"How the deuce could she know it, when she was out in the porch cooing to you the only time your name passed my lips?"
"But her dignified mother, her kind old father," said Goethe, anxiously,—"have you betrayed me to them? Do they know what a simpleton I have been?"
"I cannot answer for that," responded Waldstein, dryly; "but if they know you are a simpleton they have discovered it through their own mother-wit, for I assure you, comrade, it is not I who would betray you."
"How did you happen to speak of me at all?" asked Goethe.
"Naturally enough," replied Max: "they questioned me about Strasburg, and I found your madcap fame had preceded you as far as Sesenheim. They had heard all sorts of preposterous stuff, and they were just begging me to tell them something about your eccentricities, when you came in with your sweetheart on your arm,—oh, no, I beg your pardon, not the Cathedral, but some heroine of a novel whom you were loftily studying for your first work of fiction."
Goethe made no reply, but paced the floor in an excited manner. Max watched him narrowly with an amused expression, and waited for him to resume the conversation. Finally he stopped, and broke out abruptly, "Is she engaged?"
"No," said Max, shortly.
"Hm! that is a relief," said Goethe, with a sigh. "Is she in love? has she ever been in love?"
"Really, Wolfgang," cried Max, laughing, "I cannot pretend to be familiar with such a mysterious thing as the heart of a woman. As to her being in love now, however, I think I can safely answer—no, unless she was smitten this evening by that pretty gray suit of yours. And for the past,—well, as she is scarcely more than a child, I hardly think it possible that she should have had any serious passion hitherto."
"Strange! strange!" murmured Goethe, absently. "Such a cheerfulness by nature is inconceivable to me. Had she loved and lost and recovered herself, or were she now betrothed, in either case I could account for this deep, earnest serenity." And he relapsed into silence.