"Ah! I can understand that, for this is the loveliest spot in Thuringia. How then can you so easily endure the thought of leaving it again?"
"On the contrary, I shall not find it at all easy; but my father has taught me that our pleasures must yield to our necessities, and I understand perfectly that it must be so. I confess that I cannot easily comprehend how one can give up what is so pleasant except at the command of necessity."
"Ah! that was aimed at me. You cannot conceive how a man can voluntarily hide himself in the pyramids when he might breathe the cool, sunny air of Thuringia."
Elizabeth felt a burning blush suffuse her cheeks. Herr von Walde had humourously alluded here to the jesting conversation that she had had with her uncle, to which he had been an involuntary listener.
"If I should attempt to explain this to you I should fail, for you seem to me to find all that you look for in your home circle," he said after a moment's silence. He had leaned forward and was mechanically drawing figures with his riding-whip upon the ground at his feet. He spoke in those deep tones which always appealed powerfully to Elizabeth's mind. "But there is a time for some of us," he continued, "when we rush out into the world, to forget in its whirl and novelty that we cannot find happiness at home. If a man cannot fill up a painful void in his existence, he can at least ignore it by devoting himself to science."
This, then, was the sore spot in his heart. He had not found the affection in his own home that he longed for, and that he had a right to claim and expect from a sister for whom he manifested always the purest and most self-sacrificing tenderness.
Elizabeth had comprehended this pain, even before she had seen Herr von Walde, and, at this moment, when he alluded to it so openly, she longed most fervently to console him. Words of sympathy hovered upon her lips, but she was possessed suddenly by an unconquerable shyness which prevented her from speaking; and as she glanced up at him and marked the firm lines of his profile and his brow which was so proud and commanding, while his voice sounded so gentle and melancholy, the embarrassing suspicion flashed upon her that he had forgotten for a moment who was sitting beside him; his aristocratic ideas would cause him bitterly to repent the moment when, under the influence of a sudden self-forgetfulness, he had revealed a glimpse of his sternly guarded consciousness to an insignificant girl. This thought dyed her cheeks again; she arose quickly and called Ernst. Herr von Walde turned in surprise, and for an instant his eyes rested searchingly upon her face; then he also arose, and, as if to confirm her suspicion, stood at once proudly calm and composed before her,—but she noticed for the first time that sad, gloomy expression between the eyebrows, which her father had spoken of, and which impressed her just as his voice had done.
"You are usually very quick to think,"—he said, evidently trying to give the conversation a gayer turn, and slowly walking along by Elizabeth's side,—she was going for Ernst who had not heard her call. "Before one has quite finished a sentence the answer is plainly ready on your lips. Your silence, therefore, at this moment, tells me that I was quite right when I said that you would not understand me, because you have found all the happiness that you look for."
"The idea of happiness is so different with different people, that indeed I hardly know."
"We all have the same idea," he interrupted her; "it may still slumber in you."