Without knowing why, Albert’s heart was filled with sadness. He sighed audibly. He was depressed because he was unlike anybody and because he knew he could not be like anybody else. God had made him different, had made him a misfit, a round peg in a square hole. His thoughts wandered. No, he did not wish to be like anybody else. Yet he was vexed. He felt dreadfully alone. Had he not been afraid of the driver’s ridicule he would have wept aloud—because—because he was unlike anyone and did not want to be like anyone else. If only Hilda had loved him! It suddenly flashed upon his mind that she did not love him.
IX.
But the next week he was again hopeful, even confident, of Hilda’s love. He had written to her and she had answered him. Rejoicing!
His hopes were rising quickly. If only he could make her appreciate his poems! He felt that she disliked his verses. She did not seem to understand that the poems he had shown her were inspired by her and were meant for her eyes alone.
One day he felt the fateful moment had come. He was again at his uncle’s villa. It was early October, the family was preparing to leave for their city home. It was a gloomy day, gray clouds in the sky, winds chasing withered leaves against tree trunks and fences. Yet there was joy in his heart. Hilda had praised one of his poems. He hung upon her words as if they had emanated from the lips of the greatest critic.
“If you only knew how many more beautiful poems you could inspire me to write,” he was saying enthusiastically, with plaintive begging in his voice.
“How?”
She said this absently, between two numbers of embroidery stitches she was counting.
“By promising that you’ll marry me some day.”
She seemed caught unawares. She dropped a few stitches and seemed annoyed.