He held her hand fast, and the pleasure and excitement began again; but this time it was more quiet and moderate. Both of them seemed to feel that the sensation of being lifted to the sky was over and past; and this thought was evidently in Amrei's mind when she said: "Well, we have been very happy together once, even if we don't see each other again in all our lives, and even though neither of us knows the other's name." The youth nodded and said: "You are right." Amrei held the end of her braid between her lips in embarrassment, and after a pause spoke again: "The enjoyment one has once had cannot be taken from one; and whoever you are, you need never repent of having given a poor girl a pleasure she will remember all her life." "I don't repent of it," replied her partner. "But I know that you repent of having answered me so sharply this morning." "Oh, yes, you are right there!" cried Amrei; and then the stranger said: "Would you venture to go out into the field with me?" "Yes." "And do you trust me?" "Yes." "But what will your people say?" "I have nobody but myself to give account of my actions to; I am an orphan." Hand in hand the two went out of the dancing-room. Barefoot heard several people whispering and tittering behind her, but she kept her eyes fixed on the ground. She wondered if she had not ventured too far after all. In the fields, where the first ears of wheat were beginning to sprout and still lay half concealed in their green sheaths, the two stopped and stood looking at each other in silence. For a long time neither said a word. But finally it was the man who broke the silence, by saying, half to himself: "I wonder how it is that one, on first sight, can be so--so--I don't know--so confidential with a person? How is it one can read what is written in another's face?" "Now we have set a poor soul free," said Amrei; "for you know, when two people think the same thought at the same time, they are said to set a soul free. And I was thinking the very words you just spoke." "Indeed? And do you know why?" "Yes." "Will you tell me?" "Why not? Look you; I have been a goose-keeper--" At these words the stranger started again; but he pretended that something had fallen into his eye, and began to rub that organ vigorously, while Barefoot went on, undismayed: "Look you; when one sits or lies alone out in the fields all day, one thinks of hundreds of things, and some of them are strange thoughts indeed. Just try it yourself, and you will certainly find it so. Every fruit-tree, if you look at it as a whole, has the appearance of the fruit it bears. Take the apple-tree; does it not look, spread out broad, and, as it were, in round pieces, like the apple itself? And the same is true of the pear-tree and the cherry-tree, if only you look at them in the right way. Look what a long trunk the cherry-tree has--like the stem of a cherry. And so I think--" "Well, what do you think?"