"The child is so very much attached to the woman, who, after all, may be her mother. Perhaps when she sees her again her old love of the forest life may awake, and we shall at the very least have a painful scene."
Oswald spoke in a low voice, for Czika was moving in his arms.
"Czika wants to go too," she said suddenly. "Czika wants to go into the woods and see the moon and the stars dance in the branches. Czika knows every tree and every bush."
She was standing on the damp wood-soil and clapped her hands with delight, and danced and laughed and said:
"Come! come! You, master, and you man with the blue eyes! Czika will show you a beautiful place; Czika knows every tree and every bush along the whole road."
She slipped ahead on a narrow path, which left the road where the carriage was standing, to enter the forest sideways, and then she ran on, gliding through the bushes like a wild cat. The two men had much trouble to follow. Czika was not to be persuaded to moderate her zeal. Her only answer to all the Not so fast! of the two men was the clear merry cry of the young falcon, which she uttered again and again, louder and shriller each time. Suddenly an answer came through the forest, the same proud cry which Oldenburg and Oswald remembered so well from that morning when the gypsy woman answered the child's cry from a great distance.
Now a rosy sheen became visible through the trees, which grew brighter and brighter at every step. "We shall soon be there," said the baron, who walked ahead.
In a few minutes they really came out upon the clearing, which Oswald had seen on the afternoon when he saw Melitta for the first time at her house. At the same place, near the edge of the pool, where the gypsies were then cooking their meal, a fire was now burning, but large and bright, as if to throw a flood of light upon the scene. The tops of the mighty trees glowed in rich purple or were lost in dark shade as the flames of the pile of wood blazed up or sank low; on the black mirror of the pool another fire shone in dim glow, and surrounded by this magic illumination the Brown Countess was seen on her knees before Czika, whom she overwhelmed with kisses and caresses. The child tried in vain to draw her up, and at last threw herself down by her side, hiding her head in the bosom of the woman. This was the sight that greeted the two men when they reached the clearing at last, completely out of breath.
They stood there silent and motionless, almost overawed by the strange, touching spectacle.
Then the gypsy rose, and taking the child by the hand she came up to the two, and said to Oldenburg, who stared at her with his eyes wide open: