Has all this been only a vision of her own fancy?
Then she heard the stroke of oars in the river, and a voice again cried:—
"Thou pure, thou blessed one!"
Then all was still.
On the other side a chain rattled, the boat was drawn up to the shore, and no sound was heard; only the waves of the river, which are not heard by day, rippled and plashed and murmured in the still night. Manna thought that she could hear the blood as it flowed through her heart, so full, so oppressed, and yet so blissful.
CHAPTER VI.
A DAY WITHOUT PEN OR TYPE.
Eric stood on the shore gazing after the boat, from which Roland was waving at a distance his white handkerchief. To see a person so attached to us flitting away from us in a vessel, seems as if one should love a bird which soars freely up into the air where it cannot be reached; and yet it is different. Human love connects by invisible ties, and this signalizing from afar is a sign of a thought in common, of communication of feeling and participation of interest, notwithstanding all separation by space.
When the boat had disappeared, and only a light streak of vapor floated along the vine-covered slopes, Eric remained standing upon the hill, and as the faint mists hovered in the air, so hovered in his soul the last words of Roland's farewell,—"You and the house do not move from your place."
What a commotion, what an upheaving and swelling, there is in the soul of youth, until it comes to some expression, like an opening blossom!