"How did that occur to you?" she faltered, startled that their thoughts had taken the same course.
"Oh, a person gets notions," he replied, and smiled significantly.
Under the same impulse they took the path leading to the beech grove which they had wandered through on the first evening of their renewed friendship.
"How"s Tommy?" Lilly asked, recollecting the third party to the alliance.
"He bit away the flooring in my room and dug a hole for himself, where he snarls like an eagle-owl. I shouldn"t advise you to stick your wedding-ring finger into his hole. You might suddenly lose your ring and your finger, too."
"Why have you let him get so wild?" she asked reproachfully.
"Why have I let myself get so wild?" he retorted.
"Well, you"re growing tame again," replied Lilly, caressing him with her eyes. His recent tameness was all her doing.
"Do you think so?" he asked, and drew his brows together masterfully, as in his lieutenant days.
"Haven"t I your word of honour?" she exulted.
"Pshaw!"
Lilly basked in the superbness of her mission of salvation.
"No matter how much you disdain my influence," she replied, "everybody sees that a change has taken place in you. Mr. Leichtweg says you"re always the first to begin work now. You"ve borrowed that great book on agriculture from the colonel--it impressed him tremendously--and Miss von Schwertfeger said a little while ago you always look so appetizing now. Yes, Mr. von Prell, I take the credit for all this, and if things continue the same way we shall remain good friends."
"Apropos of appetizing," he said, "your neck beginning back of your ears is all covered with tiny, silky hairs. Do you know from what that comes?"
"Oh, nonsense," Lilly exclaimed, blushing. "Why? Do you know?"
"A wise man has theories. For instance, observe this plot of gra.s.s." He pointed to a clearing below them, through which a rill trickled, and which was closely grown with tender, juicy gra.s.s of a vivid green. "From the way it looks you"d suppose it was still spring. Until late in the summer that plot stood under water, and the spots that least often or never get dry grow the finest down--that"s nature."
Lilly was on the point of taking his botany lesson in earnest when she chanced to notice the wicked grimace he was making. Then she understood the shameless allusion and had to laugh over it helplessly.
"Listen, baronissima, how about playing tag? We owe it to the circulation of your excellency"s blood."
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when with a blithe shout she darted off down the slope, the bottom of which was lost in the purple darkness of autumn. But at the end of a short stretch she tripped over the Scotch plaid she had taken along and had refused to let Von Prell carry. She fell full length and he came just in time to help her to her feet.
This having spoiled Lilly"s taste for tag they mounted the hill like well-behaved children.
Here their eyes could travel over a rippling lake of leaves far, far away. The beeches glowed a deep red, the maples danced in all the colours of the rainbow, the birches quivered with bright flames, the elm flaunted its flakes of gold, while the oak alone obstinately retained its green garb of summer.
Lilly stared into the violet-veiled distance.
The sun hid itself behind gold-rimmed clouds, from which fiery tracks descended to earth. A narrow band of scarlet edged the horizon.
"Shall we sit down here?" asked Von Prell.
"No, not here," said Lilly, seized with a vague dread. "I"ll begin to cry here."
She ran ahead of him, back into the woods, and came again upon the path leading along the rill.
Here the darkness of evening prevailed, but the sun-charm in which they had been enveloped worked its magic here, too, and filled her heart with a happy devoutness.
Oh, how happy she was! How happy she was!
No fear and no danger so far as her thoughts could reach; and no danger from her own heart, for the man walking by her side was her friend and playmate, nothing more. He might not and could not be anything else. No secret wish, no distorted desire came from him or went to meet him.
Everything uniting him to her was clear and transparent as sunlight.
Even if the others must not have a suspicion of their intercourse, there was no sin in it--only salvation for him and laughter for her and youth for both.
She felt a warm-hearted impulse to take his hand, but fearing to be misunderstood she checked herself.
Thus they walked at each other"s side to the spot where the rill was caught up in a rotting wooden conduit, from which it spouted with a soft singsong.
Withered ferns covered the light green moss with their ragged red fronds and tired leaves came fluttering down out of the beech trees.
"Let us rest here," suggested Lilly.
"But it"s damp."
"We"ll spread the plaid," she said eagerly, taking the blanket from him--he had managed to s.n.a.t.c.h it away from her--and threw it over the fern stalks, which cracked under the weight.
She sat down on the right side of the plaid and invited him to make use of the left side, to keep his fine new suit clean.
"Do you hear the vesper bells?" he asked. "We ought to be eating supper now."
"We poor church mice, we have nothing," she laughed.
"Who told you so?" he asked, triumphantly producing a small paper package from his pocket, which contained a mashed, crumbly piece of cake. They laid it between them and ate the morsels from their hollowed hands, laughing all the while. The cake tasted like sweet wine, and Lilly felicitously hit upon its correct name, punch-tart, of which she was especially fond.
"The English call it tipsy-cake," he explained. "It quite befuddles one."
"That amount of intoxication I"ll risk," she laughed, and threw herself on her back, folding her hands behind her head.
She lay there a time without moving and looked up to the sky, of which jagged oval bits shimmered through the foliage. Rosy flakes swam in the opalescent ether, and way beyond appeared the vault of another heaven, which in some places burst through the nearer sky like a deep blue foreboding.
Lilly stretched her arms upward yearningly.
"Do you want to catch the larks?" he asked.
No, not that, but she would like to have one of the falling leaves.
They kept dropping, dropping from the boughs like birds with broken wings, and fluttered over the ground in little spirals, as if undecided where to rest.
"We"ll see to which of us the first one comes," he said, and also stretched himself on his back.
"The one to whom a leaf comes first will be blessed with a great piece of good fortune," she added.