"Poor, dear father!" he said.
But suddenly it rang again around him from all sides, so loud, so penetrating, that he trembled with his marvelous emotion.
"Sun-son! Sun-son!"
Johannes stood up and gazed outside. What light! What splendid light! It streamed over the high tree tops, it glistened amid the grass-blades, and sparkled in the shadow-patches. The whole air was filled with it up to the very sky where the first exquisite sunset clouds were flecking the blue.
Beyond the meadow, between the green trees and shrubs, he saw the dunes. Red gold lay along their slopes, and in their shadows hung the blue of the heavens.
They lay stretched out reposefully in their robe of tender tints. The delicate undulations of their expanse brought a benediction—as does prayer. Johannes felt again as he had felt when Windekind taught him how to pray.
Was not that he, there, in the blue garment? Look! there in the heart of the light—shimmering in a maze of blue and gold. Was not that Windekind, beckoning him?
Johannes flew out of doors into the sunlight. For an instant he stood still. He felt the holy solemnity of the light, and scarcely dared to move where the foliage was so still.
Yet, there, in front of him, was the light figure again. It was Windekind! It surely was! His radiant face was turned toward him, and the lips were parted as if calling him. With his right hand he was beckoning. In his left he held aloft some object. In the tips of his slender fingers he held it, and it glittered and sparkled.
With a glad cry of joy and yearning, Johannes sped toward the beloved apparition. But with laughing face and waving hand, it floated before him, still beckoning him on. Sometimes it would drift low, and lingeringly skim the ground, to ascend again lightly and swiftly, and float farther off, like a feathery seed borne on by the wind.