Hertha awoke. The flies buzzed about in the purple duskiness; broad midday sunshine came through the chinks of the shutters and the red curtains.
"I must have dreamed it," she thought, laying her arm beneath her head and laughing up blissfully at the ceiling.
And then she slowly realised that this time it could be no dream. A warm glow flooded her face. She shut her eyes and didn't think. It seemed as if her body were drifting, and as if she must die of happiness. What had her existence been yesterday, and what was it to-day? A wild hoyden had been carried down the stream, and then he had found her, and made her a woman with the magic of his love.
She jumped out of bed with a sharp exclamation, and began to dress.
When she stood before the glass she contemplated herself for a long time.
"How funny!" she said. "I look the same as usual."
She passed Elly's bed on tiptoe. The girl was sleeping away her tears and fright of the day before in rosy, peaceful slumbers. A fly had alighted on the corner of one of her eyelids. Hertha flicked it off.
"And she talks about love," she thought, and shrugged her shoulders.
And, as was always the case when she tried to put herself in the place of her companion, with her childish, objectless mind, a deadening, flat feeling came over her, which robbed her of the courage to believe in the happy result of what had happened yesterday. Perhaps, on further consideration, he would find her wanting in seriousness, and would take back his declaration.
The next minute she was ashamed of her poor-spiritness. It was inconceivable that he had not perfectly understood how boundless her love for him was, and how, in spite of her extreme youth, her early experience of the sorrows and trials of life had ripened and strengthened her character.