“But a count is more real.”

“And you prefer reality.”

“If there is going to be any permanency there must be reality.”

“My practical Lenchen, you know I’m obsessed by you.”

“Are you?”

“Your smile is radiant. You know I am as you are with me. I make no conditions.”

“Conditions?”

“You understand, Lenchen. If we had made our vows before a priest you would not have said ” Go back”. You would have said ” Go on”; and your eagerness would have equalled my own. Confess it. You don’t hide your feelings one bit. I know what you are thinking all the time. It’s there in your face your lovely young face. I know every detail.

I have dreamed of it every night and seen it every day since I found you in the forest. I love you, Lenchen, and you love me, and love like ours must be fulfilled. That is why we shall make our vows before the priest and then you will have no fears. You will be free to love. You will not see Aunt Caroline in your mind’s eye raising shocked hands; there will be no worrying about nuns or your cousin . nothing but us and that’s how I wish it to be. “

“You are asking me to marry you?”

“And what do you say?”

I did not have to answer. As I said, I betrayed myself.

“Tomorrow,” I said.

“How can it be tomorrow? People don’t marry like that.”

Here they could, he told me. He would arrange it. If he commanded a priest to marry him that priest would obey him. It would be a simple ceremony. The priest would come into the house, either this or the hunting lodge. It had been done before. I could safely leave everything to him.

I was bemused. I could not get rid of the idea that I was in the company of a supernatural being. Perhaps that’s how it always is when one is in love. The loved one is unique, of course, but more than that, perfect. Everything had changed; the whole world seemed to be mad with joy; the birds sang more joyously; the grass was greener, the flowers more beautiful; the sun shone with a new warmth; and the moon, honey-coloured, lying a little on its side still almost full, wise and benign to lovers-seemed to be laughing because Helena Trant loved Count Lokenberg and all difficulties were to be swept aside by the priest before whom they were to make their vows to love and cherish until death parted them.

“But how is it possible?” I asked Ilse and Ernst when he dined with us that night.

“Surely marriages cannot be arranged like that?”

“Ours is a simple ceremony,” explained Ilse.

“It is often performed in the house of the bride or the bridegroom, if that is more convenient. The Count is a man of great power in these parts.”

A man of great power! I was fully aware of that. Ilse spoke his name with reverence.

“It seems so sudden,” I said, without any real protest and not really wanting to enquire too deeply into the ethics of the matter because I only wanted to be assured that the marriage could take place.

Ilse brought up hot milk when I was in bed; she seemed to think it necessary to cos set me a little. All I wanted was to be alone to think of this wonderful thing which had happened to me.

A message came from the Count in the early morning. The marriage was to be celebrated at the hunting lodge. He had the priest waiting there. Ilse and Ernst were to drive me over. It was a three hours’ drive but they made no difficulty about it; they seemed somewhat overawed by him. His name was not Siegfried but Maximilian, in fact. I had laughed when he told me.

“It sounds like one of the Holy Roman Emperors.”

’”” hy shouldn’`t it? ” he demanded.

“That’s what it is. Don’t you think I’m worthy to be named after such people? “

“It suits you admirably,” I told him.

“I could never call you Max. It doesn’`t fit you. Maximilian, you see, is rather like Siegfried in a way. It suggests a leader.”

“Maximilian!” I said his name to myself a hundred times that day. I kept telling Ilse that I seemed to be living in a dream; I was afraid that I would wake up to discover that I had imagined everything. Ilse laughed at me.

“You are bemused,” she said.

Then I told her how I had been lost in the mist and how Maximilian seemed like some sort of god, quite unreal, but I didn’`t go into details about that night in the forest and how the handle of my door had turned and the presence of Hildegarde had made all the difference.

I packed my case and we set out for the hunting lodge. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when we reached it. There was a grove of firs quite near which I remembered vaguely noticing on the morning when Hildegarde had taken me back to the Damenstift. We came to the two stone posts on either side of the gate; and as we drove through them Fsaw Maximilian on the steps under the porch.

He came towards us hurriedly: and my heart leaped with joy at the sight of him, as I believed it always would at the sight of him for the rest of my life.

“I expected you half an hour before,” he said reproachfully.

Ilse replied meekly that we had left in good time.

He took my hand and his eyes gleamed as they swept over me; I was so happy because of his impatience.

What happened next was like a dream, which made it easy afterwards for me to wonder whether that was what it really had been.

The hall had been arranged to look rather like a chapel and waiting there was a man whose black garb proclaimed him to be a priest.

“There is no point in delay,” said Maximilian.

I said I would like to comb my hair and change my dress before I was married.

Maximilian looked at me in tender exasperation but I was allowed my own way and soon Hildegarde was taking me up to the room I remembered so well where I had spent that night so long ago.

I said: “Hildegarde, how good it is to see you again.”

She smiled but she did not appear to be very happy about our meeting. She had a habit of shaking her head so that she looked like some prophet of evil. At least that was the impression I had. I was too excited to think much about her, though. There I was in that room with the window looking out on the pine trees, and it seemed filled with a faintly resinous odour which I never failed to associate with that room in the hunting lodge, and that feeling of almost unbearable excitement which I experienced on that other occasion and which I was to find could only be inspired by one man in the whole of life.

Alone I washed and took a dress from my bag. It was slightly crumpled, but it was my best dress; it was of a green silky material with a monk’s collar of velvet of a slightly darker shade of green. Not exactly a wedding dress but more fitting for the occasion than the blouse and skirt in which I had travelled.

I looked into the cupboard and there was the blue velvet robe which I had worn that night.

I went downstairs where they were waiting for me.

Maximilian took my hand and led me to the priest who was standing before a table which had an embroidered cloth on it and candles in tall alabaster sticks.

The service was in German and brief. Maximilian swore to love and cherish me as I did him and he placed on my finger a plain gold ring which was just a little too big for it.

The service was over. I was the wife of Maximilian, Count Lokenberg.

It was evening and we supped as we had on that other occasion; but how different was this. I wore the blue velvet robe and my hair loose and I can say without reservation that I have never known such complete happiness as I did on that night. I could revel in my happiness with no fears that I would be missed. Everything seemed right and natural and it did not occur to me that there could be anything strange about this until afterwards.

We talked; we touched hands across the table; his eyes never left me; they seemed to scorch me with the intensity of their passion. I was bewildered and ignorant but I knew that I was on the threshold of the greatest adventure of my life.

Together we mounted the stairs to the bridal chamber which had been prepared for us.

I shall never forget it; nor any moment of that night It was the memory of this which afterwards, I believed, helped me retain my sanity; an inexperienced girl could not have imagined such a night; how could she have imagined Maximilian the lover if she had never experienced loving before?

When I awoke to find him beside me I lay very still for a long time thinking of this wonderful thing that had happened to me, and tears slowly started to fall down my cheeks.

He awoke to see them.

I told him they were tears of happiness and wonder because I had never known there could be anything in the world like marriage to him.

He kissed them away and we lay quietly for a while; then we were gay again.

What can I say of those days? Summer days in which so much happened and which seemed so brief. He said he would teach me to ride, for I had never done anything but amble about on a pony. Riding was not one of the accomplishments the nuns had thought necessary to teach. I was a good pupil, being determined to excel at everything in his eyes. In the afternoons we walked in the forest; we lay under the trees in a close embrace; he talked of his love for me and I of mine for him; that subject seemed to absorb us both.

But I must know more, I told him. The honeymoon would be over. I would go to his home. I wanted to know what would be expected of me there.

“I am the only one who is allowed to expect anything of you,” he parried.

“Of course. Sir Count. Yet presumably you have a family.”

“I have a family,” he said.

“And what of them?”

“They will need to be prepared for you.”

“Had they intended you to marry someone of their choice?”

“But of course. That is the way with families.”

“And they will not be pleased that you have married a girl you found in the mist.”

“It is only important that I should be pleased and I am.”

“Thank you,” I said flippantly.

“I’m glad I give satisfaction.”

“Complete and utter satisfaction.”

“So you do not regret?”

He held me hungrily against him then and his embrace was as painful as I had found it before, but there was always an ecstasy in the pain.

“I shall never regret.”

“But I must prepare myself for your family.”

“When the time is ripe you’ll meet them.”

“It is not ripe yet?”

“Hardly. They know nothing about you.”

“Whom do we have to placate?”

“Too many to enumerate.”

“So it is a large family and your father is an ogre. Or is it your mother?”

“She would be an ogress, wouldn’`t she? The feminine, you know.”

“How meticulous you have become.”

“Now that I have an English wife I must master the language.”

“You are already a master.”

“In some respects, yes. In language not entirely.”

I began to discover that whenever I tried to talk of his family the talk took a flippant turn. He did not wish to talk of it and for those first few days, which I wanted to be perfect, I did not insist.

I knew that he came of a noble family; his father, whom he mentioned briefly, would probably have wished to arrange a marriage for him after the manner of noble families, and it would be a shock for him to learn that we were married. Naturally we would have to wait until he had warned them and the time, as Maximilian said, was ripe.

So we joked and laughed and made love and that was enough for me.

He told me stories of the forest in which the legends of the past played a great part. I learned more of the mischievous tricks of Loke and the amazing exploits of Thor with his hammer. There was only Hildegarde to wait on us and cook for us and Hans to manage the horses apart from those two we were alone in our enchanted world.

On the second day I went into one of the rooms and opening the cupboard found a lot of clothes; I knew that the white silk nightdress which I had been given on my first visit to the lodge had come from this store.

Why, I asked myself, were they kept here?

I asked Hildegarde to whom the clothes belonged and she shrugged her shoulders and pretended not to understand my German, which was absurd because I was fluent.

That night when we lay together in the big bed I said:

“Whose are the clothes in the blue room cupboards?”