She was silent, and her eyes sought the ground; she could not look into the grave intense face of the speaker and contradict the truth he uttered.
"And I clung to keeping my troth to the letter, all the more that my spirit was faithless to you——"
"Ah!—indeed?"
"Yes, Flora, I have struggled with my inclination as with a deadly foe." He sighed heavily. "From the first moment I have dealt cruelly with myself, and with the girl who inspired me with this invincible passion. I would not permit the slightest, the most innocent approach upon her part. I would not even endure in my room the flowers she had held in her hand and thoughtlessly forgotten. She liked to be in my house. I forbade her coming as if she had desired to fire my roof. I was coldly uncivil to her even while I looked into her face that was heaven to me——"
"Ah, yes, one can well conceive it. Divine to the eye of a physician,—round and healthy, pure white and red painted in strong colours by Nature herself." With these words the breathless listening figure awoke to life. "And you dare to tell me this? What! this naïve, innocent creature throws flowers into the rooms of the men whom she would ensnare——"
"Hush!" He raised his hand with an air of such command as silenced even those wayward lips. "Overwhelm me with reproaches, I shall not justify myself; but in defence of Kitty I am armed to the teeth. She never wittingly attracted me; she returned to Dresden with no knowledge of my heart or—of her own. Why she went you well know. Whilst from one quarter she was met by persuasions to contract a loveless marriage, from another she was informed that the rooms which she occupied were needed for the comfort of a high-born guest. I was witness to this uncivil treatment, and almost forgot myself so far as to remonstrate indignantly with the Frau President; yet when an indirect request was made to me to receive the unwelcome inmate in my house I had no room there for her; nay, more, an hour afterwards she was an involuntary auditor of my request to my aunt to break off all intercourse with her until I should have removed to L——. And she went, wounded to the core of her proud firm and yet gentle nature, and I was brutal nay wicked enough, for the sake of a false principle, for the sake of the idol of clay which represents certain ideas of honour, to persist in the monstrous lie which I tried to make credible to her, to myself, and to the world about me."
As if overpowered by his own description, he paused for some seconds. Flora threw herself upon the couch and clasped her head between her hands, as if she chose to hear no more; but he continued: "I pitilessly allowed her to go, and breathed again; now I should be better of this mental torture. Folly, folly! I did not see that at the moment she vanished from my sight a demon glided to my side and clutched my very heart-strings. It was not the cares of my profession that hollowed my cheeks and made me gloomy and taciturn in society,—incessant labor is my delight and steels my nerves and muscles,—it was longing, a longing that increased as the days went by."
He had left the window, and was pacing the room in evident agitation of mind, while Flora sat upright and tossed back the curls from her forehead.
"Upon Kitty's account?" she cried, with a bitter laugh. "Oh, if papa could only see now how just was the instinct that guided his first-born when she refused to call the miller's daughter mamma, and when she turned away in anger from his youngest born because she already had two real sisters and did not want a half-sister! And it is no false principle which you have hitherto adopted as your spring of action,—no! How many thousand 'monstrous lies' are maintained and rule men's actions for the sake of this principle!—and those who maintain them victoriously will be respected as honourable men forever——"
"I vowed to myself that during this decisive interview I would not allude to the past," he interrupted her, standing still, his voice trembling, but evidently determined to make an end of the matter, "yet you force me to refer to the scene between us which took place after the attack upon you in the forest. I then allowed my betrothed to tell me to my face that she hated me, or rather despised me, because untoward chance seemed to prevent my proving to be the celebrity to whom she had first plighted her troth. The following day I endured the unexampled transformation of this hatred into fond affection, in consequence of my title of Hofrath conferred upon me by the prince, and I silently suppressed my contempt and dragged on my chain, because I wished to be 'respected as an honourable man.' And I should have carried out the detestable falsehood if we two had been the only ones concerned in the matter, if the burden of a ruined existence had been mine alone to bear. I should like to summon these three human hearts for judgment before the bar of true morality; one pronounces the solemn 'yes' before the altar because she thereby ensures to herself a desirable worldly position, and the two others who have suddenly become conscious of the true sacred love that unites them,—who belong to each other although they may be as far asunder as the poles——"