"I did not expect to find so charming a flower-fairy in this extensive forest, where the hart-royals dwell. You are as completely buried beneath leaf and flowers, as a Chinese woman of the wood, because if these little bells could ring, they would yield a far sweeter peal than that which the women of the Celestial Empire tinkle before their ancestors' images." "Have you heard those bells ring?" asked Eva, with that boldness, which is often merely an indication of great embarrassment. "Certainly, my beautiful fairy! I have heard the bells of human folly in every zone; they have much the same sound in all parts; one flies from them, and finds them again everywhere; however, why should one destroy this charming woodland quiet with such thoughts? But yet. Robbers everywhere! Do not be alarmed my lovely child! I am not one of them, I only mean the hawks which hover yonder about the summits! The nightingales have already winged their southern flight, it is a pity! Their songs would sound so exquisitely here in the valley as an accompaniment to a living picture, to this _fleur animée_, the lovely _campanula_!" Again Eva ventured to raise her glance, and saw a wide-open blue eye resting upon her. She had been mistaken before, when she deemed it to be small and insignificant; she thereupon recollected that there are eyes upon which the lids rest with heavy pressure, then suddenly seem to shake off this weight and gleam with a full, bright light. "I am ashamed of myself," said she, already more confidentially, "it was childish folly to deck myself with these flowers. I was sitting over there upon the hill beneath the weeping willows, you probably know the little spot. Suddenly, my heart became filled with fear, I hastened down into the valley, and fancied I should become more cheerful, if all these flowers' eyes looked at me when placed quite close beside me." "Still so young and yet sad?" asked the stranger, as he drew nearer concernedly, removing his fowling piece from his shoulder, and leaning upon it. "Nor do I myself know why," replied Eva with embarrassment, "it seems to be wafted over us! There is indeed so much sadness in the world." "Yet if it does hover about in the air, it only settles and remains there where personal experience makes one susceptible of it, and what can a young girl have experienced?" "Little and much!" "You speak as if you were a sybil, promulgating mysterious prophecies!" "Ah, no, my Herr! Little that can be told, what is but little for others, but unutterably much for myself!" "Then no bankrupt father, no dead mother, no brother fallen in a duel?" "Nothing of that kind!" "Perhaps even a school friend, who, married before--" "Oh, how you scoff!" "Or, perhaps a dear friend, who has transferred his heart to another's keeping!" Eva became red, and looked down upon the ground; the sportsman struck his gun against the earth.