the young people opportunity to bear the trials of separation, and for the present thought a decision useless.  The projected visit to Ostend was hastened by some ten days.  At dinner he made his decision known, adding, “You have pleased yourselves for three weeks, and now I want you to wait so long to please me.”  Wilhelm felt bitterly grieved that no one invited him to go to the fashionable watering-place, and Loulou even did not seem particularly miserable.  The fact was, that at the bottom of her not very sentimental nature, she did not take the leaving of the Schloss hotel as a matter of great importance, and Ostend with its balls and concerts, its casino and lively society, was not in the least alarming to her.  She found the opportunity that evening of consoling Wilhelm, and promised him always to think about him, and to write to him very often, and said she could not be very miserable about their separation, as she felt so happy at the thought of meeting him again in Berlin.  The following morning they made a pilgrimage to the castle, the woods, the neighboring valley, to all the places where they had been so happy during the last fortnight.  The sky was blue, the pine woods quiet, the air balmy, and the beautiful outline of the mountains unfolded itself far away in the depth of the horizon.  Wilhelm drank in the quiet, lovely picture, and felt that a piece of his life was woven into this harmony of nature, and that these surroundings had become part of his innermost “ego,” and would be mingled with his dearest feelings now and ever.  His love, and these mountains and valleys, and Loulou, the mist and perfume of the pine trees, were forever one, and the pantheistic devotion which he felt in these changing flights of his mind with the soul of nature grew to an almost unspeakable emotion, as he said in a trembling voice to Loulou: 

“It is all so wonderful, the mountains and the woods, and the summer-time and our love.  And in a moment it will be gone.  Shall we ever be so happy again?  If we could only stay here always, the same people in the midst of the same nature!”

She said nothing, but let him take her answer from her fresh lips.

They left by the Offenberg railway station in the afternoon.  Loulou’s eyes were wet.  Frau Ellrich smiled in a motherly way at Wilhelm, and Herr Ellrich took his hand in a friendly manner and said: 

“We shall see you in Berlin at the end of September.”

As the train disappeared down the Gutach valley, it seemed to Wilhelm as if all the light of heaven had gone out, and the world had become empty.  He stayed a few days longer at the Schloss hotel, and cherished the remembrance of his time there with Loulou, dreaming for hours in the dearly-loved spots.  In this tender frame of mind he received another letter from Paul Haber, who wrote thus: 

“Dearest Wilhelm:  Your letter of the 13th astonished me so much that it took me several days to recover.  Fraulein Loulou Ellrich, and you write so lightly!  Don’t you know—­that Fraulein Ellrich is one of the first ‘parties’ in Berlin?  That the little god of love will make you a present of two million thalers?  You have shot your bird, and I am most happy that for once fortune should bring it to the hand of a fellow like yourself.  In the hope that as a millionaire you will still be the same to me, I am your heartily congratulatory