"'Time went on: at first I missed my companion dreadfully, I did not know what to do with myself on Sundays, and found out fully how much he had been to me. However, I gradually got accustomed to his absence, to going about again dressed like a doll, to being serenaded by the students who passed through the town, or to reading poems and love-letters which were thrown in to me through the window, but which I never answered. For my mother was pretty strict with me, and after my first Communion, I was never allowed to leave the house alone. I believe she was afraid that one of the mad Englishmen, who stared at me worst of all, would carry me off, or that the Rhine water-sprites would draw me down out of envy and spite. Now and then real wooers would make their appearance, very respectable people, quite able to support a wife. But they had a pretty reception! My father was not going to part with me on such easy terms; he would hear of nothing under a Count, as I overheard him telling my mother, or else a man so rich as to be able to lay down my weight in money. It was all one to me, the privilege that I enjoyed of being the beautiful Kate, and treated as the most remarkable and important person in our district quite satisfied me, and since the departure of Hans Lutz I did not so much as know that I had a heart.
"'He never wrote to me, never sent me a message. It was only seldom that I heard from his mother how well he was doing, how industrious he was, and how much he was praised by his instructors. I used to wonder that he never came over for a visit. The distance from Carlsruhe was not so great after all, and however sparing of his time or his money, he might, I thought, have made the effort if he cared about seeing me again.
"'But the most wonderful thing of all, and to me wholly incomprehensible, was that he did once come over, spent a whole long day with his parents, and seemed to think that there was nothing else to be seen in the neighbourhood. I never so much as got a distant glimpse of him, nor did he leave a single message for me. Naturally I was very much offended, and determined if I ever saw him again to make him rue it. A year or so later there came an opportunity of doing this. I was just seventeen years old, he, therefore, was two-and-twenty, when it was rumoured that he had passed through all the schools with great honour, and was now looking out for some post or other which he was sure to get. That he should in the first instance pay a visit to his parents, stood to reason, but he had not fixed the day and hour. I was, therefore, not a little startled one afternoon, when sitting with my sister in the wood behind the old castle and sketching the view,--for I, too, took drawing-lessons, though I had no particular talent--just when I was about to pronounce his name and to ask Lina if she knew the day of his return, I saw a tall, slender, dark young man emerge from the bushes, take off his hat, and prepare to go down the hill without a word. I knew him instantly; he had still his old face, only with the addition of a dark beard, and he was much better-looking. The marks of the small-pox had almost disappeared. "Good Heavens!" cried I springing from my seat, "it is you, Hans Lutz! How can you startle one so!" "I beg your pardon," he said, in a formal polite way, "I had no idea that I should be disturbing young ladies here; I will no longer intrude upon them," and therewith he again took off his hat, the abominable man, and went straight away as if he had only met an old woman picking sticks, and not the playfellow of his childhood, the paragon of beauty whom other people took long journeys to admire, and who had such a fine lecture to read him, too.
"'I do believe I should have burst into tears if I had been alone, but before Lina I restrained myself, only saying, "He has indeed grown haughty and rude," and tried to go on with my drawing. To no purpose. I could not put in another stroke, my eyes swam so in tears.
"'And in the midst of all my disappointment and vexation, the worst part of it was that I could not be angry with him, that I would have done anything to get a friendly look from him; and my shame at this weakness made me so thoroughly unhappy, that at that moment, spite of my much-extolled beauty, I seemed to myself the most wretched human creature in the whole world.
"'I could not go on keeping up appearances much longer, but threw my arms round my good sister's neck, and with many tears confessed to her how deeply hurt I was, and that I must find out the reason of his estrangement, or my heart would break. The kind soul comforted me as well as she could, and when evening came, helped me to invent a pretext to induce our mother to let us both go down together to the river, to the very place where in former days our little harbour used to be. There Lina left me alone, found out that she had something to do at Hans Lutz's home, and whispered into his ear that I was waiting outside under the willow, and had something to ask him. At first, as she told me afterwards, he had looked very gloomy, and left her in doubt as to what he would do. Then he seemed to relent, and a little later I saw him coming down the road straight towards me, and I do not yet know how I had courage to stand still and wait for him.
"'But at least I was rewarded for my courage. For he was by no means as chilling as before, he even gave me his hand and said, "It is very kind of you, Katharine, still to remember an old playfellow, and what is it you have to say to me?" "Nothing," I said, "only that I wanted to know what I had done to offend him, or whether anybody had been gossiping about me that he should treat me as if I was not worth a word or a look. That was all I asked to know, and then I would go away again immediately." Upon which he told me in his quiet way as if it did not signify to him in the least, that he had heard I had grown into a vain conceited little princess, held my head very high, did nothing but look in the glass, or let myself be stared at by foreign fools, and as he was not the man to come in to that, and had, indeed, other things to do than to be always swinging incense before such a Madonna, he thought I should have no loss of him, and that it would be better for us both if he kept out of my way.
"'All that he said to me, and still more the way in which he said it, hurt me so cruelly that I had not a word to answer, but burst into a flood of tears that I could not check, that got worse and worse, till I was shaken by such a convulsion of sobs that I thought I must have died on the spot. When he saw this, he was suddenly transformed; he embraced me, and in the tenderest voice said a thousand things that at first, owing to the confusion in my head, I only half understood. He told me he had behaved so rudely merely to guard against his own heart, that through all these years he had had no other thought but me, and had only kept away in order not quite to lose his senses, and that if it were true that I cared at all for him--well, you can imagine the rest! That evening we pledged ourselves to live only for each other, and when at last Lina came and drew me away, that our parents need not scold, I had quite forgotten that I was the fair Kate, and only thought that a happier Kate was not to be found in all Rhineland, or anywhere under the sun.'
"When she had got so far, she rose and went to the door, as if to look after the child, who was quietly sitting on a garden-seat, and weaving her garland. When Kate turned round to us again, I noticed the traces of tears. Van Kuylen, however, did not seem to observe them; he had got hold of an old cork and was carving away at it, his cold pipe still in the corner of his mouth.
"'And how was it,' said I after a while, 'that fortune deserted you, and that what began so well had so melancholy an issue? I find it hard to believe that he was not true to you!'