"How do you mean right?" stammered Leo, feeling a cold shiver of anxiety run through him.
"You mustn't reproach me, dear boy. I am punishing myself more than I punish you. I love you as much as ever I did. I would pour out my heart's blood for you--but I can't associate with you any more."
"Ulrich!" cried Leo; "then you haven't forgiven me after all?"
Ulrich looked pained. "What do you call forgiving?" he said. "The one woman in the world, whom I as your friend had no right to touch, I made my wife. So I think we are quits. If it had come to shooting between us that day, and you had sent me the same way as her first husband, I would have died stroking and blessing your hand, dear boy. And then you talk of forgiving!"
Leo had staggered to his feet. He stretched out his hand as if he would seize and hold his friend fast before his soul slipped out of his grasp for ever.
"What you propose is madness," he exclaimed.
"No, dear boy. I should like to explain it all thoroughly to you. I have rehearsed a long speech, but I cannot somehow exactly recall it now. God knows it was my firm intention to let the past lie buried. But I can't alter my nature, and you know how I take things to heart, and when I do, must speak of them. But leaving me out of the question. You take life differently, less seriously. Yet how could you endure to come in and out here, when the very walls speak to you of the past? I noticed just now how you glanced at that door. It seemed to you that she must be coming through it. I have done with her, and so, it is to be hoped, have you--but, all the same, her ghost fills this place, and you feel it as much as I do."
"With time that would wear off," Leo murmured, becoming more and more dispirited.
"I doubt it," replied Ulrich. "It could never wear off with us. We should have had to be brought up differently, born of different parents, and with other blood pumped into our veins. As we are, our sense of honour, our manliness, would constantly be in revolt. Day by day we should become more discomfited, till at last we should end by laying at each other's door our loss of self-respect. No, that shall not be. It would be too great a strain on our old friendship. Think of our two fathers. They were fond of each other, God knows. But if what has happened to us had happened to them, they would have both cut their throats without asking who was to blame and who wasn't. Say, am I not right?"
Leo was silent, and thought to himself, "Thus he casts me off."