"Will you compel me?"
"We'll see about that."
These silly remarks Sali made because he wanted to keep his hands busy and to have a pretext for the awkward caresses he attempted and which his love for the beautiful girl hungered for. But she continued the childish dialogue willingly enough for some time longer, showing plenty of patience the while, feeling instinctively her lover's mood. And the simple sallies on both sides seemed to them the height of wisdom, so soft and sweet and full of their mutual feelings they were. At last, however, Sali waxed bold and aggressive, and seized Vreni and pressed her down into the scarlet bed of poppies by main strength. There she lay panting, blinking at the sun with eyes half-closed. Her softly rounded cheeks glowed like ripe apples and her mouth was breathing hard so that the snow-white rows of teeth became visible. Daintily as if penciled her eyebrows were defined above those flashing eyes, and her young bosom rose and fell under the working four hands which mutually caressed and fought each other. Sali was beyond himself with delight, seeing this wonderful young creature before him, knowing her to be his own, and he deemed himself wealthier than a monarch.
"I see you still have all your teeth," he said. "Do you recall how often we tried to count them? Do you now know how to count?"
"Oh, you silly," smilingly rejoined Vreni, "these are not the same. Those I lost long ago."
So Sali in the simplicity of his soul wanted to renew the game, and prepared to count them over once more. But Vreni abruptly rose and closed her mouth. Then she began to form a wreath of poppies and to place it on her head. The wreath was broad and long, and on the brow of the nut-brown maid it was an ornament so bewitching as to lend her an enchanting air. Sali held in his arms what rich people would have dearly paid for if merely they had had it painted on their walls.
But at last she sprang up. "Goodness, how hot it is here! Here we remain like ninnies and allow ourselves to be roasted alive. Come, dear, and let us sit among the corn!"
And they got up and looked for a suitable hiding-place among the tall wheat. When they had found it, they slipped into the furrows of the field so that nobody would have discovered them without regular search, leaving no trace behind, and they built for themselves a narrow nest among the golden ears that topped their heads when they were seated, so that they only saw the deep azure of the sky above and nothing else in the world. They clung to each other tightly, and showered kisses on cheeks and hair and mouth, until at last they desisted from sheer exhaustion, or whatever one wishes to call it when the caresses of two lovers for one or two minutes cease and thus, right in the ecstasy of the blossom tide of life, there is the hint of the perishableness of everything mundane. They heard the larks singing high overhead, and sought them with their sharp young eyes, and when they thought they saw one flashing along in the sunlight like shooting stars along the firmament, they kissed again, in token of reward, and tried to cheat and to overreach each other at this game just as much as they could.
"Do you see, there is one flitting now," whispered Sali, and Vreni replied just as low: "I can hear it, but I do not see it."
"Oh, but watch now," breathed Sali, "right there, where the small white cloud is floating, a hand's breadth to the right."