“And I have thought of you every moment,” he continued in a plaintive, reproachful tone, “and dreamed of you—and day-dreamed of you—” There was a spiteful smile around his lips as he added, “In my day-dreaming you could not shun me—you couldn’t push me away. You see, there is some advantage in being an imaginative poet even though you despise him—” The color was rising in her face, her breast heaved. His words were like the suggestive passages in the novels she was forbidden to read but which she had read clandestinely. “You must not say these things to me,” she presently said, catching her breath, her cheeks burning. “Why shouldn’t I? I love you. I do not care who knows it. I lie awake in the darkness of my room visualizing your presence close to me. You can’t forbid my loving you—” There were unshed tears in his half-closed eyes. There were tears in his voice. It was his vision, his words of despair, that brought the tears. “How can you talk this way, Albert.” Her voice was soft, caressing; there was tenderness—a soothing tenderness—in the manner she pronounced his name. “You know, it is—” she paused as if she could not utter what was in her mind—“You know it’s impossible—” “Why impossible?” His voice changed quickly and he spoke rapidly, impulsively. “Impossible because I am a poor poet, because I have no gold to offer you, because—” He checked himself. She was pensively silent, which gave him hope. On their way to the house she seemed more solicitous about the things that interested him. That evening Aunt Betty was more demonstrative in her hospitality to him. She prevailed upon him to stay a few days longer, and he saw in this, too, a hopeful sign, He saw connection between her attitude and his talk with Hilda. He spent a hilarious evening. He was his old self again, the loveable, witty boy whom the family had met in Gunsdorf a few years ago. Before he went to bed he wrote letters home. One to his mother, telling her of the wonderful time he was having at Uncle Leopold’s villa, and begging her to thank Aunt Betty for her many kindnesses to him; another to his sister, in which he guardedly told her of Hilda’s beauty and loveliness; and still another to his devoted friend, Christian Lutz. To him he poured out his whole heart. He told him of his great passion for Hilda, of the unmistakable signs of reciprocity, of his great happiness.