For Erna's sake! How often he repeated that phrase to himself in the course of the day! He wanted nothing for himself. What, indeed, could he have wanted for himself? Nothing more than a man who should see a child lost, in danger, among a crowd of carriages, and who should bound to the spot and carry the child away to some place of safety; nothing more than a wanderer, who sees a fellow-traveller start upon a road of which he knows of old the insecure state, and who warns the heedless man to take some other road instead. One does so because it is one's duty as a human being; one does so because one's heart urges one to do it, because one cannot help doing it.

Yes, a man acts and speaks in such situations as he would hardly act or speak for his own sake. He is more courageous or more anxious than he would be, if his own weal or woe were at stake. One grows beyond one's self, or else sinks beneath one's own everyday moral level.

"And the latter is meanwhile my case," said Bertram to himself, as he played his part with due zeal, and, as he thought, with great success. It was a natural consequence, of that part that he lectured Hildegard (after the event), because she had not yesterday taken him at once into her confidence; that he exchanged with his friend Otto looks of the completest accord and understanding; that he used with Lydia--to her evident delight--a tone of mingled melancholy and fun, which appeared half to express and half to hide a deeper emotion; and that with the Baron he completely dropped his calm manner of the day preceding. How else could he form an opinion of the man? And how could he be a faithful counsellor to Erna without having formed an opinion?

So he examined the Baron's portfolio with patient attention, whilst that nobleman turned over the leaves and gave explanations. The collection would have been a priceless treasure if the quality had corresponded with the quantity. There were sketches from almost every country in Europe; the northern coast of Africa, too--Algiers, Tunis--was largely represented. And then the painter's talent embraced all styles and kinds of painting:--landscape, architecture, still-life, portraiture--nothing had escaped the unwearied brush, nothing had appeared too difficult. On the contrary, there were the most unlikely effects of light and shade, the oddest scenes, the most risqué situations, involving the wildest inroads on the laws of perspective and the most reckless foreshortening--and the daring sketcher seemed positively to have revelled in these. And yet Bertram had to confess to himself that a not inconsiderable talent, which, with patient and careful schooling, might have borne beautiful fruit, had been recklessly wasted--and, indeed, generally recklessness did seem to him to be the Baron's leading characteristic. Anyhow, the painter's fluent comments on his own sketches quite corresponded to the reckless style of painting. Everywhere his ideas, good ones and bad ones, and some really original ones, were clothed in the same hurried, flurried, sometimes absurd form, showing a ready, but never a profound insight into human relations, into manners and customs of nations; much, but most desultory reading; extensive, and yet scattered knowledge. The man spoke as he painted, and painted as he played music. Reckless, superficial, inconstant, like his work and his talk, will and must his love be too, thought Bertram.

Could love like that lastingly suffice for Erna? It seemed impossible. But is there such a word as impossible in connection with the magic world of the human heart? Are not the natures of truly noble women at times visited by irresistible and undying passion for wavering, unstable, yes, even for morally worthless men? Does it not well-nigh seem to have all the stability of a law of nature, that totally opposed characters, all inward resistance notwithstanding, feel drawn to and fascinated by each other?

Was this fatal fascination visible in Erna?

Bertram kept his attention unconsciously fixed on that one decisive point, but without being able to come to any definite result. True, he had to confess to himself that even a still keener observer would have vainly tried his hand at the task. Erna joined to-day even less directly than on the previous day in the general conversation; nay more, he thought he noticed what had not been the case yesterday, or what had at least escaped him then, that her gaze, usually so firm, seemed at times fixed on vacancy, then again appeared directed inward, anyhow was not dwelling on her surroundings--a symptom which by no means pleased the observer, because from it one might surely conclude that there existed a deeper sentiment, one which absorbed her inner life. And this sentiment was not likely to be one of aversion to the Baron, to whom she talked more, in her own calm way, than to anybody else; with whom she played music two or three times during the day; and with whom she played chess after supper in her own grave, attentive manner. Hildegard came and explained all these details to Bertram ...

"Believe me," she said, "I know Erna. Mind, my words of this morning. She may be long in confessing her preference for any man, but if she were to dislike any one, he would find it out pretty soon."

"I fear that I am experiencing something of the sort," Bertram replied.

"How so?"