"It is charming here," he said; "and you come to me like a kind fairy who lives in an enchanted forest and who conducts weary wanderers into her fairy home, where it is always cool and delightful." Julutta laughed. "Only favoured wanderers," she said. "I thank you, gentle fairy," Bernhard said, earnestly. She blushed and looked away from him towards the water. For an instant he gazed at her admiringly, and then, as if forcing himself to look at something else, he took up a little book lying on a rustic table. He read the title-page,--"Pages from the Life of a Good-for-Nothing," by Eichendorff. "Ah, have you been reading this midsummer night's dream of Eichendorff's on this sultry summer day?" he asked. With a smile she turned to him. "And why not?" she said, with a gentle dreamy expression in her eyes. "Do you think, because I have known more than most women of the stern realities of life, that I must have lost all sense of its poetry?" "No, assuredly not; but I thought you too much of a critic to enjoy the story, which, charming as it is, is so absolutely impossible that you must admit that it is thoroughly unreal and unnatural." "But, good heavens! there are moods in which one longs for just that. A day like this in a lonely forest--for this park is really only a forest--makes one dream; and why should one not indulge in this charming midsummer dream, and for an hour believe that, even in this mortal life, everything may be delightful? Reality will teach us soon enough that it is not so." Bernhard turned over the leaves of the book. Julutta seated herself upon the gnarled roots of a beech beside the waterfall, and gazed at the green lily-pads floating on the little lake, and at the dragon-flies hovering on gauzy wings above it. "You have been dreaming, then, to-day?" Bernhard asked, seating himself beside her. "Yes; shall you laugh at me for doing so?" "On the contrary, I envy you. I have had to write such dreadfully long and tiresome letters at home." "Do you never dream?" "They say a man should never dream." "Ah, 'they say' so much, 'they' are so wise; but folly is not to be easily banished from the world. I even maintain that every man of sensibility and imagination has often found himself dreaming of some foolish happiness." "Why of a foolish happiness?" "Because happiness can hardly ever stand the test of critical reason, but depends upon imagination, which is often folly. And what is happiness, after all? A moment, an intoxication, a dream,--and yet we all long for it." A year before--a few months before--Bernhard would perhaps have contradicted her. Now he nodded a mute assent. She was right. Happiness was an intoxication, a dream. "I sometimes think," Julutta continued, eagerly, "that mortals would be better and happier if there were somewhere an island where all could be happy in their own way for at least three weeks of every year." Bernhard laughed. "There is method in your dreaming at least," he said.