"No, I don't," returned the miner, shortly, increasing his pace, and evidently desirous of breaking off the conversation.
"You cannot possibly understand it," declared Wilberg, with much self-satisfaction, "for you cannot, and never will, rise to that pure elevation of feeling of which only highly-cultivated minds are capable, that feeling which, without a hope, without a desire, can content itself with adoring in silence from afar. Or what do you think a man should do else, if he loves a woman who belongs to another?"
"Overcome his love," said Ulric, in a low voice, "or"----
"Or?"
"Strike the other man down."
Herr Wilberg beat a hasty retreat to the other side of the road, where he remained standing transfixed with horror.
"What brutality! What appalling principles! So you would seal your love by assault and murder? You are a man to be feared, Hartmann! And you can say such a thing as that with the tone, the look of .... Her ladyship was right when she said you were like one of Nature's untamed elements which"----
"Who said so?" broke in Ulric, looking at him darkly.
"Her ladyship. 'A wild untamed element,' she said, and the description was most striking, most apt, Hartmann"-- The young man ventured a little nearer his companion, but timidly still, and approaching him by degrees. "Hartmann, I could forgive you everything, even what you said just now, but the one thing I cannot forgive is your conduct to her. Have you alone no eyes for her beauty and grace, which disarm the very roughest of your comrades, that you should avoid the sight of her, as if it would bring you ill-luck? If her carriage appears in the distance, you turn round and get out of the way; if she rides by, you step into the house nearest at hand, and I warrant, you make that long round every day past the Director's house, for no other reason than that you might meet her once at the park-gates and be obliged to take off your cap to her. Oh, this stubborn, bitter class-hatred, which spares not even women! I repeat it to you, Hartmann, you are a man greatly to be feared."
Ulric was silent. Contrary to his wont, he submitted to these reproaches without answering a syllable, and by so doing, he strengthened Wilberg in the delusion that his arguments had at last produced some effect. Encouraged by this, he began again,