commended me for a worthy deed.

'An answer, Aennchen?' I asked her.

'Yes, yes!' said she anxiously; 'but it will take more time than I can
spare.' She appointed a meeting near the palace garden-gates at night.

I chose a roof of limes to read under.

'Noblest and best beloved!' the princess addressed me in her own tongue,
doubting, I perceived, as her training had taught her, that my English
eyes would tolerate apostrophes of open-hearted affection. The rest was
her English confided to a critic who would have good reason to be
merciful:

'The night has come that writes the chapter of the day. My father has
had his interview with his head-forester to learn what has befallen from
the storm in the forest. All has not been told him! That shall not be
delayed beyond to-morrow.

'I am hurried to it. And I had the thought that it hung perhaps at the
very end of my life among the coloured leaves, the strokes of sunset--
that then it would be known! or if earlier, distant from this strange
imperative Now. But we have our personal freedom now, and I have learnt
from minutes what I did mean to seek from years, and from our forest what
I hoped that change of scene, travel, experience, would teach me. Yet I
was right in my intention. It was a discreet and a just meaning I had.
For things will not go smoothly for him at once: he will have his hard
battle. He is proved: he has passed his most brave ordeal. But I!
Shall I see him put to it and not certainly know myself? Even thus I