In old times the street had had an evil name, now it possessed only a pitiful one.
It was half after nine when Gretchen and the vintner picked their way over cobbles pitted here and there with mud-holes.

They were arm in arm, and they laughed when they stumbled, laughed lightly, as youth always laughs when in love.
"Only a little farther," said Gretchen, for the vintner had never before passed over this way.
"Long as it is and crooked, Heaven knows it is short enough!" He encircled her with his arms and kissed her.

"I love you! I love you!" he said.
Gretchen was penetrated with rapture, for her ears, sharp with love and the eternal doubting of man, knew that falsehood could not lurk in such music.

This handsome boy loved her.

Buffeted as she had been, she could separate the false from the true.