He accepted the rebuff, and controlled himself by an effort: "Fräulein von Thurgau, you have felt yourself obliged to hate me since the hour of your father's death, and you have avenged yourself richly for a supposed injury. Well, then, I will endure your hate if so it must be, but not your contempt. I will not suffer any longer from the cold scorn which I always see in your eyes. You well know how to wound with it, but I pray you--do not drive me to extremes."
He really looked as if the farthest limit of his self-control were reached. The man usually so cool and calculating, of such iron resolution, absolutely trembled in the fever of his agitation.
Griff was still pugnacious, following with an angry eye every movement of him whom he considered a foe, and who seemed to be threatening his young mistress, who, however, took the dog by the collar and held him fast.
"Can you compel my esteem?" she asked.
"Yes, by heaven I can and will!" he broke forth. "I compelled respect but now from that insolent egotist, who despises money merely because he possesses it in abundance, and who parades as romanticism his dreamy idle existence. You heard how he was silenced by my reference to my work. He does not know what it is to be poor, and to have bare, hard reality staring him in the face. But I drained that cup to the dregs in my needy youth; life for me possessed no poetry, no ideals. I felt within me the power to excel in my profession, and was tied down by hard mechanical labour. I had to submit to men my inferiors in intellect, and to obey where now I command. The plan of the Wolkenstein bridge, now regarded as such a wonder, was rejected again and again because I had no patronage, because a poor, unknown man is sure to be despised. But, in spite of it all, I determined to rise; not for the money's sake, not that I might revel in idle luxury, but that I might work with freedom, undeterred by all the petty hinderances, to soar above which wealth gives wings. There stands my work!" He pointed to the narrow road, which gleamed like silver above the abyss. "Whether you hate its designer or not, it must force even you to respect him!"
With like proud, bold self-assertion Wolfgang Elmhorst was wont to silence his opponents and to win the victory, but it stood him in no stead here. Erna had risen and stood confronting him, the scorn which he would not brook still looking from her eyes.
"No!" she said, decidedly. "That work of yours condemns you. The man capable of achieving that should have had the courage to depend upon himself, and to go forward alone, for he carried his future within him. My uncle recognized your talent long before you wooed his daughter; he had opened the way for you, and you could have attained your goal even without him. But that indeed would have cost time and trouble, and you wanted to take fortune by storm."
Wolfgang gazed sadly at the girl's agitated face. "Yes," he said, "I did. And I have paid a high price for it; perhaps--too high."
"The price now is your freedom; in future it may possibly be your honour."
"Erna! Have a care! Do not insult me!"