"And is this all the spirit with which you enter the battle?" asked Lilly.
"Dear Fräulein," he replied, "how can a fellow who starts in life with a few darned shirts and socks, and borrowed money, feel any different?"
"He is the very one who should conquer," Lilly urged, eager to inspire him with her own confidence. "You, with your consciousness of being great and different from other people, are bound to carry all before you."
She waved her arm with an impassioned gesture, which took in the whole prospect before them: the plain with its silver streams and its green trees, the city embosomed in its gardens, perched among its meadows like a lark's nest. She would show him a small symbol of the future kingdoms over which he was to reign.
He nodded gloomily, convinced that he knew more about it than she did.
"Life is hard--hard," he repeated.
She still did not despair of infecting him with her own ambition for his future, and in an outburst of eloquence she went on:
"If only I could express what I feel and know is true--if only I could make you courageous and hopeful.... Look what a pitiable creature I am. I have neither father nor mother nor friends.... I hadn't even the chance of staying at school and finishing my education. Here I am, without position, money, or even winter clothes.... Look at my feet." She thrust out her shabby boots, which till now she had been careful to hide beneath her skirt. "I never have enough to eat, and if I am late home to-day I shall be thrashed. Yet I am certain that somewhere happiness is waiting for me.... It is there, in every little breeze that blows in my face--though invisible--in every sunbeam that greets me. The whole world is made up of happiness, really, and of music.... Everything is a Song of Songs--a Song of Songs is everything."
She turned away from him sharply so that he should not see how moved she was.
Below in the town the bells began to chime. St. Mary's, which once had been the Catholic cathedral and was now the chief Protestant church, led off with its deep triple clang. St. George's, once the Church of the Order, gave out a clear E G third; on feast-days it added a C. More bells sounded, and among them the modest tinkle of St. Ann's, unmistakable and insistent, making itself clearly heard in the chorus. To Lilly's ears it whispered, "We know and love each other, and St. Joseph greets us."