Windekind looked tenderly and very seriously at Johannes.
"Do you see my flower?" he asked. "This is not my old iris. This is much more beautiful. Oh, Mother Earth is greatly changed; and so am I."
Johannes looked about him. But everything appeared as before: the long lines of delicate green dunes; the sky, all mottled with white clouds; the graceful sea-gulls rocking in the wind, with their cry of grand and lonely liberty. But on the water not a sail was to be seen, nor on the strand a person.
"How good it is to see you again," said Johannes. "I have been so sorry about Father Pan. And now I am very anxious about my poor Brother."
But as Johannes said this he felt quite calm and peaceful; and this puzzled him.
Windekind looked at him, and smiled mysteriously.
"That was a long time ago," he said.
And when Johannes gazed at him in amazement, he repeated:
"Long ago—quite a thousand years."
"A thousand years?" murmured Johannes, mistrustfully.