"And why didn't you wake me up?"
"Because you needed sleep. In one hour we are going home again."
Roland turned defiantly away; but while Eric was talking to him with great earnestness, he turned his face towards him at last, and on his long eyelashes stood big tears.
"What tears will those eyes one day shed?" said Eric to himself.
The carriage in which Doctor Fritz and his child had left came back. The coachman brought still another greeting from Lilian to Roland. The horses were not taken out, but fed in harness, and soon Eric and Roland were journeying homewards.
CHAPTER VI.
THE WORLD A MASQUERADE.
If romantic affliction manifests itself in a pale face, a feeling of loathing, obstinacy, and hatred of one's neighbor and of everything, then had Roland experienced a genuine romantic affliction. He sat near Eric in the carriage, and shut his eyes so as to see nothing but what was going on in his own imagination; he pressed his lips hard together, pale and trembling, determined not to say a word.
Am I a child still, he asked himself, that can be knocked about hither and thither, that must obey and ask for no reason? Why didn't Eric give a reason for his returning so suddenly? Why did Knopf, with a triumphant smile, tell me that he didn't wake me on purpose? Then it flashed upon him that Knopf had taken upon himself the responsibility that Eric had assumed, and he might have thought that it would be better for Roland to be angry with an absent one, than with him in whose hands he had to remain. In the meanwhile Roland glanced over towards Eric, to see whether he wasn't on the point of beginning to explain everything to him; but Eric was silent; he had also shut his eyes.
In the bright day, through a landscape full of life, they both rode on wrapt in their own reveries.