"Hartmut!"
He started and sprang up quickly. He did not know the voice, nor the stranger, but it was a lady, and he bowed chivalrously.
"Gracious lady----"
A slender and trembling hand was laid hastily and warningly upon his arm.
"Hush--not so loud--your companion might hear us, and I must speak with you, Hartmut--with you alone."
She stepped back again and motioned him to follow. Hartmut hesitated a moment. How came this stranger, whose face was closely veiled, but who, to judge by her dress, belonged to the highest class, at this lonely forest pond? And what was the meaning of the familiar "thou" from her to him, whom she saw now for the first time? But the mystery of the encounter began to interest him, and he followed her.
They stopped under the protection of the bushes where they could not be seen from the other side, and the stranger slowly raised her veil.
She was no longer in her youth--a woman still in her thirties--but the face with the dark, flashing eyes possessed a strange fascination, and the same charm was in the voice, which, even in the whisper, was soft and deep, with a foreign accent, as if the German which she spoke so fluently was not her native tongue.
"Hartmut, look at me. Do you really not remember me? Have you not kept some recollection from your childhood that tells you who I am?"
The young man shook his head slowly, and yet there arose in his mind a remembrance, misty and dreamlike, that told him he did not now hear this voice for the first time--that he had seen this face before in times long, long past. Half timidly, half transfixed, he stood there gazing upon the stranger, who suddenly stretched out both arms toward him.