"Friend," said she, "when you sin you shall receive forgiveness; but until then, I pray you be quiet!" He looked upon her significantly. "Hast thou not already forgiven, and have not I too? But couldst thou have known how intimately I lived with thee during these days on the way to my Schoppe, and brought over the divine past into the future--ah, can I then tell thee all in this place?" Fortunately she--like other women, attending less to words than to looks, gestures, and actions--heard more with the spiritual than the bodily ear, and stepped not over the brink of the abyss which his words laid open so near her. Thus did these two now play, like children, near the cold thunder-charged lightning-rod, out of which at the smallest nearer approach must dart the flashing scythe of death. Both went on with their illusions near the lightning. The sun went down with his flames by the little mountain and the smooth flowery grave over into the distant plains. Out of the depths of the princely garden came tones fluttering up through the long evening rays and deified the golden landscape. The rays were solitary wings, that sought their heart, and joined it, and then flew onward--and the loving hearts became full of wings. The rays sank, the tones soared. Around Linda and Albano lay a golden circle of gardens and mountains and green valleys, and every flower rocked with its riches under the last lingering gold, and became the cradle of the eye, the cradle of the heart. The lovers looked at each other, and upon the earth, with inspired looks; the shining world appeared to them only in the magic mirror of their hearts, and they were, themselves, both, only floating images therein. "Linda, I will be more gentle," said he. "I swear it by the saint in whose garden we stand!" "Be so, dear one; in Lilar thou wast not so!" said she. He understood it of his storminess toward Liana. "Bury this recollection in thy love!" said he, reddening. She looked upon him like a virgin,--her inner being had remained virginal and innocent,--as the peach turns its red and glowing side toward the sun, but keeps under the leaves the tender white. Her eye drank from his, his drank from hers; the heavens mingled with her heaven, the purple sun glimmered back out of the warm dew of loving eyes. "O that I might now kiss thee!" said Albano. "Ah, that thou mightest!" said Linda. "So goldenly did the sun once go down into the sea!" said he. "And afterward we gave each other the first kiss!" said she. "We will see each other now much oftener," said he. "Yes, indeed, and longer by day; by night I, poor one, have, indeed, no eye. Even now is my eye already going down yonder," said she, as the sun sank from sight.