Grayish blue steam whirls up to the shadowed ceiling and moistens with falling drops the rounded silver of the tea urn. The bell rings. From the housekeeper's rooms floats an odour of fresh baked breads. They are having a feast there. Perhaps they mean to prepare one for the master, too. A new book that has come a great distance to-day is in my hand. I read. Another one has made the great discovery that the world begins with him. Ah, did it not once begin with me, too? To be young, to be young! Ah, even if one suffers need--only to be young! But who, after all, would care to retrace the difficult road? Perhaps you, O woman at my side? I would wager that even you would not. And I raise a questioning glance though I know her to be far ... and who stands behind the kettle, framed by the rising of the bluish steam? Ah child, have I not seen you often--you with the brownish locks and the dark lashes over blue eyes ... you with the bird-like twitter in the throbbing whiteness of your throat, and the light-hearted step? And yet, did I ever see you? Did I ever see that look which surrounds me with its ripe wisdom and guesses the secrets of my heart? Did I ever see that mouth so rich and firm at once which smiles upon me full of reticent consolation and alluring comprehension? Who are you, child, that you dare to look me through and through, as though I had laid my confidence at your feet? Who are you that you dare to descend wingless into the abysms of my soul, that you can smile away my torture and my suffocation? Why did you not come earlier in your authentic form? Why did you not come as all that which you are to me and will be from this hour on? Why do you hide yourself in the mist which renders my recognition turbid and shadows your outlines? Come to me, for you are she whom I seek, for whom my heart's blood yearns in order to flow as sacrifice and triumph! You are the faery who clarifies my eye and steels my will, who brings to me upon her young hands my own youth! Come to me and do not leave me again as you have so often left me! I start up to stretch out my arms to her and see how her glance becomes estranged and her smile as of stone. As one who is asleep with open eyes, thus she stands there and stares past me. I try to find her, to clasp her, to force her spirit to see me. Without repulsing me she glides softly from me.... The walls open. ... The stones of the stairs break.... We flee out into the wintry silence.... She glides before me over the pallid velvet of the road ... over the tinkling glass of the frozen heath ... through the glittering boughs. She smiles--for whom? The hilly fields, hardened by the frost, the bushes scattering ice--everything obstructs my way. I break through and follow her. But she glides on before me, scarcely a foot above the ground, but farther, farther ... over the broken earth, down the precipice ... to the lake whose bluish surface of new ice melts in the distance into the afterglow.