A third variation had also taken place, which, if I could credit Fräulein Duff, I had brought about. True, appearances seemed to confirm her statement, but only appearances.
When I returned to Zehrendorf from my visit to Rossow, as I went to my own room I had to pass through the parlor where the whole company were assembled. Hermine was sitting at the piano playing a noisy piece, which she suddenly stopped as, after silently bowing to the company, I had my hand on the knob of the door to pass out. Involuntarily I turned at the sound of the discord with which she closed, and in the next moment I saw her standing before me, with pale features and a strange light in her large blue eyes, and with quivering lips saying something which she had to repeat before I could understand it. They hoped I had taken the jest of to-day as it was meant, and not deprive their little party to-morrow of the pleasure of my company, on which they had certainly counted.
The company who had been hitherto conversing with especial animation, and had scarcely appeared to notice my presence, were suddenly silent, and this was probably the reason that I heard my own answer with startling distinctness, almost as if it was not I but another who had spoken with an altogether strange voice:
"I thank you, Fräulein: but you were perfectly right; I cannot be counted upon on these occasions."
Next I found myself outside in the hall, trembling in every limb of my strong body, with sharp pain in my heart and a burning desire to cry out aloud, and then I pressed both hands upon my breast, and said to myself, with deeply-drawn breath and trembling lips, "Thank heaven, it is all over."
To this thought I held fast all the long night while I paced sleepless up and down my carpeted room, or stood at the open window cooling my burning brow in the night air, or throwing myself upon the divan to sink into painful thought.
All over; all over! despite the note that Fräulein Duff sent about midnight to my room by the hands of my now devoted William, and in which in her queer fantastic way she assured me that Hermine had been looking forward for two weeks to this excursion only because she was to make it with me, and indeed had planned it with no other view; and she asked whether the good should give place to the evil, and whether love did not believe all things and endure all things, especially when it might be convinced that what occasioned its severest sufferings were themselves but love-torments?
Love? Was this, could this be love? Love, she said, endured all things and believed all things. True: but it also is not puffed up, does not behave unseemly, and thinks no evil. Is this love? Is it not rather selfishness, vanity, caprice, the caprice of a spoiled child which now kisses its doll and the next moment flings it on the ground, for which the whole world is only a bright soap-bubble that for its especial pleasure glitters in the sunshine of its fortune? Well, this may be love--one kind of love; but I do not fancy this kind and will not have it, and it is all over.
Had I not known another kind of love? A firm, deeply-rooted, beneficent love that brought blessings wherever it was given. If this love had never been bestowed on me, did I any the less know that it existed? And if she had never loved me as she was capable of loving, and would some day love another, had I not tasted a drop at least of this pure fountain of living water, and drunk from this single drop courage and refreshment, far more than from all this torrent which rushes so exuberantly to-day, and to-morrow will have vanished without a trace into the sand--the sand of her selfishness and caprice? No! it must all be over, and it was all over.
Thus all night long thoughts whirled and burned in my head and heart, until day broke--a bright day, but heavy with brooding storm--and found me feverish and exhausted; but I aroused myself with a strong resolution and said to myself: