When the Easter vacation came Reinhard journeyed home. On the morning after his arrival he went to see Elisabeth.

“How tall you’ve grown,” he said, as the pretty, slender girl advanced with a smile to meet him. She blushed, but made no reply; he had taken her hand in his own in greeting, and she tried to draw it gently away. He looked at her doubtingly, for never had she done that before; but now it was as if some strange thing was coming between them.

The same feeling remained, too, after he had been at home for some time and came to see her constantly day after day. When they sat alone together there ensued pauses in the conversation which distressed him, and which he anxiously did his best to avoid. In order to have a definite occupation during the holidays, he began to give Elisabeth some instruction in botany, in which he himself had been keenly interested during the early months of his university career.

Elisabeth, who was wont to follow him in all things and was moreover very quick to learn, willingly entered into the proposal. So now several times in the week they made excursions into the fields or the moors, and if by midday they brought home their green field-box full of plants and flowers, Reinhard would come again later in the day and share with Elisabeth what they had collected in common.

With this same object in view, he entered the room one afternoon while Elisabeth was standing by the window and sticking some fresh chick-weed in a gilded birdcage which he had not seen in the place before. In the cage was a canary, which was flapping its wings and shrilly chirruping as it pecked at Elisabeth’s fingers. Previously to this Reinhard’s bird had hung in that spot.

“Has my poor linnet changed into a goldfinch after its death?” he asked jovially.

“Linnets are not accustomed to do any such thing,” said Elizabeth’s mother, who sat spinning in her arm-chair. “Your friend Eric sent it this noon from his estate as a present for Elisabeth.”

“What estate?”

“Why, don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“That a month ago Eric took over his father’s second estate by the Immensee."

“But you have never said a word to me about it.”

“Well,” said the mother, “you haven’t yet made a single word of inquiry after your friend. He is a very nice, sensible young man.”

The mother went out of the room to make the coffee. Elisabeth had her back turned to Reinhard, and was still busy with the making of her little chick-weed bower.

“Please, just a little longer,” she said, “I’ll be done in a minute.”

As Reinhard did not answer, contrary to his wont, she turned round and faced him. In his eyes there was a sudden expression of trouble which she had never observed before in them.

“What is the matter with you, Reinhard?” she said, drawing nearer to him.

“With me?” he said, his thoughts far away and his eyes resting dreamily on hers.

“You look so sad.”

“Elisabeth,” he said, “I cannot bear that yellow bird.”

She looked at him in astonishment, without understanding his meaning. “You are so strange,” she said.

He took both her hands in his, and she let him keep them there. Her mother came back into the room shortly after; and after they had drunk their coffee she sat down at her spinning-wheel, while Reinhard and Elisabeth went off into the next room to arrange their plants.

Stamens were counted, leaves and blossoms carefully opened out, and two specimens of each sort were laid to dry between the pages of a large folio volume.

All was calm and still this sunny afternoon; the only sounds to be heard were the hum of the mother’s spinning-wheel in the next room, and now and then the subdued voice of Reinhard, as he named the orders of the families of the plants, and corrected Elisabeth’s awkward pronunciation of the Latin names.

“I am still short of that lily of the valley which I didn’t get last time,” said she, after the whole collection had been classified and arranged.

Reinhard pulled a little white vellum volume from his pocket. “Here is a spray of the lily of the valley for you,” he said, taking out a half-pressed bloom.

When Elisabeth saw the pages all covered with writing, she asked: “Have you been writing stories again?”

“These aren’t stories,” he answered, handing her the book.

The contents were all poems, and the majority of them at most filled one page. Elisabeth turned over the leaves one after another; she appeared to be reading the titles only. “When she was scolded by the teacher.” “When they lost their way in the woods.” “An Easter story.” “On her writing to me for the first time.” Thus ran most of the titles.

Reinhard fixed his eyes on her with a searching look, and as she kept turning over the leaves he saw that a gentle blush arose and gradually mantled over the whole of her sweet face. He would fain have looked into her eyes, but Elisabeth did not look up, and finally laid the book down before him without a word.

“Don’t give it back like that,” he said.

She took a brown spray out of the tin case. “I will put your favourite flower inside,” she said, giving back the book into his hands.

At length came the last day of the vacation and the morning of his departure. At her own request Elisabeth received permission from her mother to accompany her friend to the stage-coach, which had its station a few streets from their house.

When they passed out of the front door Reinhard gave her his arm, and thus he walked in silence side by side with the slender maiden. The nearer they came to their destination the more he felt as if he had something he must say to her before he bade her a long farewell, something on which all that was worthy and all that was sweet in his future life depended, and yet he could not formulate the saving word. In his anguish, he walked slower and slower.

“You’ll be too late,” she said; “it has already struck ten by St Mary’s clock.”

But he did not quicken his pace for all that. At last he stammered out:

“Elisabeth, you will not see me again for two whole years. Shall I be as dear to you as ever when I come back?”

She nodded, and looked affectionately into his face.

“I stood up for you too,” she said, after a pause.

“Me? And against whom had you to stand up for me?”

“Against my mother. We were talking about you a long time yesterday evening after you left. She thought you were not so nice now as you once were.”

Reinhard held his peace for a moment: then he took her hand in his, and looking gravely into her childish eyes, he said:

“I am still just as nice as I ever was; I would have you firmly believe that. Do you believe it, Elisabeth?”

“Yes,” she said.

He freed her hand and quickly walked with her through the last street. The nearer he felt the time of parting approach, the happier became the look on his face; he went almost too quickly for her.

“What is the matter with you, Reinhard?” she asked.

“I have a secret, a beautiful secret,” said Reinhard, looking at her with a light in his eyes. “When I come back again in two years’ time, then you shall know it.”

Meanwhile they had reached the stage-coach; they were only just in time. Once more Reinhard took her hand. “Farewell!” he said, “farewell, Elisabeth! Do not forget!”

She shook her head. “Farewell,” she said. Reinhard climbed up into the coach and the horses started. As the coach rumbled round the corner of the street he saw her dear form once more as she slowly wended her way home.