VIII.
atrina watched the little party as they went in at the great door leading to the entrance hall. And her friend, just before she disappeared from view, having turned, had seen Katrina standing out there in the sunshine of the court and had waved a farewell to the child. Then the door closed with a heavy sound and the little one realized she was all alone. A strange lump rose in her throat and her blue eyes filled with tears; but she knew that to have kept her promise was the right thing to have done, so, throwing back her head, she laughed away the desire to cry.
Some impulse seemed to turn her steps down toward the castle gates. She walked across the court, past the bench where she and Fritz had sat together, on beyond the Knight’s House with its memories of Martin Luther, until she reached the rosebush—the same bush from which she had gathered the crimson blossoms for the lady.
In her disappointment—for it was indeed a disappointment not to see, after all, the castle of her dreams—Katrina felt a longing for friendly sympathy, and something seemed to tell her that she would find it here. So, after choosing a shady spot, the child sat down in the soft grass, the breath of roses all about her, and some of the velvet petals touching her cheek like a gentle caress.
“I’ll love you more than I ever did before,” Katrina whispered, as she bent even closer to the blossoms. “The lady called you ‘the roses of Saint Elizabeth,’ and she told me that in the castle I would see a picture of Saint Elizabeth carrying roses just like you to the poor, sick people. My dear mütterchen told me about her, too; she said she was so beautiful and good, and that she lived in this same castle where we are living now. Oh,” Katrina added with a sigh, “if I only knew more about her I’d be so glad!”
“The breath of roses all about her”