"Indeed! was that simply clumsiness?" "What else should it be?" "I thought you had done it on purpose," she says, with apparent utter indifference. He gives no answer, and she quietly nods a few times to herself as much as to say, "It seems I was right after all!" The days pass by. Relations between Johannes and Trude are cooler than they were. They do not avoid each other, they even talk together, but their former happy-go-lucky mode of intercourse is irretrievably lost. "She is offended because I kissed her," thinks Johannes, but it does not strike him that he too has changed his behavior towards her. "Children, what's up with you?" says Martin one evening grumblingly. "Have your throats grown rusty, as you never sing now?" For a few seconds both are silent, then Trude says, half turning towards Johannes, "Will you?" He nods; but as she has not been looking at him she thinks she has had no answer and says, turning towards Martin, "You see, he doesn't want to!" "Don't I though!" laughs Johannes. "Then why can't you say so at once?" she answers with a timid attempt at responding to his cheerful tone. Then she puts herself in position, folds her hands in her lap as she is wont to do when singing, and fixes her eyes on the pigeon-house yonder. "What shall we sing?" she asks. "Must we part, beloved maid?"--he suggests. She shakes her head. "Nothing about love," she says rather pointedly, "that's all so stupid." He looks at her astonished and after some deliberation she starts a hunting song. He joins in lustily and their voices blend and unite like two waves in the ocean. They themselves marvel at such harmony; they have never sung so well. But they soon come to an end. The Germans have not many folk-songs which are not at the same time love ditties. And finally she has to submit. "Rose-bush and elder-tree, When my love comes to me!" she begins, tacking on a "Jodler." He smiles and looks at her, she blushes and turns away.--She has let herself be caught now. The two voices grow full of wonderful animation, as though their hearts' pulsation were throbbing through the notes. They swell heavenwards as though impelled by waves of passion, they die down as though the bourne of life were stagnant through intensity of hidden woe. "No words can e'er express my love, In silent longing I adore. Question my eyes, for they will speak; I love thee now and evermore!" Why do their eyes suddenly meet? What occasion is there for them both to tremble as though an electric current were passing through their bodies?... "There is never an hour in my sleeping When my thoughts are not waking. Their flight to thee taking, To thank thee for placing forever Thy heart in my keeping!" What intoxicating passion vibrates through the notes! How the two voices seek each other as if to embrace!