Silently they walked side by side for a while. When they reached the wood, which lay thick and dark before them, she stopped and asked,
“Who has taught you that?”
“Nobody,” he said; “it came to me quite naturally.”
“Can you also play the flute?” she went on.
No, he could not; he had never even heard it; he only knew that it was the favorite pastime of “old Fritz.”
“You must learn it,” she said.
He thought it would probably be too difficult for him.
“You should try all the same,” she counselled him; “you must be an artist—a great artist.”
He was startled when she said that; he scarcely dared to follow out her thoughts.
When they had reached the other side of the wood they separated. She went towards the White House and he went back. When he passed the juniper-bush where they had both been sitting all seemed to him like a dream, and henceforth it always remained so to him. Two or three days elapsed before he dared to say anything of his adventure to his mother, but then he could contain himself no longer; he confessed everything to her.