in the event, their marriage and honeymoon end up taking place near gainesville, florida, in the united states, thanks to the intervention of an american acquaintance. while swimming in a river together with alan, käthe is frightened by what seems to her the figure of a drowned girl, though alan reassures her that it is only a log. her playful sensuality overwhelms alan, continuing to captivate him and their entire social circle after their return home to run his family's ceramics shop. käthe discovers, at an auction, a valuable ceramic figurine of "the girl in a swing" – one of only three known such figurines – which promises to bring wealth to the couple. in a haunting episode in which alan may or may not be in trance, he arrives home to find käthe naked on the swing in the yard of their property, and as they make love on the lawn, undergoes a transcendent experience.