolor sketch of Naples and Mount Vesuvius, in which he had been making some alterations in the foreground with a piece of chalk, he was just about to exchange his favorite old dressing gown with the sheepskin, for a more appropriate garment for an evening walk, when the door was opened noiselessly, and Helen came in, with a serene countenance, and an unfaltering voice that belied all her agitations of the morning. "Good evening, brother. I have been longer away than I expected. I had a little piece of business to do on my way home, that should have been settled long ago--Christel has been taking good care of you, I hope? How have you been? better?"