Love, thou art mine, and I am thine!
This makes my heart so glad.
And ne’er shall thine be sad.
Dearest, farewell!
They came at length to the village, and one group after another fell off.
Barefoot remained standing long by her parents’ house, under the service-tree, thinking and dreaming. She wished she could go in and tell Mariann every thing; but she gave it up,—“Why disturb her night’s rest?” Then she went homeward. The whole village lay buried in sleep.
At length she entered the house. All within seemed more strange than without,—so strange, she felt that she could not belong there. “Why hast thou come home again? What wilt thou do here?” were the strange questions that seemed asked in every noise. When the dog barked, when the stairs creaked, when the cows in the stall lowed,—in every sound was this question,—“Who is coming home? What do you do here?”
At last she entered her chamber, and sat quiet a long time, looking at the light. Suddenly she seized the light, and placed it before her little glass, so that she saw her own face. She asked herself, “Who is this? Thus he must have seen me. So I must have looked,” was the second thought. “Yet there must have been something there to please him,—else why did he look at me so?” A quiet feeling of satisfaction arose within her, and this was heightened by the thought, “You have now been respected as a person; till yesterday you were always looked upon as the servant and helper of others. Good-night, Amrie, you have lived one day?”
But this day must come to an end. Midnight was over. Amrie laid one piece after the other of her dress carefully away. “Ah, there is the music again; listen, how the rocking waltz sounds!” She opened her window; but there was no longer music. Its echo was in her ear! Below, near Mariann’s, the cock began already to crow. She heard the footsteps of men approaching; probably some belated home-goer from the wedding. They sounded so loud in the night. The young geese began to gabble in their enclosure.
“Yes,” she said to herself, “geese sleep only an hour at a time, by night as well as by day. The trees are quiet, motionless. Why is a tree so wholly different in the night from the day? Such a close, dark mass, like a giant wrapped in his mantle. How much motion there still is within the motionless tree! What a world of life there is there! Not a breath of wind stirs, and yet there are drops from the trees. These may be caterpillars and beetles falling. Ah, a quail calls! It must be the one in the cage at the Heathcock’s. She does not know that it is night. And look, the evening star, which at sundown was deep under the moon, is now nearer and above the moon. The more we look at it, the higher it becomes.”