"I have forgotten none of your words."
"I was wrong. You have been very different since. When I see you now and hear you talk I can hardly believe you are the same man who talked so frivolously about self-destruction. You looked strangely and your laugh was so bitter that it hurt me, but now you laugh from your heart, and you look so kind and sincere that I cannot help having faith in you. I beg your pardon for what I said. You certainly are a good man, or Fritzchen would not be so fond of you. None but good men win the affection of children."
Egon's heart beat as he listened to her simple words. She was right; fourteen days had made another man of him. Formerly such praise from girlish lips would have excited his ridicule, now it delighted him. "I hope your opinion of to-day may prove as correct as was your former one," he said. "I am trying, at all events, to improve."
Lieschen looked up at him gratefully. "Yes, you shall advise me. To whom should I turn when I am at odds with myself? To my parents? Oh, I know how ready they are to help me, but upon this point they do not agree. To Albrecht? Never. He is not good. I never could trust him. But you wish me well,--I know you do,--and you will be frank with me."
Egon did not speak, but his eyes were more eloquent than words.
"You shall hear how I am at odds with myself," Lieschen went on. "It is about Bertha von Massenburg. My father wishes me to receive her affectionately, to let no word or look betray how indignant I am with her, with her sordid views, her odious conduct. My dear father is so gentle and kind, he cannot bear to think ill of any one. He does not believe in Bertha's low motives. It is easy for him to receive her kindly, but in me it would be hypocrisy. Must I be a hypocrite? Should not truth be our first consideration? Ought I to be false to myself out of conformity with conventional ideas of courtesy? Nothing makes me so indignant as falsehood, and now I am asked to act a falsehood myself. My mother thinks as I do, but she submits. In whatever my father seriously desires she always obeys him. He yields to her in all small matters, but when he has formed an opinion upon any important question my mother always conforms to it. I know that she is as indignant as I am about Bertha von Massenburg, but she never will allow it to be seen; my father's wish is her law, and it has always been mine, but now I am sure he is mistaken. Advise me what to do. What would you do if you were in my place?"
Egon's gaze was bent upon the ground. He did not dare to look into the clear eyes that were questioning his face. 'Nothing makes me so indignant as falsehood,' the girl had just said, and her words yet sounded in his ears. Was not his whole life at Castle Osternau a falsehood? She did not dream of the sentence she had passed upon him. She hated falsehood, and asked advice of him! He commanded his voice with difficulty, and, without lifting his eyes, said, "You wish to know what I should do? I cannot tell you. I do not know. It has always been my misfortune to yield to the impulse of the moment. How can I tell what that impulse might be?"
"Is that all you have to say? You have no advice to give me?"
"What ought I to say? Can I advise you to disobey your father? Should I be tempted to do so I might perhaps sin grievously, not only against Herr von Osternau, good and kind as he is, but against Fräulein von Massenburg. It is easy to pronounce a harsh judgment upon those who have not acted rightly according to our convictions, but what do we really know of their springs of action? How do you know that it has not cost Fräulein von Massenburg a bitter struggle to insist upon her union with Herr von Ernau, whom you call a miserable fellow, judging him no less harshly than you judge her? Do you know him at all except from the description of a man who is not acquainted with him? And if he is, as Herr von Sastrow says, at odds with life, do you know what has made him so? I can imagine a wretched man satiated from earliest childhood with every pleasure that money can procure, with no wish ungratified save that for affection, never having known the love of either father or mother, miserably lonely, surrounded by flatterers and parasites who feign friendship for the sake of his riches, but who care nothing for him in reality. Is it his fault if he has become disgusted with his fellow-men, if he is vain, blasé, dictatorial, destitute of self-control? How do you know that deep in the soul of the man whom you have condemned there do not slumber the sparks of nobler and truer sentiments, beneath the ashes of the ruin wrought by his ill-spent life? It needs but a breath, perhaps, to make this spark a flame, a breath of self-inspection or a breath of affection, and yet you condemn him. If he should judge himself as you judge him, the spark would surely die beneath the ashes, and he would be lost without hope of rescue."
Lieschen stared at the speaker in wonder. "How strangely you speak," she said, "exactly as if you knew Herr von Ernau! And how agitated you have become! you have grown quite pale. Oh, you must know Herr von Ernau, or you would not thus defend him."