It was the old tone, but it was no longer the old Hans. His blue eyes were more expressionless, his brown cheeks sunken, and his formerly well-shaped handsome nose was red and swollen; and when we seated ourselves side by side on the edge of the trench, and he took off his cap, I saw that his thick dark-blond hair was greatly thinned.
"I knew that you would come," he said, taking flint and steel from his hunting pouch and lighting a cigar, after first supplying me: "I was to go there to dinner to-day, but I do not know whether I should have gone; so I am all the more glad that I have met you here. I had much rather be here."
And he puffed great clouds of smoke from his cigar and gazed at the water in the trench, where the lively long-legged water-beetles were busily rowing about.
"Much rather," he repeated.
"And are you still living as lonely as ever?" I asked.
"Naturally," said Hans.
"I do not find that so natural," I replied, with some animation, for Hans's whole appearance and voice bespoke a carelessness and desolation which cut me to the heart--"by no means natural. What! a man like you, a dear, good, brave fellow like you, go mooning and wasting his life in solitude because a coquette has chosen to lead him in her string for a year or so? Yes, Herr von Trantow, a heartless coquette, who never was worth the regards of an honest man and now--no, she is hardly worth our compassion. I can tell you, I have learned that truth to my cost."
"So have I," said Hans.
"I know it."
Hans shook his head as if to say, that is not what I mean. I knew of old how to translate his gestures.