“You look deep in thought,” she said.

“I suppose I was,” Matthew said, smiling.

“What about?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” sighed Matthew, “about—well, about all of you, I suppose, and this place. It’s so different here, so peaceful. And—you are different too. I don’t mean just you, but your father and mother too.”

“Good different or bad different?”

“Oh, good different!”

“Whew!”

They were silent a few moments.

“Anything you’d want to talk about?” asked Sabina.

“I don’t know—maybe. It’s just that there’s nothing specific that I’m thinking, just… like I said, that there’s something different here.”

“And you want to know what it is?” said Sabina.

“I don’t know, maybe that’s it. I don’t want to leave here puzzled about something that was right in front of my nose.”

“Feel like a walk?” asked Sabina.

“Sure.”

“Then let’s go down into the garden.”

After their playful excursion through the cellar of the house, this afternoon’s stroll was much different in tone—quieter and more thoughtful.

Two playful children had scampered through the hidden passageway pretending dangerous mysteries and adventures. Now two young adults, in their own ways seeking meaning both to life and to this new friendship suddenly forming between them, found themselves walking side by side, saying little, but each full of many thoughts. The day was a warm one, and they walked slowly down the hill, Sabina steadying him as they descended the stairs.

At length they passed under the stone arch and into Der Frühlingsgarten.

26 Mystery of the Kingdom

26

Mystery of the Kingdom

Baron von Dortmann found his daughter and their new young friend an hour later in the rose garden.

An inner prompting had led him here, and the moment he saw the looks on their two faces, he knew why the urging of the Spirit had come to him.

They sat silent, obviously deep in thought.

The baron sensed he had walked into the midst of an important conversation. The very air tingled with a stillness he recognized immediately as the presence of God. Gliding across the ground softly, as if the garden itself were a chapel, which in truth it was, he took a seat nearby and prayerfully waited.

Several minutes passed.

It was Sabina who broke the holy hush.

“I was just telling Matthew,” she said softly, “what our faith in God means to us, Papa.”

“Ah,” he murmured with a smile, “I wish I had heard what you told him.”

“Why, Papa? You know well enough what I would say.”

“It is always uplifting to hear it from another’s lips. And every time we talk of the things of God, it seems some new truth is revealed.”

Both were quiet again. Time was plentiful for such things. Discussions of this nature could not be rushed.