hankered after and never found.'

'What was that?'

'Oh! nothing--only perfection,' laughed Greif.

'Nonsense! If I am perfection, what must you be? Plato himself? I do
not know much about him, but I have read that he was a good man.
Perhaps you are like him.'

'The resemblance cannot be very striking, for no one has noticed it,
not even the professors themselves, who ought to know.'

'Must you go back to Schwarzburg?' Hilda asked, suddenly growing
serious.

'Yes, but it is the last time. It will not seem long--there is so much
to be done.'

'No. It will not seem long,' answered Hilda, thinking of all that she
and her mother must do before the wedding. 'But the long times are not
always the sad times,' she added sorrowfully.

'I shall be here for Christmas,' said Greif. 'And in the new year we
will be married, and then--we must think of what we will do.'

'We will live at Sigmundskron, as you said, shall we not?'

'Yes. But before that we will go away for a while.' 'Away? Why?'