“No; but she called out several times in her sleep, and once I heard her say quite distinctly:  ’Ludwig, take care; she will bite!”

* * * * *

Count Vavel could not deny that his fair neighbor had made a very favorable impression on him.  In astronomy she had taken the place of the moon, in classic literature that of an ideal, and in metaphysics that of the absolutely good.

He had sufficient command of himself, however, to suppress the desire to see her again.  From that day he did not again turn his telescope toward the neighboring manor.  But to prevent his thoughts from straying there was beyond his power.  These straying thoughts after a while began to betray themselves in his countenance and in his eyes; and there are persons who understand how to read faces and eyes.

“Are you troubled about anything, Ludwig?” one day inquired Marie, after they had been sitting in silence together for a long while.

Ludwig started guiltily.

“Ye-es; I have bad news from abroad.”

Such a reply, however, cannot deceive those who understand the language of the face and eyes.

One afternoon Marie stole noiselessly up to the observatory, and surprised Ludwig at the telescope.

“Let me see, too, Ludwig.  Are you looking at something pretty?”

“Very pretty,” answered Ludwig, giving place to the young girl.

Marie looked through the glass, and saw a farm-yard overgrown with weeds.  On an inverted tub near the door of the cottage sat a little old grandmother teaching her grandchildren how to knit a stocking.

“Then you were not looking at our lovely neighbor,” said Marie.  “Why don’t you look at her?”

“Because it is not necessary for me to know what she is doing.”

Marie turned the telescope toward the manor, and persisted until she had found what she was looking for.

“How sad she looks!” she said to Ludwig.

But he paid no attention to her words.

“Now it seems as though she were looking straight into my eyes; now she clasps her hands as if she were praying.”

Ludwig said, with pedagogic calmness: 

“If you continue to gaze with such intensity through the telescope your face will become distorted.”

Marie laughed.  “If I had a crooked mouth, and kept one eye shut, people would say, ‘There goes that ugly little Marie!’ Then I should not have to wear a veil any more.”

She distorted her face as she had described, and turned it toward Ludwig, who said hastily:  “Don’t—­don’t do that, Marie.”

“Is it not all the same to you whether I am ugly or pretty?” she retorted.  Then, as if to soften the harshness of her words, she added:  “Even if I were ugly, would you love me—­as the fakir loves his Brahma?”

* * * * *