"Happiness takes on strange aspects," she thought, and she gave her shoulders a petulant little shrug. Then suddenly a great dread came over her that those times would never come back, that she must go on like this eternally, barren in soul, disturbed in spirit, persecuted by gloomy, inexpressible fears. "It must all come of not loving him enough," she confessed to herself. Now she knew what she had to petition of the Virgin Mary. She bowed her face in both hands and prayed long and fervidly--prayed that she might learn to love him with as much passion as she had blood in her veins; with as much devotion as she had hopes of her soul; with as much joyousness as there was laughter in her heart. And, lo! her prayer was answered. She rose from her knees with shining eyes, a burden lifted from her soul, and hurried away, back to him to whom she belonged, to serve him with all humbleness and confidence, either as his daughter, his handmaiden, his mistress--in any capacity he wished. CHAPTER XIV They passed Berlin without stopping, because the colonel had no desire to encounter his military friends so soon after his _mesalliance_. From here in three hours they reached Dresden, and took up their quarters at Sendig's, where the hotel proprietors had arranged to provide the newly-married pair with the comforts and privacy of a home. Drawing-room, bedroom, and dressing-room were all they needed, for the closer their outer intimacy the nearer would their inward relations approximate. And, indeed, the colonel had every reason to be satisfied with his honeymoon. He, who in the course of his not too short life had held hundreds of girls on his knee, who thought he knew every type through and through, the sweetly clinging, the coyly coquettish, the brazenly bold, the sham and the true, and all their different kinds of kisses--this old amorous hand, who ought to have been surprised at nothing, was simply full of incredulous amazement at his last lovely find. In his whole carefully cultivated career as a _roue_ he had never come across so much yielding and so much pride, so much fire, ready wit, and quick understanding, so much naive simplicity, as were comprised in this one dreamily smiling Madonna-faced child. Perhaps he was most taken aback and puzzled by her utter unpretentiousness. When they dined _a la carte_, she invariably selected for herself the very cheapest items on the menu, and would ask if she might have lemonade to drink with as much shy modesty as if she were making a love confession. Once, on their way back from the public gardens, when they wandered home through queer little back streets, Lilly, who resolutely declined as a rule to look in at shop-windows, stood transfixed before a small greengrocer's. The colonel, on inquiring what interested her, elicited gradually that she loved eating sunflower seeds, and would he mind very much if she bought some?