Not entirely had Albrecht and Erna lost the old fashion of reading and of talking together, although after the coming of Count Stephen and yet more after Herr von Zimmern had returned to the castle, so greatly was the time taken up with the chase and with jocund sports and with feasting, that there was little space in which to carry on the former studies. One morning when the rain was beating against the castle casements and the spirits of the storm were shrieking over the forest, they sat together in a chamber, and talked of the things which now were of chief interest to the husband.

"I cannot tell how it hath chanced," Albrecht said, "that we read so little together now."

"In the long winter there will be time enough for that," Erna answered. "Thou wouldst not have me like a clerk that cannot get his nose clear of a book. In sooth, I might as well be a nun at once and done with it."

Her husband looked at her in troubled silence a moment.

"Meseemeth, sweetheart," he said wistfully, "that I have made thee like to that which I was myself when first I came to thee out of the wood."

"And meseemeth, certes," she answered, with a faint touch of scorn in her tone, "that I have made thee like to that which I was when thou camest. I was but a dull brooder over pious scrolls, and not in the least did I know what life meant."

"And what does life mean to thee now?" he asked.

"That thou needest not to ask, for of a surety thou knewest when thou didst come to Rittenberg."

"But tell me, sweetheart."

"Life means delight; it is to be glad and jocund. To be sad and moping is to be dead," Erna cried impulsively. "Life is the chase and the dance and the feast; it is joy. Life is to-day, and not to-morrow; life is to do, not to wait; it is to rejoice, not to mourn. Callest thou that life which mews itself up in a cell like the dungeon of a felon, and flickers out like a candle in the dark? I trow that that is not life; it is only the poor, pale shadow of it."

"That is life as thou sayest," Albrecht returned, "that rejoices, and that takes delight in the chase and the feast and the dance; but even the beasts of the forest and the nixies and the kobolds can share all of these things. Surely thou dost not count this the whole of life?"

"Not the whole; no. Yet it is all that one can be sure of finding pleasure in; all that—"

"Nay," Albrecht interrupted softly; "since thou thyself hast taught me that man has other within him than the sense of the beasts and the wood-folk in the forest yonder, thou shalt not now belie thyself by putting thy kind on a level with the brutes. It is to foster the spirit which he alone of all living beings hath, that man should make his cumber, rather than to feed upon the delights of the body."

"Beshrew me," cried Erna, "but thou talkest as if I had indeed taken thee in hand to instruct thee as a master teacheth a pupil."

"It can scarce be," he responded, "that two live together, the more if they love each the other, without that they do teach and mould each the other. Thou hast in sooth instructed me in much more than thou knowest, sweetheart; and I would that I had as well influenced thee as thou hast me. Of a truth our lives now are that which we have made each other; and it behooveth us to look to it well that it be the life of the soul rather than of the body, which engageth us."

"In good sooth," Erna laughed back mockingly, "now thou talkest like a priest. Father Christopher shall give thee his gown, and thou shalt be sent to preach to the Huns and the Saxons in the north."

Albrecht cast down his eyes and sighed so heavily that Erna put her hand upon his arm and added coaxingly:

"Nay, dear heart, thou shalt not be vexed ............