"Ah! I had forgotten the Reichstag."
"No, he is no longer a member of the Reichstag. He has so much practical work to attend to that he has no time for theorizing, even politically; but he is there to attend a family festival,--the christening of the first boy of Walter Eichhof, our youngest."
"Ah! is he married?"
"Yes; to the love of his boyhood, the daughter of the old Freiherr von Hohenstein."
"Had he not some idea formerly of becoming a physician?"
"He is a physician, and a fine one, I can tell you. Our Count was in a terrible way about it at first, but Countess Thea insisted that the boy was right, and the brothers were reconciled when Walter was betrothed. He undertook the management of Dr. Nordstedt's large infirmary when Nordstedt was called to a professor's chair in Strasburg. You know, I suppose, that Fräulein Alma, our Countess's sister, is married to Professor Nordstedt?"
"I think I heard of that before I left Germany. I certainly must look up my old acquaintances. This vagabond life makes one a terrible stranger in his home."
The locomotive whistles, the next station is reached, and the superintendent takes his leave of Werner, who leans back in a corner of the coupé and falls into a revery. The past rises before him like a dream. He sees Thea in memory the same, and yet so different. He can think of her now as of some lovely picture, which one admires and enjoys without coveting, and he can ponder upon the past without remorse.
"What a wonder life is!" he muses, as the train speeds on. "But it all amounts to the fact that if you would be happy--and who would not?--you must do what is right."