“Be merry,” she pleaded; “we only live once.”
And at that moment Leo came rushing up to her, seized her round the waist, and danced away with her.
“Nevertheless, she is still a stranger to you,” thought Paul.
As she passed him again she whispered to him, “Go into the next room; I have something to tell you.”
“What can she mean to tell me?” he thought; but he did as he was told.
Half hidden by the curtain, he waited, but as she did not come, every minute the bitterness of his soul increased. He remembered his beautiful speeches about the peat-culture and Heine’s “Buch der Lieder,” and shrugged his shoulders contemptuously over his own stupidity. He felt as if he had grown years older and maturer in the course of this one afternoon.
And then the questions suddenly arose within him, “What business have you here? What are all those merry people, who laugh and want to please each other, and live thoughtlessly from one day to another—what are all those to you? You were a fool, a miserable fool, when you thought that you had a right to be merry; that you, too, could be what they are.”
The ground burned under his feet. He felt as if he were committing a sin by remaining a minute longer in this place.
He slipped out into the hall, where his cap hung.
“Tell my sisters,” he said to the servant who was waiting there, “that I am going home to order a carriage for them.”