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. I understand how the brave woman must look down on the weak man. I think you were wrong in some things; but I have tried to understand it, and I do. I do not need to forget or to forgive, Seraphina, for I have understood.'
`I know what I have done,' she said. `I am not so weak that I can be deceived with kind speeches. I know what I have been -- I see myself.
I am not worth your anger, how much less to be forgiven! In all this downfall and misery, I see only me and you: you, as you have been always; me, as I was -- me, above all! O yes, I see myself: and what can I think?'
`Ah, then, let us reverse the parts!' said Otto. `It is ourselves we cannot forgive, when we deny forgiveness to another -- so a friend told me last night. On these terms, Seraphina, you see how generously I have forgiven myself. But am not I to be forgiven? Come, then, forgive yourself -- and me.'
She did not answer in words, but reached out her hand to him quickly.
He took it; and as the smooth fingers settled and nestled in his, love ran to and fro between them in tender and transforming currents.
`Seraphina,' he cried, `O, forget the past! Let me serve and help you; let me be your servant; it is enough for me to serve you and to be near you; let me be near you, dear -- do not send me away.' He hurried his pleading like the speech of a frightened child. `It is not love,' he went on; `I do not ask for love; my love is enough ...'
`Otto!' she said, as if in pain.
He looked up into her face. It was wrung with the very ecstasy of tenderness and anguish; on her features, and most of all in her changed eyes, there shone the very light of love.
`Seraphina?' he cried aloud, and with a sudden, tuneless voice, `Seraphina?'
`Look round you at this glade,' she cried, `and where the leaves are coming on young trees, and the flowers begin to blossom. This is where we meet, meet for the first time; it is so much better to forget and to be born again. O what a pit there is for sins -- God's mercy, man's oblivion!'
`Seraphina,' he said, `let it be so, indeed; let all that was be merely the abuse of dreaming; let me begin again, a stranger. I have dreamed, in a long dream, that I adored a girl unkind and beautiful; in all things my superior, but still cold, like ice. And again I dreamed, and thought she changed and melted, glowed and turned to me. And I -- who had no merit but a love, slavish and unerect -- lay close, and durst not move for fear of waking.'
`Lie close,' she said, with a deep thrill of speech.
So they spake in the spring woods; and meanwhile, in Mittwalden Rath-haus, the Republic was declared.