"And this 'one element,' what is it?"
"The fact that her uncle is not in love with her at all. Was not that it?"
"To be sure. I only wonder at your having found it out."
"And my only wonder is that Hilarie did not discover it sooner. She must have been very blind not to have seen that her uncle returns--or rather does not return--her love from sheer kindliness of disposition; that at best his penchant is but the faintest reflex of her passionate love. Look at this passage: 'You are making me the happiest man beneath the sun! Exclaiming this, he fell at her feet.' How feeble, how strained! And it contents her, makes her happy. I should have been ashamed of the whole business."
"You must make some allowance for the spirit of the time, for the manner and expression of the period; in that case, these things do not look or sound quite as bad. But now for the other side of the medal: You hold that Hilarie did truly love her uncle, and would have remained faithful to her love, in spite of any number of Flavios, if her passion had been returned?"
"Most certainly!"
"Well, be it so. He loves, loves passionately. Enter Flavio, loving, loving passionately, too. The father perceives it. He sees that his own love would seal the doom of the son whom he loves. Moreover, he is sure--if he is not a conceited fool, but a man of heart and head, he must be sure--that Hilarie would undoubtedly, return his son's passion, if he, the father, the uncle, did not unfortunately stand between them; that the girl's love for the young man, and vice versa, is the only natural--that means, the only right thing; that therefore Hilarie cannot truly love him; that her love rather, if it be not absolutely unnatural, is anyhow an error, an aberration, from which she shall and must turn. Given these things, am I wrong in asserting that then, indeed, the comedy changes to tragedy--a tragedy the secret and silent stage of which, I admit, will be solely ... the elderly man's heart? Do you not agree with me?"
"I must, I think; if I have first granted your suppositions and assumptions, particularly this: that a girl's love for a man much older than herself must needs in every case be an error, an aberration. But then, again, I do not see why the elderly man's love for the girl does not also tend to self-deception, to a fact which he, being more far-sighted, clever, experienced; is bound to realise all the sooner. And then, where is your tragedy?"
Once more the great eyes flashed, the dainty lips quivered, an angry cloud lay on her brow. There was a wild voice in his heart crying: "Where?--here, here--for I love, I love thee! and it is impossible that into thy maiden heart, there should ever fall one spark of the wild conflagration raging here." But he succeeded this time, too, in subduing the tumult in his heart, and he said smilingly--
"I hoped, nay, I knew that you would make this objection, which is absolutely correct, and which helps the Master to regain that absolute sovereignty and undeviating correctness in matters of the heart in which I, wantonly, tried to argue Göthe was deficient. Of course, so the matter stands, turn and twist it as you will--Hilarie's love is an illusion; or, more correctly, it is a foreshadowing of that true and genuine passion which she will feel one day. The Major's love is a reminiscence of what his heart once, in the bygone days of his far-away youth, was glowing with, and what it never again will glow with now. Anything of a warmer feeling that haply still survives, may be sufficient for a sensible, reasonable marriage, with the clever widow, in whose sentiments towards him again reminiscence acts the part of a kindly mediator, and ... but surely ... why, they are back already! Shall we go and meet them?"