He seemed gradually to come to life. He put on his hat and emerged from behind the tree-trunk. "Now he is going to speak to me," she thought, and she felt a sickening dread. But no! He lifted his hat, threw her one more long, questioning, earnest look--almost a look of recognition--walked past her, and took the path she had come by. Lilly, too, would have liked to walk on, but she could not make up her mind, and, not to be caught staring after him, she slipped behind the same trunk which had lately concealed him from view. She wondered if he would look back. No, he did not do that, and she felt somehow hurt and neglected. Smaller and smaller grew the tall figure. He strode over the sand with a somewhat heavy step. "He's never been a soldier," she thought. Then she fancied that he stooped and afterwards turned round. Yes, he was making quite a wide and careful survey of the landscape, as if bent on discovering her. But she was safely hidden behind her tree and did not stir. Then he walked on again and vanished in a bend in the path. "A pity I haven't got the carriage," she said to herself. If she had been driving she could have overtaken him without appearing to follow him, and the seven-pointed coronet would have duly impressed him. As it was, he must have formed a bad opinion of her for wandering about alone, whistling like a boy and throwing stones at amorous squirrels. Nevertheless, as she made her way homewards she felt as if some rare and beautiful gift had been bestowed upon her. Was it possible that she had seen him before? She recalled the young man she had met in the Pragerstrasse, when she was with her husband in Dresden; how he had given her the same sort of look with a flash in it of sad recognition; and how she had wanted to turn round and ask, "Who are you? Do you belong to me? Would you like me to belong to you?" And she had forborne to follow her instinct, because to turn round in the street would have been a crime in the colonel's eyes. To-day she was free--so free that she could choose her friends as her heart dictated--and yet she had not followed him, but had let him go, he who, whether he was that same young man or not, might perchance belong to her or she to him. With half-closed eyes she filled in the details of the picture that she had formed of him. His beard was small, dark, and double-pointed, and so closely shaven on the cheeks that it appeared only a blue shadow. Such beards were rarely seen in Berlin, though Italians and Frenchmen wore them. His lips were full, hard, and firmly closed, as if chiselled out of marble; his high, square forehead seemed to give him an aspect of wrath, but not the vulgar wrath of an ordinary mortal towards a poor creature like herself; it was like the wrath of the gods--divine.