So the time passed on. The impatience of the aspirants might well have seemed to her like a flood rising to her very lips, threatening and terrifying her, or like a row of insistent creditors, with herself sitting in her little room in peace and letting them knock and call as loud as they would. She did not realize the impatience of the hunters; they seemed all so foreign, so far off to her. To take one of these strangers into her house, to have him always about, to be obliged to see him every day, seemed a thing so distasteful and impossible that the thought did not even trouble her. But she dreamed of wonders--of one whom she would long to love. She felt something strong, great and good in herself, and realized at the same time her ignorance and her limitations. Her longing for freedom was also a longing for breadth, a desire to escape from all that was narrow, a will to grow. Hitherto no one had offered her the bread of life; and she was hungry. Her beauty had in it something sleeping, something strong, that yearned to be active in this world and beyond; but no one offered to nourish this wonderful thing. What they offered her was no royal, soul-strengthening food; it was but ordinary, every-day diet, on which she would pine away and starve. Yes ... she dreamed long, amidst all her suitors, of an awakening compared with which the life which these others called into being in her was but a deep, dull sleep. The Raven-mother took delight in observing that the fortress she was set to guard showed no signs of surrendering; for so the comfortable existence up at the Rauchfuss farm might prolong itself a while longer. On Sunday afternoons and evenings they had the most of their visitors. Then came the suitors, the Kirsten girls with their friends, the pretty young widow, and often the good Kummerfelden, who took great delight in listening to the irrational chatter of the amorous youths. "These men-creatures are enough to drive one mad when they're in love," she said once to the Raven-mother. "The bird sings his prettiest songs to his mate and finds the nicest things to tell her; but men, with the exception of a few, who immediately print their pretty phrases, talk miserable rubbish. It positively makes my hair stand on end when I think that they used to do exactly the same in my day, and I didn't take it in ill part. They are only really clever when they're driven into a corner and can't help themselves; it must be a fearful strain on them." "Yes," said the Raven-mother, "it's as if they thought that a fresh girl like that could only be caught by extraordinary nonsense--to be sure, she laughs at their foolishness; but I tell you she's a cool head all the same." "And she's right," said Frau Kummerfelden. But the talk of two old women is a dry affair. In the spring twilight they were sitting by the window in the great living-room; the young people were playing forfeits. In the next room the table was laid for supper.