"And as you have found it all out so nicely, I will show it to you this very evening!"
"What! This is not a fancy picture?"
"Oh no! Perhaps those ducks hiding in the rushes from the hawk up there. The brook is the outlet of your mysterious lake in the forest."
"Ah, and thus only a continuation of my dream," said Oswald, turning over leaf after leaf.
A loose leaf fell into his hands. It had on it the head of a man in profile, drawn in beautiful bold lines. In a corner stood the letters A. V. O. and a date.
"That leaf will drop out," said Oswald.
"Let it drop, then!" replied Melitta.
The tone in which she said these few words was so peculiar, so entirely without the ordinary sweetness of her voice, that Oswald involuntarily looked up at her. He saw that her beautiful brows were contracted as if in anger, and her lips trembling. He looked down again instantly, and was about to put the leaf back in its place, when Melitta laid her hand on his arm and said:
"How do you like the head?"
A storm rose in Oswald's heart. He might have thrown himself instantly at Melitta's feet to cry out: Do I not love you, Melitta? How can you ask my opinion about a man whom you have loved, whom you perhaps still love? But he checked himself and said, with apparent calmness: