"Do you imagine, then, that Wolfgang cares for me? I do not think he does."
There was no bitterness in her words; they were only sad, and the eyes which Alice raised to the young physician were as sad.
"You do not believe in Wolfgang's love?" he asked, dismayed. "But why, then, should he have----" He broke off in the middle of his sentence, knowing well enough that love had borne no share in his friend's wooing. He remembered only too distinctly how the young engineer had coldly determined to win for a wife the president's daughter, and the contemptuous shrug with which he had repudiated the idea of sentiment in the affair. It was a speculation,--nothing else.
"I have no fault to find with Wolfgang, none at all," Alice went on. "He is always most attentive, and so anxious about me, but I feel nevertheless how little I am to him, and I can see how his thoughts wander whenever he is with me. Formerly I scarcely perceived this, and if I did perceive it, it did not hurt me. I was always so weary; I had no pleasure in life,--it was one long illness for me. But when health began to relieve me of the oppression that had weighed down soul and body, I saw, and understood. Wolfgang loves his calling, the future to which he aspires, his great work, the Wolkenstein bridge, of which he is so proud. He never will love me!"
Benno for a moment could find no reply to these words, which both startled and amazed him, from the girl whom he had supposed entirely indifferent in this matter, and who now thus clearly defined the true state of affairs.
"Wolf's is not an ardent nature," he said at last, slowly. "With him ambition outweighs sentiment; it was his character as a boy, and it is far more evident in the man."
Alice shook her head: "Herr Gersdorf's nature is cool and calm, and yet how he loves Molly! Awhile ago Ernst Waltenberg cared for nothing save untrammelled freedom, and see how love has transformed him! Frau Lasberg, to be sure, says such sentiment is the merest nonsense which hardly outlives the honey-moon, that there is no such thing as the enduring affection of a romantic girl's imagination, and that a woman, if she is wise and hopes for happiness in marriage, must banish all such ideas from her mind. She may be right, but such wisdom is terribly depressing. Do you share it, Herr Doctor?"
"No!" said Reinsfeld, with so decided an emphasis that Alice looked up at him in surprise and with a sad smile.
"Then we are both dreamers and fools, whom sensible people would despise."
"Thank God that it is so!" Benno broke forth. "Never let 'such sentiment' be snatched from you, Fräulein Nordheim; it is all that can make life happy or even worth the living. Wolf has always prophesied that I should never come to good, or make myself a fine position in the world. So be it. I do not care! I am happier than he with all his wisdom and his schemes. He takes no real pleasure in anything,--sees nothing anywhere save bare, forlorn reality, transfigured by no ray of inspiration. I have had a hard life. When my parents died I was knocked about the world, with scant favour from any one, and sometimes, as a student, was hard put to it for bread to eat; even now I possess merely the necessaries of life; but I would not exchange lots with my friend for all his brilliant future."