"I do not know myself. Sometimes I want to cry, and yet must laugh. You must not judge me by what I do. Ah, by the way, what a wonderful story it is about the Lorelei. Isn't it her rock that we see yonder? They say that at first she drew every one else beneath the water, but after she was acquainted with love, she cast herself in. The story pleases me. Frau Luise tells me all sorts of fairy stories. Frau Luise has a black cat with yellow eyes----" Assja raised her head and threw back her hair. "Ah, how comfortable I feel!" she said. At this moment broken, monotonous tones fell on our ears. Hundreds of voices in unison repeated a hymn with measured pauses. A troop of pilgrims was moving along the way beneath us with flags and crosses. "I would like to go with them!" cried Assja, while she listened to the sound of the voices, gradually dying away. "Are you so devout?" "I would like to go somewhere far off, to pray, to accomplish something difficult," she added. "The days hurry by, life will come to an end, and what have we done?" "You are ambitious," I said. "You do not wish to live in vain. You would like to leave behind some trace of your existence." "Would it be impossible?" "Impossible," I had nearly repeated. I looked into her clear eyes and only said: "Well, try it." "Tell me," Assja began after a little silence, while flying shadows followed each other across her face, which had grown pale again--"did that lady please you very much? You remember, my brother drank to your health once, in the ruins; it was the day after we had made acquaintance." I laughed aloud. "It was a jest of your brother's; no lady has pleased me, at least no one now pleases me." "What is it that pleases you in women?" asked Assja, tossing back her head in childish curiosity. "What a singular question!" I exclaimed. Assja was a little disturbed. "I should not have asked the question--not so? Forgive me. I am used to chatter about everything that goes through my head. That is why I am afraid to talk." "Only talk, for heaven's sake! Don't be afraid," I broke in. "I am so glad that at last you cease to be shy." Assja lowered her eyes and laughed; a still, gentle laughter that I did not recognize as hers. "Well, tell me something then," she said, while she smoothed her dress and tucked it about her feet as if disposing herself to sit for a long while--"tell me something, or read something aloud, as that time when you read to us out of 'Onegin.'" She grew suddenly thoughtful. Where now in green boughs' shadow The cross rests on my mother's grave-- she said to herself in a low voice. "In Pushkin the verse is somewhat different," I ventured.[J] [Footnote J: In Pushkin it reads, "On my nurse's grave."] "I would have liked to be Pushkin's Tatiana," she continued, still lost in thought. "Tell me something," she cried suddenly, with vivacity.