CHAPTER VII.
[IN THE LAND OF THE LOTUS-FLOWERS.]
Blanden recovered slowly; several relapses occurred, weeks elapsed before he might take his drive with Giulia.
The softened mood of the convalescent was in harmony with the wild spring breeze which was wafted towards them from wood and meadow. The thawing wind had melted the ice on the Pregel, it floated to the sea, and the breezes of spring swept through the air.
They descended from the carriage in the wood, they gathered the last snow drops, the first anemones.
"I love these flowers," said Blanden, "the pretty anemones cannot grow in gloom, they only flourish in places where a fresh breath of air greets them, where the wind plays with their delicate coronets of blossom. Free air, fresh air, breath of life, how I have ever longed for you! I feel myself related to these lovely flowers--and if a soul dwells in these tiny anemones, it is one thirsting after freedom."
Giulia had learned to enter entirely into Blanden's thoughts and feelings, the quiet, familiar intercourse in his sick room had given her leisure to become quite absorbed in his richly stored mind.
Daily she felt more that she could not live without him, and equally so that she owed him her whole life; again and again she told herself that it could be no sin if she made him happy, so long as it was permitted by the fate which she defied. He did not see the sword above her head, she saw it with internal trembling, and yet--she defied it, even if it might fall upon her.
How devoutly she listened to his tales of the land of the lotus-flowers! Ah, how vast was the world, how rich the knowledge of it, how varying the habits! Giulia was almost alarmed when Blanden told her of the woman at Luckwardie, on the hills of the Himalaya, high above the Pomona--every woman there belongs to four brothers.
She lost herself completely in the breath of the fairy tale and flowery land, that is so lovely in its dreams and so vast in its thoughts. One after another Blanden unrolled these magically illuminated worlds of thought conceived by silent thinkers in penitents' garb and hermits' huts. Is the world but the veil, the dream, the existence?--why then is life full of nervous dread? Giulia felt herself strengthened by that dream-world of the Bast, everything painful and impious faded away in that mild, softening twilight.