spiritual defects. How plainly I still see before me those large, wide-spreading Reineclaude trees, crammed with fruit ripe to bursting, which covered the little hut. A little farther off was an apple-tree covered with blood-red fruit, and then a second with taffety white, and a third with velvety apples. From the open door of the hut one could see right along the overgrown path, which was bordered on[Pg 33] both sides by bowery vines. When the warm blood-red rays of summer pierced through the meshes of the foliage, it seemed as if every shadow was of green-gold. Far away on the banks of the Danube could be heard the delusive echoes from the military band in the "English Garden," whilst closer at hand the yellow-hammer piped, and a frog here and there croaked in the irrigating trenches. I was writing the hardest part of my romance—the love part, that most undiscoverable of all unknown worlds. One may write down a description of the marsh world from the imagination, but not a description of the world of love. If the heart has not already discovered it, the head can tell us nothing at all about it.

[Pg 33]

All at once the green-gold shadows were lit up by something bright. She was standing there in the door of my hut, dressed in a white frock, with a straw hat fastened to two blue ribbons hanging upon her arm, and her dishevelled locks floating down her shoulders. For a moment I fancied that the dream-shapes of my imagination had taken bodily form. Then her ringing peal of laughter assured me that a living person stood before me.

"How did you come here?"

"How? Why, by walking over the soft grass, of course."

"Alone?"

"Alone! Why not? Whom should I have brought with me, I should like to know? I suppose I may come to a neighbour's garden unattended?"

[Pg 34]It was quite true that our gardens were only about a hundred feet apart, lying one on each side of the common path, which ran right through the island.

[Pg 34]

"You don't seem to give me a very hearty reception," pouted she, as she entered my hut.

My head began to swim.

"On the contrary, I am overjoyed at the honour you do me, and I'll gather for you at once some of our princely plums."

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