"Have I ever said that the task would be easy?" he asked. "It is hard enough, harder than I could have believed, but not impossible. With this shy avoidance of him, you will certainly attain nothing. You must grapple with the foe; he is so strongly mailed that he can only be taken by storm."
"I cannot!" cried Frida passionately. "I tell you that no voice within me speaks for him, and if I can neither give nor receive love, what shall I do here? Steal my way into a home and fortune. You cannot wish that, and if you did, I would refuse both, were they offered to me with the heartless indifference with which he permitted me a refuge in his house."
With the last words she sprang from her seat. Gustave quietly drew her down again.
"Now you are getting beyond all bounds, and the end will be an obstinate refusal. If I did not know from whom you take that wilful obstinacy, that passionate temper which lies under all your outward reserve, I would give you another sort of lecture. But these faults are hereditary, it is no use fighting against them."
The girl seized his hand and held it in both her own, as she entreated--
"Let me away, let me go home again, I beg, I beg! What does it matter if I am poor. I can work. I am young, and you will not desert me. Thousands are in the same position, and must struggle with life themselves. I will rather a thousand times do that than beg for a recognition which is withheld from me. I only followed your wishes, when you brought me to your brother; I need neither him nor his riches."
"But he needs you," said Gustave impressively. "And he needs your love more than you believe."
The girl's lips trembled with a bitter smile.
"There you are certainly wrong! I know little of the world or of men; but I know very well that Mr. Sandow neither needs nor wishes for love. He loves nothing in the world, not Jessie, who has grown up under his eyes almost like a daughter of his own; not you, his own brother. I have seen only too plainly how far he is from you both. He knows nothing but the desire for wealth, for gain, and yet he is rich enough. Is it true, really true, that he is connected with this Jenkins, that such a man belongs to his friends?"
"Child, you understand nothing about that," said Gustave, evasively. "Whoever, like my brother, has seen all the hopes of his life shattered, whose every blessing has become a curse, every pleasure a disappointment, either sinks utterly under such a catastrophe, or he leaves his former self entirely behind, and goes on his way another man. I know what he was twelve years ago, and what was then living in him cannot be quite dead. You shall awaken it, you shall at all events try, and that is why I have brought you here."