about her. But the poetry was in English, and Isa could not read
it, even had he dared to show it to her. During the second year he
went home to England for three months, and by confessing a passion
to one of his sisters, really brought himself to feel one. He
returned to Munich resolved to tell Isa that the possibility of his
remaining there depended upon her acceptance of his heart; but for
months he did not find himself able to put his resolution in force.
She was so sedate, so womanly, so attentive as regarded cousinly
friendship, and so cold as regarded everything else, that he did not
know how to speak to her. With an English girl whom he had met
three times at a ball, he might have been much more able to make
progress. He was alone with Isa frequently, for neither father,
mother, nor Isa herself objected to such communion; but yet things
so went between them that he could not take her by the hand and tell
her that he loved her. And thus the third year of his life in
Munich, and the second of his residence in the Ludwigs Strasse, went
by him. So the years went by, and Isa was now past twenty. To
Herbert, in his reveries, it seemed as though life, and the joys of
life, were slipping away from him. But no such feeling disturbed
any of the Heines. Life of course, was slipping away; but then is
it not the destiny of man that life should slip away? Their wants
were all satisfied, and for them, that, together with their close
family affection, was happiness enough.

At last, however, Herbert so spoke, or so looked, that both Isa and
her mother that his heart was touched. He still declared to himself
that he had made no sign, and that he was an oaf, an ass, a coward,
in that he had not done so. But he had made some sign, and the sign
had been read. There was no secret,--no necessity for a secret on
the subject between the mother and daughter, but yet it was not