"I thank you," he said very gently, "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for so much goodness, and to deserve it will be the fairest task of my life. But pray do not condemn Herr von Waldor. It is impossible to measure him by the common standard. Contempt of death and greed of life, princely generosity and petty egotism, tenderest love and bitterest hatred--all these things lie side by side in his soul, and cross and re-cross each other in such a way that even to me (and I think I know him better than any one else) it is a perfect enigma. But if at times I cannot solve it all, if in this present case I cannot but see that he is willing--I must not say to sacrifice, but to stake--me and my happiness in the hope of gaining his own great stakes, then I need only remember what he has been to the orphaned boy, after he had carried my father, fatally wounded, upon his own shoulders out of the bloody struggle around the fortifications of Düppel; how he, of all men the most impatient, has watched over me with a mother's loving patience when I have been ill; how he resumed his studies in order to be able to supervise and guide mine; how he paid my expenses when I was a cadet; how he equipped and helped the ensign, the young officer; how he pressed upon the poor young man of bourgeois birth abundant help to enable him to hold his own in an expensive and aristocratic regiment; and how he thundered in his wrath when I refused to accept it any longer, as I had learned that he had himself to borrow the needful money at usurer's interest. Surely you will admit that one so deeply indebted to Herr von Waldor as I am, has lost the right, nay, more, the ability to struggle and resist, even if the hand which has done so much in the way of kindness weighs heavily, terribly so, upon him."
"I think I can follow you in your feelings," replied Bertram, "although Waldor is by no means thereby excused in my eyes; on the contrary, I adhere firmly to the Scriptural saying, that the right hand should not know what the left does; and I hold that he who claims gratitude has already his reward. Moreover, was the sacrifice really requisite, which Waldor expected from you, when he put you into this ominous position? From a moral point of view it is a matter of indifference; but I should like, if possible, to be enlightened on this point, which I have not hitherto understood."
"How things stand exactly," Kurt replied, "I can hardly say myself. I assume that the marriage-contract of the Princess contains certain conditions which deprive her of the greater part of her present fortune, if she contracts a new matrimonial alliance; or rather, would seem to deprive her, for a judicial interpretation of this dubious point is to be the result of the law-suit which is now reaching its final stage. Further, it may be assumed that the view of the Princess herself is the only correct one by all the laws of sound logic; but she fears--whether rightly or wrongly I know not--that the decision will be adverse to her if the authorities learn that her choice has fallen upon an alien."
"But you are an alien, too," objected Bertram.
Kurt shrugged his shoulders.
"An obscure lieutenant, not of noble birth, and Princess Volinzov! No one need imagine that they would have taken this au sérieux, any more than a dozen other liaisons...."
He paused abruptly, blushing to the very roots of his hair.
"For shame!" he cried, "that was basely said. Let others sit in judgment upon the poor victim of a most abominable bad education and of most wretched circumstances. I dare not, I dare not feel for her aught, but admiration and gratitude, and renewed gratitude, for I know and have experienced in my own person that, through all the badness and baseness that have been crowding around her from her childhood, she has preserved the capacity for a great and heroic love, a love of which we men are scarcely ever, and of which among women only the best and noblest are, capable."
Only at the last words Kurt had again ventured to look up, and he swiftly lowered his eyes again. Bertram's great eyes shone in wondrous radiance, and a curious smile, half melancholy, half ironical, was hovering about his lips, as he slowly answered--
"To be sure! you are quite right. Only the noblest women! We men are egotistical scoundrels; that is our lordly privilege; and he who resigns it, deserves to be crucified with malefactors on either side."