“Hurrah!” the man with the little beard said to himself--and his plan of action was complete. To the right of the Spineder grounds, separated from them by a wooden fence, lay a long empty lot that had temporarily, since the war, been transformed into a large kitchen-garden. It extended upward as far as the summer-house on the highest point of the Spineder garden. The other edge of the lot was separated by another wooden fence from a side street that opened on the Kobenzlgasse; but this fence was in a dilapidated state, and had broken down entirely in several places. The Frenchman crawled through one of the holes and dashed up through the kitchen-garden, catching up with and soon passing the blonde girl walking on his right. Now M. Dufresne had reached the top; he swung himself over the fence into the garden of Hofrat Spineder, and hid himself behind a massive linden-tree that stood in the middle of the vineyard. A few minutes later the girl reached the tree; but she was not able to see the man hidden behind it. Not until, suddenly, something unexpected happened. M. Dufresne called, _mezzovoce_: “Lotte!” And when Lotte Spineder, startled and confused, stopped to look around, he called again: “It’s I, Lotte! For heaven’s sake, don’t be frightened!” The next moment the gentleman with the little beard had caught Lotte, who had become white as a sheet and had begun to sway, in his arms. Again and again he pressed his mouth to her cold lips, until the color returned to her cheeks and, trembling all over, she clung to him tightly, as if someone were trying to tear him away from her. And now they sat in the summer-house, Leo Strakosch held Lotte on his knee, and told his story hurriedly: “Yes, Lotte darling, it’s I, and it’s for your sake that I grew this horrible beard and mustache. I longed for you so much, I simply couldn’t stay away any more; and when your father wrote me that he was really worried about your health and that he thought it wisest for us to stop writing to each other, as every letter opened the wounds in your heart--then my mind was made up. I confided in a dear and good friend, Henry Dufresne, who would go through fire for me; I grew a little imperial beard like the one he wears, and got all his papers from him: the certificates of his baptism, residence, and military service, and his passport, duly viséed by the Austrian embassy in Paris. The beard made us look very much alike, so that he could take a chance on securing his passport with my photograph. And I did not forge his signature, but he imitated mine. Of course this splendid fellow told all his friends and acquaintances that he was going to Vienna, while he actually went to his uncle’s estate, in the south of France, where he will stay a year. And I can live in Vienna as Henry Dufresne just as long as he remains there.” Lotte wept and laughed in the same breath.