Perhaps they were; he never said a word about the weary time he had lived in the beach-house, but often began to relate stories of his young days--ancient tales, which no living person knew except himself, and over which he could laugh merrily, while at other times the tears ran down his pale, withered cheeks. Ancient tales, of which he knew every detail, every name, and Christian name, the day and hour, and even whether the weather was pleasant or rainy; but he remembered nothing of what had lately happened, or made the strangest mistakes. Thus he repeatedly called Cecilia by the name of his early love, Ulrica, and it had been a bitter grief to his great-granddaughter, that he sometimes spoke of her husband, Gretchen's father, as a man he loved and eagerly longed to see again, although he had been there very recently, until she understood that he meant Gotthold. It had moved her strangely at first, and then when the old man recurred to it again as quietly as if it never had been and never could be otherwise, and brought her name into such close connection with that of her lover, she had accepted it like a dream, which comes between waking and sleeping, until she started in terror at the danger that lay in the vision. It must not, could not be. Why trifle with a reality which was impossible, a future that could never come to pass! She said it with passionate vehemence, and a flood of tears, more to herself than the old man, when he again spoke of Gotthold, who stayed away too long, who left her who longed to see him, and the child who was so fond of playing with him, too much and too long alone. She told him that she dared not think of such a thing; too much, too much had happened, which separated them forever, and that though she would give her blood for him drop by drop, if it did not belong to her child and her father, she could never, never be his wife. They were in the garden on one of the beautiful summer-like evenings of this month of October, and as she spoke the old man gazed earnestly towards the saffron-hued eastern sky, that gleamed through the brilliant foliage of the trees, which was unstirred even by the faintest breath of wind. "Yes, yes," he said, "you have suffered keenly, keenly: but"--he added after a short pause--"that is so long, so very long ago. Time heals much, much!" He seemed to be absorbed in dreams of the days, which to him alone were no nonentity, which to him alone emerged from the river Lethe; but as his glance fell upon the tear-stained face at his side, he passed his hand over his brow and eyes, and said hastily, as if he feared he might forget it again: