"Of course, why shouldn't it?" Martin stammers in consternation. He shakes his head, looks down thoughtfully for a while, then says, with an uneasy laugh: "Go to bed, Johannes.--That broken mill-wheel is haunting your imagination." Next day Trude is lying ill in bed. She will see no one--even Martin as little as possible. Johannes slinks about unable to settle down to anything. Their meals are taken in monotonous silence. The shadows close down more and more round the Rockhammer mill. But the sun breaks forth once more. On the fourth day Trude is half-way convalescent again, and Johannes may go into her room for a talk with her. He finds her sitting at the window, with a white dress lying across her lap. She is pale and weak yet, but her features are glorified by an expression of peaceful melancholy such as convalescents are apt to wear. Smiling, she puts out her hand to Johannes. "How are you now?" he asks softly. "Well--as you see," she replies, pointing to the white dress; "my thoughts are already occupied with the ball." "What ball?" he asks, astonished. "What a bad memory you have!" she says with an attempt at a joke. "Why, next Sunday is the rifle-fete." "Yes, so it is." "Perhaps you're not even looking forward to dancing with me?" "Indeed I am!" "Very much?--Tell me! Very much?" "Very much!" A child-like smile of pleasure flits across her pale, delicate face; she fingers the laces and frills, with undisguised delight at the white, airy texture. This physical exhaustion seems to have restored to her mind its former, child-like harmlessness, and with a certain degree of anxiety she begins to enquire about her dancing shoes. She is once more, to all appearance, just the same girlishly thoughtless creature who once put out her hand with such unconstrained simple-heartedness to bid Johannes welcome. He sits down opposite to her, lets the texture of the ball-dress glide through his fingers, and listens to her prattling with a quiet smile. And everything she tells him is replete with sunshine and the very joy of existence. This had been her wedding dress which she had made and trimmed herself, for she could do that as well as anybody. She would have liked to wear silk, as befitted the bride of the rich miller Rockhammer, but she could not scrape together sufficient money, and as for letting her intended give her her wedding dress--well, her pride would not permit that. To-day she felt almost sorry to undo the seams, for how many foolish hopes and dreams were not sewn into them?--But what else could she do?--she had got so much stouter since she was a married woman. Then the conversation flies off at a tangent to the approaching rifle-fete, touches on her new acquaintances in the village and occasionally wanders off to the shoemaker's place in the town; but ever and again she comes back to the time of her engagement and tarries over the moods and events of those blissful days.