I hung breathless on what he would say.  Suppose he played, out there in the dusk, with the stars and the water and the forest all round us, what would it be like?

He got up without a word and went indoors.

The Grafin looked uneasy.  “I hope,” she said to Frau Kloster, “my asking has not offended him?”

But Bernd knew—­Bernd, still at that moment only Herr von Inster for me.  “He is going to play,” he said.

And presently he came out again with his Strad, and standing on the step outside the drawingroom window he played.

I thought, This is the most wonderful moment of my life.  But it wasn’t; there was a more wonderful one coming.

We sat there in the great brooding night, and the music told us the things about love and God that we know but can never say.  When he had done nobody spoke.  He stood on the step for a minute in silence, then he came down to where I was sitting on the low wall by the water and put the Strad into my hands.  “Now you,” he said.

Nobody spoke.  I felt as though I were asleep.

He took my hand and made me stand up.  “Play what you like,” he said; and left me there, and went and sat down again on the steps by the window.

I don’t know what I played.  It was the violin that played while I held it and listened.  I forgot everybody,—­forgot Kloster critically noting what I did wrong, and forgot, so completely that I might have been unconscious, myself.  I was listening; and what I heard were secrets, secrets strange and exquisite; noble, and so courageous that suffering didn’t matter, didn’t touch,—­all the secrets of life.  I can’t explain.  It wasn’t like anything one knows really.  It was like something very important, very beautiful that one used to know, but has forgotten.

Presently the sounds left off.  I didn’t feel as though I had had anything to do with their leaving off.  There was dead silence.  I stood wondering rather confusedly, as one wonders when first one wakes from a dream and sees familiar things again and doesn’t quite understand.

Kloster got up and came and took the Strad from me.  I could see his face in the dusk, and thought it looked queer.  He lifted up my hands one after the other, and kissed them.

But Bernd got up from where he was sitting away from the others, and took me in his arms and kissed my eyes.

And that’s how we were engaged.  I think they said something.  I don’t know what it was, but there was a murmur, but I seemed very far away and very safe; and he turned round when they murmured, and took my hand, and said, “This is my wife.”  And he looked at me and said, “Is it not so?” And I said “Yes.”  And I don’t remember what happened next, and perhaps it was all a dream.  I’m so tired,—­so tired and heavy with happiness that I could drop in a heap on the floor and go to sleep like that.  Beloved mother—­bless your Chris.