"That is not an answer, Paula," I said.
She opened her lips to speak; but I was not to learn if the unfavorable construction I had given her words was the right one or not, for at this moment a blast smote the summer-house, tearing off the roof, and driving in the remaining sashes, that fell in shivers around us. I caught Paula around the waist and sprang with her out of the house, which fell with a crash the instant we had quitted it. Paula gave a shriek of terror, and clasped me convulsively. My heart bounded with joy when I thus held the dear maiden in my arms; but she released her hold immediately.
"What weaklings we women are, after all!" she said. "You men must think that we exist for no other purpose than to be protected by you."
As she said this there was an indignant expression in her large eyes and her brow; but her lips twitched with hardly-repressed weeping.
What was passing in her thoughts at that moment?
I did not learn this until years later.
We went--or rather, struggled--back to the house. No further word was spoken between us, nor did she take my arm, which I, for my part, did not venture to offer her. Would she have rejected the arm of another as well? I asked myself.
With a sadness that I had never felt before, I was sitting an hour later in the office. How could I work with this disquiet in my heart, with this weight upon my brain, and on such a day as this? But "first do your work, everything else will come in in its place," was the word of the superintendent, and in accordance with this word I seated myself at my work, and copied lists and examined accounts without making a single error in my figures. I had well spent my long apprenticeship: I could now say that I had learned to work.
It was noon when I went to the superintendent to place the papers I had prepared before him for his signature. When I reached the ante-room of his cabinet I stopped, for through the half-opened door I heard some one speaking within.
"It is a grand opportunity," said an unctious voice, which of late years had been less frequently heard in the superintendent's house--"a glorious time, a time of the Lord, who reveals himself in storm and tempest, to awaken the heart of sinful man from its obduracy. Let us rightly understand this time, Herr Superintendent, and not let the Lord appeal to us in vain."