The afternoon was beautifully still and warm when the time came for me to go down the hill. I ran rather than walked along the path, which passed cottages and hedges, and through the little lane between the garden walls that opened to the glorious, bright Elbe valley. But as every stride brought me nearer to my fate, and altogether I had only a short distance to go, my pace slackened, and I came to a complete standstill when I saw the lower stone-step leading from the narrow meadow up to the cottage. The smallest movement would now have enabled me to see its corner, with the projecting summer-house appearing behind the foliage of a fruit tree in the neighbouring garden. It was as if somebody had caught hold of my throat, and my legs seemed to have disappeared from under me.
There was the sunlit lime wall under the shining tiles, the vine creeper, the shadow projected by the tree, enveloping the summer-house, where the grey-green table-cloth had a crooked sun-streak of yellow—I looked for a long time at this streak so that the critical moment might be delayed; some leaves of the fruit tree hid the corner of the table-cloth, and over them came the steam of the coffee-machine. A white-bearded man I had already discovered, now also the old lady, but no one else was there.
I continued to stare, hoping that I might after all be able to see her. In spite of the intense heat of the sun I shivered as if I was standing in an evening mist, but I
