But when evening came he made his way through the town once more, the air was soft and full of the vapourous odours of the past. Only the fragrance was ten times stronger, and oppressed him in the narrow streets. But as he crossed the open square he smelt the grass and leaves from the country beyond. And overhead he saw the spring in the tranquil little clouds and the tender rose of the western sky. The twilight shed a soft grey mist, full of delicate tints, over the town. The streets were quiet, only a grinding organ in the distance played a love-sick tune; the houses stood out black against the crimson heavens, their fantastic pinnacles and chimneys stretching up like numberless arms.
To Johannes it was as though the sun were giving him a kind smile as he shed his last beams over the great city—kind, like the smile which seals a pardon. And the warmth stroked Johannes's cheek with a caress.
Deep tenderness came over his soul, so great that he could walk no farther, but lifted up his face to the wide heavens with a deep sigh. The Spring was calling to him and he heard it. He longed to answer—to go. His heart was full of repentance and love and forgiveness. He gazed up with longing tears flowing from his sad eyes.
'Come, Johannes! do not behave so strangely; people are staring at you!' cried Pluizer.
The long monotonous rows of houses stretched away on each side, gloomy and repulsive—an offence in the soft atmosphere, a discord in the voices of the Spring.
The folk were sitting at their doors and on the steps, to enjoy the warmth. To Johannes this was a mockery. The squalid doors stood open and the stuffy rooms within awaited their inhabitants. The organ was still grinding out its melancholy tune in the distance.
'Oh, if I could but fly away—far away! To the sand-hills and the sea!'
But he must needs go home to the little garret room; and that night he could not sleep.
He could not help thinking of his father, and of the long walks he had been used to take with him, when he trotted ten yards behind, or his father traced letters for him in the sand. He thought of the spots where the violets grew under the brushwood, and of the days when he and his father had hunted for them. All the night he saw his father's face just as he had seen him in the evenings when he sat by his side in the silence and lamplight, watching him and listening to the scratching of his pen.
Every morning now he asked Pluizer when he might once more go home to his father, and see the garden and the sand-hills again. And he perceived now that he had loved his father more than Presto, or his little room, for it was of him that he asked—