With a deep sigh she gazed at him, considering him now positively unearthly.
"Two whole years!" she cried.
"I am engaged on a great scientific work," he continued; "for its sake--no, it would be more correct to say for my health's sake--I was sent to Italy. My uncle, who is a father to me, wished it.... And it was Italy that first inspired me with the idea of the work, and afterwards fatherland and my old life and studies, everything else, went to the wall."
As he spoke his eyes flashed with enthusiasm. He seemed palpitating with his great purpose; and the old former yearning for Italian skies awoke and beat its wings within her heart.
"Yes, isn't it true," she cried, infected by his ardour, "that there is the home of all great ideas? There you may feel your utmost. What you have sown there will repay and bear fruit. Isn't it so? I have never been there, but I am quite sure that is how people feel. There, where everything great and beautiful belongs to the soil; there, one's self becomes greater and nobler.... One has no more petty sordid cares. Isn't it true?"
He had listened to her astounded, his eyes beaming and radiant. "Yes," he said almost solemnly, "it is exactly as you say."
She felt a sensation of joy. Wasn't this harmony of thought a confirmation of the affinity that she had from the first moment that she had set eyes on him sought and hoped for? Nothing could ever separate her from him after this. Perhaps he really was the physical embodiment of that shadow belonging to the Dresden days that had taken up its abode in her soul!
"I can't help feeling as if we had met before," she murmured softly, with eyes downcast.
"I feel like that too," he answered, "but it can't be so, for if we had met I could never have forgotten the time and place."
"You were not in Dresden, by any chance, about this time six years ago?" she asked.