"But you must sit down too." "I must hold the horses, gracious baroness." "You can tie them to a tree." He reflected a moment. "So I can," he said, and knotted the reins to the fallen trunk. Then when he came to sit beside her she shifted her position more towards the middle to make room. Her feet hung in the air over the ditch-water. He pushed himself after her along the tree, hand over hand. "That's far enough," she said; for she did not want him too close. "Very well, gracious baroness," he answered, and swung his legs. The formality of his address caused her fresh annoyance. "Don't you think when we are alone together you might drop titles?" she asked, looking him straight in the eyes. "I might ... but I mustn't." "But how about the other day?" "Oh, the other day was my birthday," he answered, "and as I wanted a pretty little present I gave myself that!" "And to-day is _my_ birthday," she jested. "What present am I to be given?" "Anything the gracious baroness likes." "Then I like you to call me 'Comrade.'" "Always, or just once in a way?" "Always." "Shall I call you comrade, or be comrade?" "Be comrade; be--be comrade. That's the chief thing!" she cried. "A bargain," he said, and cautiously crept a little nearer along the wobbling trunk to give her his right hand. "A bargain," she said, and shook hands. "But there are other items to be settled in connection with this," he said, clearing his throat. "What are they?" "Well, for one thing, does a comradeship mean Christian names?" "Certainly not," Lilly replied, feeling that she was making a great sacrifice. He accepted the condition as final, and said submissively, "Just as you like, comrade." Now was her chance to speak out. She drew a deep breath and said: "You know I want to talk seriously to you, Herr von Prell." "Ugh!" he ejaculated, prepared for a bad quarter of an hour, as he gnawed his gloved thumbs. Lilly plunged off at a tangent. She would not say anything about his last misdemeanour, for bad as it was, it was all over, and what was forgiven ought also to be forgotten. But if he imagined that the loose life he had been leading was a secret in the castle household, he was very much mistaken. It was an open scandal, and even the laundry and scullery-maids sniggered about it; but how could he expect anything else after ... Here she enumerated the sum total of his misdoings, as she had gleaned them from remarks the servants had let fall. She was ashamed to retail them. This was not what she had intended to say at all.... She had wanted to speak grandly of the high purpose of human existence, the nobility of self-renunciation, the glory of pure and lofty ideals, of the spiritual tie uniting the elect on earth, and so on. But inspiration failed her when she saw him sitting there with bent shoulders and turning his big toes inwards so that under the soft leather of his riding-boots they looked like excrescences, and she could think of nothing better.