“Such what? What have I done? Is it my fault, if people jump to false conclusions? Am I to blame for their lack of sense? Can't a young man be ordinarily polite and decent to a young girl, without every body fancying that he is spoony over her?”
“No, he can't; not if you call it ordinarily polite and decent to visit a young lady regularly every week or so, and spend a couple of months at her side in the country. From that sort of politeness and decency, her parents always infer that he means matrimony. It gives the same impression to society, also, and frightens other young men away.”
“Well,” groaned Elias, “I suppose it's needless for me to say I'm sorry. I am sorry; but that's neither here nor there. If I had at all foreseen—But what's the use of iffing? Now that you have opened my eyes, I'll stop visiting her. That's at once the least and most I can do. Well, I'm glad it went no further. So far, at any rate, no harm has been done.”
“No harm done! Well, I must say, your complacency astounds me. No harm done! You—you get a young girl's expectations all aroused—get her heart set on you—get her and her family to taking for granted that you want to marry her—get the whole world to talking about her as your sweetheart—and then coolly dismiss the matter with a No harm done! No harm done, forsooth!”
“Oh, come,” protested Elias; “you exaggerate. It's not so bad as all that. Whatever you and her uncle and the others may have suspected, she never misconstrued my feeling for her. She has too much good sense. Why, I never spoke a word to her that could, by torturing it even, be interpreted as any thing more than friendly. As for her heart being set upon me, and her expectations aroused, that's rubbish, pure and simple rubbish.”
“Is it, though?” retorted the rabbi. “Her uncle didn't seem to think so.”
“What do you mean?” cried Elias.
“I mean that Mr. Koch gave me to understand that Miss Morgenthau is in love with you.”
“Gave you to understand? Oh, you misunderstood.”
“I could scarcely have done that. He told me so in just so many words.”