"Under such circumstances it would be difficult not to be strong," he said. "But confess, it has tired you? Come and sit down here; there is room for more than two on this moss sofa." Oswald sank down into the soft moss by the side of Melitta, who was leaning against the trunk of a beech-tree; he rested his head on his arm and looked thoughtfully in her cheerful face. Was the dream near the pond about to be fulfilled? Is the dear face about to bend down and to kiss him, as it did in the dream? Oswald was overcome by the strange feeling as if he had gone through all this once before; as if he knew the place from of old, the tall dark forest, from which came the pecking of a woodpecker, the meadow before him, with the red evening lights touching up the tall grass, the silent garden yonder, and from the green foliage the gray château of Melitta rising on high. He felt as if he had seen Melitta often in former years, as a boy, when he had been deep in a beautiful fairy tale, till at last the sweet princess stood bodily before him. And Melitta also must have felt something like it, for quite at her ease, as if he had been her brother or her husband, she took his hat off and pressed her delicate fragrant handkerchief repeatedly on his warm brow and on his blue dreamy eyes. Oswald seized the white hand and pressed it to his lips. "Your hand I must return, but the handkerchief I can really not give you back," he said. "Then keep it as a souvenir of this hour. But now let us go on. It is quite a distance yet to the forest chapel, and the sky looks really threatening now." Melitta leaned on Oswald's arm as they followed the narrow path, which led first under beeches, and then through a young plantation on one side and tall old pine-trees on the other side, deeper into the forest. The sun poured its fiery red rays over the low branches of the tall trees; a little bird was pouring out soft plaintive melodies, as if it were taking leave of the sun and of life itself. Then the purple glow became extinct on high; the little bird was silent, and shade and silence surrounded the loving couple. But the shades became darker and more threatening, and the silence was strangely broken by the groaning and creaking of the pine-trees, which stretched and strained their powerful limbs as if they wanted to try their strength to defy the storm that was rising over the forest. And now it began to whisper and to whistle mysteriously in the bushes; dry leaves flew up and drifted along, as if in mad anxiety, before the whirlwind, which beat down the green waves on high, twisting the crowns of the beech-trees as in a wild dance, bending low the tall tops of the pine-trees and starting the whole forest to its remotest depths from its pleasant repose. The pale gleam of lightning shot across the sky, and big warm drops began to fall through the leaves.