Melitta had come up close to Oswald, whose heart was exulting in the storm. Pressing the beloved one with one arm to his side, he stretched out the other one, as in defiance to the tempest-torn sky. "Go on, go on," he murmured through his firmly closed teeth; "I am not afraid of thee.... How, is your courage already exhausted? Oh! it is so beautiful in the stormy, thundering forest!" Melitta did not say a word; without raising her eyes from the ground, she hurried forward faster and faster, until the forest opened upon a large clearing; and there lay before them the forest chapel, just at the moment brilliantly illumined by the red flashes of lightning. A few steps more and they were under the projecting roof of the cottage. It was built in the style of Swiss houses, and a jewel of a cottage. Melitta quickly walked up the steps which led to the low veranda, took a small key from a pocket in her dress, unlocked the lock, but instead of opening the door she leaned trembling against the door-frame. She was pale; her strength seemed to be gone; she pressed her hand on her heart. Thus she stood when Oswald turned his eyes from the steaming meadow--a sight which always filled him with a peculiar kind of delight--to her again. "Great God! what is the matter? Are you unwell?" "Oh! nothing, nothing!" she said, gathering herself up at the first sound of his voice. "I have run too fast; now it is better already. Come in!" She opened the door and Oswald entered. But he drew back startled when he saw in the mystic twilight within a tall white figure, which seemed to float down from out of the wall. "What is that?" he exclaimed, in his first surprise. "What?" said Melitta, who was opening the windows to let the fresh air into the hot room, full of the fragrance of flowers. "The Venus of Milo!" cried Oswald, and a voluptuous shudder passed over him. "My saint! Did I not tell you? Well, how do you like the chapel?" It was not a very large but a very high room; on the right and on the left a window looking out upon the veranda; opposite the door, in a niche and upon a low pedestal, the image of the goddess. A few comfortable garden-chairs, a _chaise longue_, a table covered with books, papers, drawing material, a half-finished embroidery, riding-whip and gloves, in picturesque disorder--this was the whole, simple but suitable, furniture of the room. "Did you get very wet?" asked Melitta, throwing her hat on the table, without waiting for an answer to her first question. And then: "Go away from the window; you will take cold. Come here, or rather, sit dawn on the lounge and rest yourself." And again: "If I only could find something for you! But--to be sure I can make tea for you. Where are the tea-things, I wonder? Here--no, there, in the cupboard." All this she said hurriedly, as if pressed by an inner painful restlessness, while she was walking up and down in the room with quick, unequal steps. Oswald took her hand.