Felicitas jumped the steps into the recess, and was going to hold her frozen feet to the furnace, when she recollected herself, and coming back to the swing-door which led into the greenhouse itself, she called the gardener's name through the darkness. There was no response, only the sound of water dropping from leaf to leaf in the hot, moist atmosphere. "Now we are quite safe," she laughed, and skipped down the steps again, sighing with contentment at the warm glow. The cloak slipped from her shoulders, and as she reclined against the steps, her figure in the blue morning gown was revealed in soft lines against the white fur. The firelight flickered on her fair hair and cast a shimmer like a purple veil over the rounded face, which wore the childlike pathetic expression habitual to it when in repose, and when she was feeling particularly comfortable. "Why do you stand there looking like an old owl?" she said with a laugh, throwing her head back in order to see him better. Leo, who was leaning against a pile of faggots, lost in thought, replied-- "It's a pity that that fur doesn't grow on your body, then you would be the image of Elly's white Persian cat." "Don't you think that you have said enough disagreeable things to me, my friend. I show you affection, and nothing but affection, but you insist on behaving like a surly dog." "Cat and dog, in fact." "Leave off making stupid jokes and come and sit down." He did as he was bidden, and seated himself on the edge of the furnace, so that he could look down on her outstretched form. "Aren't we like Hansel and Grethel?" she asked, struck by the poetry of their situation. "Now tell me a pretty story of knights and princesses, and we shall be fifteen years old." "You can feel so innocent?" "Yes," she answered, "and so in love; not with you, you vain person, but with that chivalrous knight whom you are to have the honour of presenting me to. In old days it was the same, and don't you remember how furious it made Johanna? How furious!" The grim picture of his sister rose spectre-like before him. He sank into a gloomy reverie, while she continued chattering. "To speak honestly, I was gone on you then. You were such a thorough boy, but--what shall I say?--rather green. It seemed as if you wouldn't, or couldn't, see. Every evening I threw beautiful kisses out of the window down to your room, but you never noticed them. Yet all the same you were madly in love, and that annoyed Johanna terribly, and no wonder, as Ulrich was another bad case." Ulrich's name that she thus let slip playfully over her lips made her pause. She gave Leo an anxious glance, and then gazed thoughtfully into the flames. "Ah!" she sighed after a while, "who would have thought things would turn out as they did?" "And are going to turn out," he muttered, shaken by impotent rage. "What do you mean?" she said naïvely.