In the pine woods, which gave out a hot breath, a squirrel ran past them almost over their feet, shot up a tree trunk, and at about a man"s height from the ground stood still as if turned to stone.
Lilly and Konrad looked at each other mindful of the moment they had first met.
Lilly moved up to within a few feet of the squirrel, but it did not budge.
"I feel as if we were enchanted," she said. "If it were to speak to us, I shouldn"t be a bit surprised."
Heaving a sigh of bliss she threw herself on the grey, crackling moss.
Konrad followed her example. Shading their eyes with their hands they lay on their backs and blinked up at the sun which flickered down on them through the spa.r.s.e fir boughs.
They had both nearly forgotten the squirrel"s presence, when a sudden chip sounded close over their heads. They looked up and saw the little fellow scampering up the trunk. Until that moment he had stared at them too frightened to stir.
"There you have it," said Konrad, "if we shoot our human language at them, they"ll take good care not to speak to us."
"We"re enchanted at any rate," laughed Lilly. "I at least have never in my life been stretched out so comfortably and had the sun shine on me so. Have you?"
"Oh yes," he rejoined. "I recall one time at least quite definitely."
"How? When?" Lilly inquired, all jealousy. She was jealous of every happy moment in his life which she had not created for him.
"Oh, there"s not much to tell. It was in Ravello, a rocky nest not far from Amalfi, high over the sea. A perfect fairyland. Full of old, Moorish palaces, partly inhabited, partly in ruins. There are marble courtyards with trellised iron railings, ruined fountains with myrtle and laurel growing around in rank profusion and little white climbing roses covering everything. There was one place in particular which I would have given my life to be able to enter. It had a small, mysterious gallery which stood out against the deep blue sky like a silver web. An iron gate as high as a house separated me from that gallery. Since there was n.o.body about to see the street Arab escapade--only a few peasant labourers in the olive plantations live there--I actually climbed over that gate one day."
"Glorious!" cried Lilly.
"Yes, I got in. After making a professional inspection of the beautiful, strange motifs, I lay a long time on the warm stone steps, and let the sun shine down on me just as we are doing now under these Brandenburg firs. And--think of it! the little bluish-green lizards that you love so came gliding up slowly, cautiously, and ran straight over me."
"Oh, heavenly!" said Lilly rapturously.
"Lying there that way with the old marble fountain making music in my ears, I fell asleep--a thing one had better not indulge in, because one may get a sunstroke that way even in midwinter. I"m sure I should have, if some tourists hadn"t come along and thrown sticks and stones at me.
When I awoke I felt dizzy and I saw red. I couldn"t dream of climbing over the gate again. The tourists had to fetch the gate key from the sindaco, and to cap the climax I had to appear before him for a hearing--Who are you? Don"t you know trespa.s.sing in the garden is forbidden? But thank the Lord, he didn"t send me to jail, because all the people tapped their heads and said: "_e matto_, he"s crazy.""
"No harm," laughed Lilly. "You got what you wanted; you entered the forbidden garden. Other people have to be content with standing outside the railing."
"A pleasure we shall probably enjoy to-day," he observed, and Lilly choked down her curiosity.
"At any rate," he continued, "it doesn"t hurt if one practices standing outside now and then. Heaven knows, the very happiness toward which you crane your neck usually is a forbidden garden."
Lilly looked at him.
What did he mean by that?
Their eyes met in shy understanding.
That hopeful disquiet, which she did not venture to call by its name, quivered through her like a fit of fever.
"Come," she said, jumping to her feet and hurrying on without looking back at him.
The woods grew thinner. They now walked along a thicketed swamp where birches gaily shot up their slender white columns from mossy pediments.
The warm noon air vibrated in wavelets. From somewhere came the sound of a church bell, but no farmyard was visible far or near, and suddenly they struck a cross-road, and did not know which way to go.
"We are called upon to decide," he said, and listened a while in the direction from which the sound of the bell came. Then he turned to the right.
"I wish," he went on, "I wish there were a bell to sound the way for me in life."
Then he told her he was standing at a cross-road. He had been offered a position, which in view of his youth was not of slight importance. But before accepting it, he had to make sure whether at the same time he could continue with his life-work.
"It must be a very high position, isn"t it?" Lilly asked proudly. Had the world felt impelled to make him Minister of Fine Arts, or Emperor of China, she would not have been a bit surprised.
But he hesitated to reply, and finally said:
"I"d rather tell you about it when it"s all settled."
She had to be content.
Roofs gleaming red crept over the tops of the bushes. On the edge of the horizon sparkled a lake, nothing more at that distance than a fine silver thread.
"Is that it?" asked Lilly.
"Possibly."
"Oh, don"t put on such a mysterious air," she rebuked him teasingly. "Up to now I"ve been very good and haven"t asked a single question. But do at last tell what you have up your sleeve."
"Afterwards, when we"re there," he laughed. "I know you. I shouldn"t like to make you jealous before the time"s ripe."
Oh, if a woman _was_ in the case!
Another woman!
She gave no outer signs of her emotion, but as she walked along she felt quite ill, partly from hunger, partly from distress.
The lake in its light blue summer beauty now lay before them with its greyish-green girdle of reeds and its glistening play of light.
Not far from the bank, on an eminence encircled with bushes, stood an inn, a reddish-yellow atrocity, built in that barbarous style for frame houses half-way between a palace and a barn.
But three or four wide-spreading ancient lindens surrounded the inn, and the white benches beneath offered pleasant seats according with Lilly"s and Konrad"s mood.
To the left the lake stretched into the hazy distance; to the right, beyond the reeds, in the cove, lay a peasant village, with its mossy green thatched roofs and its blunt, weather-beaten spire half hidden in the bushes and reeds.
And nearby, only a few hundred feet away, rose the mighty trees of a park, from the interior of which here and there came a gleam of columns and bridges and white, vine-clad walls.
Probably the "forbidden garden," in front of whose railing she was to stand that day.
How beautiful and how mysterious.
Anglers came up from the lake, red as lobsters and panting with thirst, the sole guests, it seemed, besides Lilly and Konrad. The stream of Sunday excursionists had not yet flowed into that quiet corner.