The trees of the avenue between the city and Burtscheid were covered with rimy frost, which made their branches seem to coruscate and glitter in myriad prisms. Frost was on the pathway; it shone on the stems and twigs, on the stalks and blades of the wayside plants; snow covered all the district, yet the air was far from being cold.
At last the old church of Burtscheid rose before him again. In another minute or two, he would have clasped her to his breast, where he had clasped her last—at the altar-rail—when those sad and sweet and solemn vows were interchanged.
In that moment the campaign in Alsace and Lorraine, danger, duty, wound, and suffering, were all forgotten; nothing was in his mind but the intense happiness of the event to come.
He was conscious enough of the tombs and cypresses, the pillars and obelisks, standing grimly up from the snow-clad graves; of the dusky outlines of various distant buildings; of red lights streaming from windows out upon the gloom; and he could see the pale silver crescent of the new moon peeping sharply up above the black outline of the Schloss of Frankenburg.
He heard the faint whisper of the ivy leaves on the old wall; but all as one might do in a dream.'
He threw away the end of his cigar, and thought,
'I should not have been smoking when coming to meet her.'
No britzka or other carriage stood before the gate. Heinrich was not there as escort; neither was the old butler or any other servant there in attendance.
So, as the evening was clear and fine, she must have come alone to meet him, that they might have the joy of walking back to the Schloss together!
He entered the church. It was gaily decorated for the coming Christmas-eve.