“In a few hours now I can go and see Christine.”  At this point in his love he had no other thought.  He was too happy to speculate on any probability as yet.  It was sufficient at present to know that he had found his love, that she lived at a definite number on a definite avenue, and that in six or seven hours more he might see her again.

He chose the earlier number.  It was just eleven o’clock when he rung Mr. Stromberg’s bell.  Mrs. Stromberg passed through the hall as he entered, and greeted him pleasantly.  “Christine and I are just going to have breakfast,” she said, in her jolly, hearty way.  “Come in Mr. Mueller, and have a cup of coffee with us.”

Nothing could have delighted Franz so much.  Christine was pouring it out as he entered the pretty breakfast parlor.  How beautiful she looked in her long loose morning dress!  How, bewitching were its numerous bows of pale ribbon!  He had a sense of hunger immediately, and he knew that he made an excellent breakfast; but of what he ate or what he drank he had not the slightest conception.

A cup of coffee passing through Christine’s, hands necessarily suffered some wonderful change.  It could not, and it did not, taste like ordinary coffee.  In the same mysterious way chicken, eggs and rolls became sublimated.  So they ate and laughed and chatted, and I am quite sure that Milton never imagined a meal in Eden half so delightful as that breakfast on the avenue.

When it was over, it came into Franz’s heart to offer Christine a ride.  They were standing together among the flowers in the bay window, and the trees outside were in their first tender green, and the spring skies and the spring airs were full of happiness and hope.  Christine was arranging and watering her lilies and pansies, and somehow in helping her Franz’s hands and hers had lingered happily together.  So now love gave to this mortal an immortal’s confidence.  He never thought of sighing and fearing and trembling.  His soul had claimed Christine, and he firmly believed that sooner or later she would hear and understand what he had to say to her.

“Shall we ride?” he said, just touching her fingers, and looking at her with eyes and face glowing with a wonderful happiness.

Alas, Christine could think of mamma, and of morning calls and of what people would say.  But Franz overruled every scruple; he conquered mamma, and laughed at society; and before Christine had decided which of her costumes was most becoming, Franz was waiting at the door.

How they rattled up the avenue and through the park!  How the green branches waved in triumph, and how the birds sang and gossiped about them!  By the time they arrived at Mount St. Vincent they had forgotten they were mortal.  Then the rest in the shady gallery, and the subsidence of love’s exaltation into love’s silent tender melancholy, were just as blissful.

They came slowly home, speaking only in glances and monosyllables, but just before they parted Franz said, “I have been waiting thirty years for you, Christine; to-day my life has blossomed.”