'And your Highness?' he gasped.
'My Highness is running away,' replied Otto, 'straight for the frontier.'
'Leaving Grunewald?' cried the man. 'Your father's son? It's not to be permitted!'
'Do you arrest us, friend?' asked Otto, smiling.
'Arrest you? I?' exclaimed the man. 'For what does your Highness take me? Why, sir, I make sure there is not a man in Grunewald would lay hands upon you.'
'O, many, many,' said the Prince; 'but from you, who were bold with me in my greatness, I should even look for aid in my distress.'
The miller became the colour of beetroot. 'You may say so indeed,' said he. 'And meanwhile, will you and your lady step into my house.'
'We have not time for that,' replied the Prince; 'but if you would oblige us with a cup of wine without here, you will give a pleasure and a service, both in one.'
The miller once more coloured to the nape. He hastened to bring forth wine in a pitcher and three bright crystal tumblers. 'Your Highness must not suppose,' he said, as he filled them, 'that I am an habitual drinker. The time when I had the misfortune to encounter you, I was a trifle overtaken, I allow; but a more sober man than I am in my ordinary, I do not know where you are to look for; and even this glass that I drink to you (and to the lady) is quite an unusual recreation.'
The wine was drunk with due rustic courtesies; and then, refusing further hospitality, Otto and Seraphina once more proceeded to descend the glen, which now began to open and to be invaded by the taller trees.
'I owed that man a reparation,' said the Prince; 'for when we met I was in the wrong and put a sore affront upon him. I judge by myself, perhaps; but I begin to think that no one is the better for a humiliation.'
'But some have to be taught so,' she replied.
'Well, well,' he said, with a painful embarrassment. 'Well, well. But let us think of safety. My miller is all very good, but I do not pin my faith to him. To follow down this stream will bring us, but after innumerable windings, to my house. Here, up this glade, there lies a cross-cut - the world's end for solitude - the very deer scarce visit it. Are you too tired, or could you pass that way?'
'Choose the path, Otto. I will follow you,' she said.
'No,' he replied, with a singular imbecility of manner and appearance, 'but I meant the path was rough. It lies, all the way, by glade and dingle, and the dingles are both deep and thorny.'
'Lead on,' she said. 'Are you not Otto the Hunter?'
They had now burst across a veil of underwood, and were come into a lawn among the forest, very green and innocent, and solemnly surrounded by trees. Otto paused on the margin, looking about him with delight; then his glance returned to Seraphina, as she stood framed in that silvan pleasantness and looking at her husband with undecipherable eyes. A weakness both of the body and mind fell on him like the beginnings of sleep; the cords of his activity were relaxed, his eyes clung to her. 'Let us rest,' he said; and he made her sit down, and himself sat down beside her on the slope of an inconsiderable mound.
She sat with her eyes downcast, her slim hand dabbling in grass, like a maid waiting for love's summons. The sound of the wind in the forest swelled and sank, and drew near them with a running rush, and died away and away in the distance into fainting whispers. Nearer hand, a bird out of the deep covert uttered broken and anxious notes. All this seemed but a halting prelude to speech. To Otto it seemed as if the whole frame of nature were waiting for his words; and yet his pride kept him silent. The longer he watched that slender and pale hand plucking at the grasses, the harder and rougher grew the fight between pride and its kindly adversary.
'Seraphina,' he said at last, 'it is right you should know one thing: I never . . .' He was about to say 'doubted you,' but was that true? And, if true, was it generous to speak of it? Silence succeeded.
'I pray you, tell it me,' she said; 'tell it me, in pity.'
'I mean only this,' he resumed, 'that I understand all, and do not blame you.