Away! away! to him she loved, if it might be, to seek shelter in his strong arms from this hollow, unreal world, to weep out upon his faithful breast her grief and indignation, to feel free in his presence from all this self-made sorrow, this foolish misery, and never, never again to leave him. And if this highest happiness were denied her, if she must return to the slavery of these intolerable circumstances--out into the open then, over the brown meadows, through the dark fields, to the white dunes which peeped out in the distance, to have one look at the sea--his beloved sea! Might it but bring her a greeting from her beloved, a waft of his breath to cool her hot brow, to refresh her burning eyes, were it only by a tear of unsatisfied longing! Over the brown meadows and through the dark fields Elsa hurried, in the direction of a farm which lay before her at some distance, and which she must pass if she followed any further the sandy path, which looked as if it would take her quickest to her goal. The path led her ever nearer to the farm, and at last directly into it. Elsa did not like it; she would rather have met no one, since she dared not hope to meet him for whom she longed; but an attempt to get round the outside of the barn was frustrated by wet ground here and a hedge there. She must turn back or pass through the farm--a little, melancholy, quiet farm, a few tumble-down out-buildings, from which the dwelling-house was only to be distinguished by the windows--which looked dilapidated enough too--and by the two lime-trees, which in summer made a pleasant shade before the door, but whose bare, leafless branches now projected in a ghostly manner over the decayed thatched roof against the grey sky. A tall, broad-shouldered man came out from a barn-door, followed by a little dog, who flew at the stranger, barking loudly. The man called the animal back. At the first sound of his voice, Elsa, to whom the whole scene had appeared wonderfully familiar, as if she must have seen it before, recognised the honest farmer who had so kindly sheltered her last autumn. "Herr Pölitz!" she said, holding out her hand. "You have forgotten me." A look of joy came over the sunburnt face. "Come, this is good of you to pay us a visit!" "You knew, then, that I was in Warnow?" The farmer smiled in his melancholy way. "How should the like of us not know such a thing? But that you should have remembered us! My wife will be so pleased."