"Do you not know that you are mine, and I yours?"
She nodded slowly, while she gazed in front of her and pressed her lips together.
"And that you love me; don't you know that?"
Minna got up and embraced me tenderly.
"Yes, my beloved, that I know."
"Then there is nothing to doubt, not even as regards him. He knows you sufficiently to be sure that you would not submit to a marriage of convenience, and of me he knows that I am neither a duke nor a millionaire."
I spoke to her long and soothingly, while we were sitting on the little sofa with our arms round one another; it was so dark I could hardly see her. She seldom answered, and I doubted whether she really listened or whether her thoughts were completely wandering. Suddenly she pressed my hand and said—
"Let us go away from here, Harald! At once, to-morrow."
"Go away, but where to?"
"Out in the mountains, to Erzgebirge, to Blocksberg—anywhere!" And she laughed with the natural gaiety that was always ready to break out.
"Yes, but, Minna, would that be wise?"
"I dare do it. I have thought it all over—I have no relations for whose sake I need bother. I am my own mistress, and I dare."
"That is all very well, and I appreciate that you would in case of necessity ignore—ignore such ideas and formalities, but I think in this instance you ought to understand that your reputation is to me the most precious thing in the world, and I cannot see that it is a necessity."
"Indeed, indeed!" she exclaimed decidedly, almost violently. Whereupon she laid her lips to my ear and
