"Has the Magister disappeared?" he asked, anxiously.
"He has done what he was obliged to do," replied Werner, gloomily. "Whatever his future life and fortune may be, we have done with him."
Raschke looked anxiously on the furrowed countenance of his colleague.
"I should like to see you on the road to your wife, and better still, with her on the road back to us."
"Have no doubt, friend, that I shall seek both roads as soon as I have a right to do so."
"Ilse counts the hours till your return," said Raschke, in still greater anxiety; "she will not be at rest till she has fast hold of her loved one."
"My wife has long been deprived of rest while she was with me," said the Scholar, "I have not understood how to defend her. I have exposed her to the claws of wild beasts. She has found from strangers the protection that her own husband refused her. The indifference of her husband has wounded her in that point which it is most difficult for a woman to forgive. I have become a mere, impotent dreamer," he exclaimed, "unworthy of the devotion of this pure soul, and I feel what a man never should feel--ashamed to meet my excellent wife again." He turned his face away.
"This feeling is too high-strained, and the reproaches that you angrily make yourself are too severe. You have been deceived by the cunning prevarication of a worldly wise man. You yourself have expressed that it is ingloriously easy to deceive us in things in which we are not cleverer than children. Werner, once more I entreat of you to depart with me immediately, even though by another road."
"No," replied the Scholar, decidedly; "I have all my life long been clear in my relations with other men. I cannot do things by halves. If I feel a liking, the pressure of my hand and the confidence that I give does not leave a moment's doubt of the state of my heart. If I must give up my relation to any one, I must have the reckoning fully closed. I cannot leave this place as a fugitive."
"Who demands that?" asked Raschke. "You only go like a man who turns his eyes away from a hateful worm that crawls before him on the ground."