"No," he assented soberly, "it is certainly not their fault. Hast thou never heard it said," he went on, "that if one of them marries a mortal, he would win a soul?"
"Yes," she replied; "but Father Christopher does not believe that that is true."
"But if it were," he began, "wouldst thou—"
He broke off suddenly, and sprang up.
"Come," he cried, with his infectious laugh, "thou art making me as solemn as an owl. Did I talk in this sombre fashion when I came to Rittenberg?"
She did not answer save by a smile. She was aware that the knight had changed since he had been at the castle, although she did not realize what the alteration might mean. She had herself changed too much in the same time to be able to appreciate the subtile difference between what he now was and what he had been on his arrival; and she was too well content with whatever he was to study deeply over the question of the effect of her influence upon him. She rose from the grassy mound on which she had been sitting, and soon they were on their homeward way through the forest.
The day was wasting as they neared the castle, and already in the shadows of the forest the tree-trunks were black and dim. The way wound through the solemn pine-wood, rising and falling as it crossed the hills. Far above them they could see the peaks reddened by the rays of the late sun, while they rode forward in the dimness of the bridle-path below. Now and then some sudden turn in the way brought them to the crest of an elevation from which they could look far over the wide range of the tree-clad country. Spread before them were the sweeping black forests of pine, broken here and there with patches of ling and heather, as the surface of the ocean may be mottled by lighter spaces that mark where the concealed currents run.
Suddenly, as they turned a corner where the path ran along a rocky hillside, becoming so narrow that they were close together, Erna laid her hand on the arm of her companion.
"Look!" she exclaimed, pointing with the other hand.
Far, far before them, bathed in the golden light of the dying sun, lay the peaks of the Alps. White and pure as crystal the snowy summits rose toward the sky, while lower the slopes were flushed to rosy pink, or dyed to strange and lovely hues of gold and crimson and purple. From a cloud of rainbow colors soared the rosy peaks, fairer than dreams.