"Yes, it is very strange how I once fell in love with a girl after she had been dead for seven years. When I first became acquainted with little Very, I was extremely pleased with her. For three days I was deeply interested in her, and took the greatest pleasure in all that she did and said, and in every expression of her piquant, exquisite self, without being in the least sentimentally inclined. Nor was I indeed moved to any extravagant grief when I learned, some months later, that she had suddenly died in consequence of a nervous fever. I forgot her entirely, and I am sure that for years I never thought once about her.
"Seven years had passed away, and I found myself in Potsdam, determined to enjoy the whole beautiful summer in undisturbed solitude. I did not associate with any one; my only company was the statues which are in the garden of Sans Souci.
"It happened one day that certain features, and a strangely winsome voice and gesture, suddenly recurred to me, without my being able to identify the person whom they characterised. Nothing is more annoying than such stumbling about among old memories, and I was therefore surprised as with joy when I, after a few days, all at once recalled little Very, and found that it was her charming and forgotten form which had
