The servant called an attendant, who took the letter away.  I heard every step in the long halls, and every moment I waited, my position became more unendurable.  The old family portraits of the princely house hung upon the walls—­knights in full armor, ladies in antique costume, and in the center a lady in the white robes of a nun with a red cross upon her breast.  At any other time I might have looked upon these pictures and never thought that a human heart once beat in their breasts.  But now it seemed to me I could suddenly read whole volumes in their features, and that all of them said to me:  “We also have once lived and suffered.”  Under these iron armors secrets were once hidden as even now in my own breast.  These white robes and the red cross are real proofs that a battle was fought here like that now raging in my own heart.  Then I fancied all of them regarded me with pity, and a loftier haughtiness rested on their features as if they would say, Thou dost not belong to us.  I was growing uneasy every moment, when suddenly a light step dissipated my dream.  The English lady came down the stairs and asked me to step into an apartment.  I looked at her closely to see if she suspected my real emotions, but her face was perfectly calm, and without manifesting the slightest expression of curiosity or wonder, she said in measured tones, the Countess was much better to-day and would see me in half an hour.

When I heard these words, I felt like the good swimmer who has ventured far out into the sea, and first thinks of returning when his arms have begun to grow weary.  He cleaves the waves with haste, scarcely venturing to cast a glance at the distant shore, feeling with every stroke that his strength is failing and that he is making no headway, until at last, purposeless and cramped, he scarcely has any realization of his position; then suddenly his foot touches the firm bottom, and his arm hugs the first rock on the shore.  A fresh reality confronted me, and my sufferings were a dream.  There are but few such moments in the life of man, and thousands have never known their rapture.  The mother whose child rests in her arms for the first time, the father whose only son returns from war covered with glory, the poet in whom his countrymen exult, the youth whose warm grasp of the hand is returned by the beloved being with a still warmer pressure—­they know what it means when a dream becomes a reality.

At the expiration of the half hour, a servant came and conducted me through a long suite of rooms, opened a door, and in the fading light of the evening I saw a white figure, and above her a high window, which looked out upon the lake and the shimmering mountains.

“How singularly people meet!” she cried out in a clear voice, and every word was like a cool rain-drop on a hot summer’s day.

“How singularly people meet, and how singularly they lose each other,” said I; and thereupon I seized her hand, and realized that we were together again.