"Where then?" interposed Reinhold impatiently. "Italy is the school of all art and artists. There alone could I complete the meagre, defective study to which circumstances confined me. Can you not understand that?"
"No," said the Captain, somewhat coldly. "I do not see the necessity that a beginner should go at once to the higher school. You can find opportunity enough for study here; most of our talented men have had to struggle and work for years before Italy at last crowned their work. Supposing, however, you carry out your plan, what is to become of your wife and child in the meanwhile? Do you intend to take them with you?"
"Ella?" cried the young man, in an almost contemptuous voice. "That would be the most certain method of rendering my success impossible. Do you think, that in the first step I take towards freedom, I could drag the whole chain of domestic misery with me?"
A slight frown was perceptible between Hugo's eyes--
"That sounds very hard, Reinhold," he answered.
"Is it my fault, that I am at last conscious of the truth?" growled Reinhold. "My wife cannot raise herself above the sphere of cooking and household management. It is not her fault, I know, but it is not therefore any less the misfortune of my life."
"Ella's incapacity, certainly seems settled as a sort of dogma in the family," remarked the Captain quietly. "You believe in it blindly, like the rest. Have you ever given yourself the trouble to find out if this accepted fact be really infallible?"
Reinhold shrugged his shoulders--
"I think it would be unnecessary in this case. But in none can there be a question of my taking Ella with me. Naturally she will remain with the child in her parents' house until I return."
"Until you return--and if that do not happen?"