"From a profession which you must certainly resign in the future."
"Do you consider that as a matter of course, Fräulein von Thurgau?" Wolfgang asked, nettled by her tone. "I cannot see what should induce such a course on my part."
"Why, your future position as the husband of Alice Nordheim."
The young engineer flushed crimson; he glanced angrily at the girl who ventured to remind him that he was marrying money. She was smiling, and her remark sounded like a jest, but her eyes spoke a different language, the language of contempt, which he understood but too well. He was not a man, however, to rest quietly under the scorn which pursues a fortune-hunter; he too smiled, and rejoined, with cool courtesy, "Pardon me, Fräulein von Thurgau, you are mistaken. My profession, my work, are necessities of existence for me. I was not made for an idle, inactive enjoyment of life. This seems incomprehensible to you----"
"Not at all," Erna interposed. "I perfectly understand how a true man must depend solely upon his own exertions."
Wolfgang bit his lip, but he parried this thrust too: "That I may accept as a compliment, for I certainly depended entirely upon my own exertions when I planned the Wolkenstein bridge, and I trust my work will bring me credit, even as 'the husband of Alice Nordheim.' But excuse me; these are matters which cannot interest a lady."
"They interest me," Erna said, bluntly. "My home was destroyed by the Wolkenstein bridge, and your work demanded yet another and far dearer sacrifice of me."
"Which you never can forgive me, I know," Wolfgang went on. "You reproach me for an unhappy accident, although your sense of justice must tell you that I am not to blame, that I do not deserve it."
"I do not blame you, Herr Elmhorst."
"You did in that most wretched hour, and you do it still."