Daniel asked if they were all well. Benno replied that there was no lack of good health, though some of the family were a little short of change. Then he laughed again. He spoke of his father, said the old gentleman was not getting along very well, that he was having quite a little trouble to get anything to do, but then what could be expected with a man of his age, and the competition and the hard times! Daniel asked if Eleanore was at home. No, she was not at home: she had gone on a visit with Frau Rübsam over to Pommersfelden, and planned to stay there for a few weeks. “Well, I’ll have to be hurrying along,” said Benno, “my fraternity brothers are waiting for me.”
“Good gracious! Do you have fraternity brothers too?”
“Of course! They are the spice of my life! We have a holiday to-day: The King’s funeral. Well, God bless you, Herr Kapellmeister, I must be going.”
Daniel went up and rang the bell; Gertrude came to the door. It was dark; each could see only the outline of the other.
“Oh, it’s you, Daniel!” she whispered, happy as happy could be. She came up to him, and laid her face on his shoulder.
Daniel was surprised at the regularity of his pulse. Yesterday the mere thought of this meeting took his breath. Now he held Gertrude in his arms, and was amazed to find that he was perfectly calm and composed.
In the room he led her over to the lamp, and looked at her for a long while, fixedly and seriously. She grew pale at the sight of him: he was so strange and so terrible.
Then he took her by the hand, led her over to the sofa, sat down beside her, and told her of his plans. Her wishes and his tallied exactly. He wanted to get married within four weeks. Very well; she would get married.
He found her the same unqualifiedly submissive girl. In her eyes there was an expression of fatal docility; it terrified him. There was no cowardly doubt in her soul; her cool hand lay in his and did not twitch. With her hand her whole soul, her whole life, lay in his hand. He wanted to raise some doubt in her mind: he spoke in a down-hearted tone of his future prospects; he said that there was very little hope of his ever winning recognition from the world for his compositions.
“What is the good of recognition?” she asked. “They can take nothing from you, and what they give you is clear gain.”