"You see," I concluded, "that in every sense I am well taken care of; and now I must know how things have gone with you and Christel, and how you managed so soon to become man and wife. Only twenty-two, Klaus, and married already! How do you expect to get on? And your Christel has let you come away? Klaus, Klaus, I don't like the look of that."
I laughed at him, and Klaus, who now at last perceived that nothing could come of his plan to rescue me, laughed also, but not very heartily.
"There it is," said he. "How will she look when I come back without you."
"'Without thee,'[[6]] I said, Klaus. I am not going to put up with any breach of our old brotherhood now, or I shall think you too proud to be on terms of thee and thou with a prisoner. And how will she look when you come back without me?"
"There it is," said Klaus, "how will she, indeed! We are so happy; but one or the other of us was always saying, 'and he is shut up there!' and then there was an end of all our happiness, especially because in a manner it is Christel's fault that you are here; for that morning at Zanowitz----"
"Klaus," I interrupted him, "do you know then that for a while I believed that Christel herself gave the information to get rid of your father?"
"No," said Klaus, "she did not do that, thank God; though more than once she was quite desperate and thought of killing herself."
He wiped his forehead with his hand; I had touched a painful subject. We sat awhile without speaking, when Klaus commenced again:
"One good result it has had: 'he'"--Klaus had already adopted Christel's habit of never calling 'him' by his name--"'he' of course had to give up the guardianship of Christel, and as a person of damaged reputation, could not interfere much with me. Aunt Julchen in Zanowitz, with whom Christel stayed after that day, fitted Christel out, and we might have lived like angels, if--" and Klaus, with a melancholy look at me, shook his big head.
"And you are still in Berlin, in the commerzienrath's machine-shops?" I asked, to give his thoughts another direction.