"If only he would come now!" said the girl.
"Why, you little goose?"
Noémi grew crimson. "Only because I should prefer it."
Timar, however, thought to himself how happy he could make these two people with a single word. But he gloated over the thought, like a child which had some sweets given to it, and begins by eating the crumbs first. He felt an inward impulse to share the joys and sorrows of these islanders.
Supper was over, the sun had set, and a splendid, still, warm night sunk on to the fields; the whole sky looked like a transparent silver veil—no leaf stirred on the trees. The two women went with their visitor to the top of the great bowlder; from there one had a wide view over the trees and the reed-beds far across the Danube. The island lay at their feet like an enchanted lake with variegated waves. The apple-trees swam in a rosy, and the pomegranates in a dark-red, sea of blossom; the poplars looked golden-yellow, and the pear-trees white with snowy bloom, and the waving tips of the plum-trees were radiant in brazen green. In the midst rose the rock like a lighted cupola, wreathed with fiery roses, on whose top old lavender bushes formed a thicket.
"Superb!" cried Timar, enchanted with the landscape outspread before him.
"You should see the rock in summer, when the yellow stonecrop is in bloom," exclaimed Noémi, eagerly; "it looks as if it had on a golden robe. The lavender blossom makes a great blue crown for its head."
"I will come and see it," said Timar.
"Really?" The girl stretched out her hand to him joyously, and Michael fell a warm pressure such as no woman's hand had ever given him in his life. And then Noémi leaned her head on Therese's shoulder, and threw her arm round her mother's neck. All nature was under the spell of deep repose undisturbed by any human sound. Only the monotonous chorus of the frogs enlivened the deep shadows of the night. The sky offered a curious spectacle; half was blue, and the other opal green. There are two sides even to happiness.
"Do you hear what the frogs are saying?" whispered Noémi to her mother—"'Oh, how dear you are, how sweet!' They say that all night long—'Oh, you darling, you sweet!'" and she kissed Therese at every word.