“I don’t know,” was all he said. Later, I learned the reason of that “don’t know.”
“So it was no love affair,” said Eugen again. “Then I have been wrong all the time. I quite fancied it was some girl—”
“What could make you think so?” I asked, with a whole-hearted laugh. “I tell you I don’t know what it is to be in love. The other fellows are always in love. They are in a constant state of Schwäramerei about some girl or other. It goes in epidemics. They have not each a separate passion. The whole lot of them will go mad about one young woman. I can’t understand it. I wish I could, for they seem to enjoy it so much.”
“You heathen!” said he, but not in a very bantering tone.
“Why, Eugen, do you mean to say that you are so very susceptible? Oh, I beg your pardon,” I added, hastily, shocked and confused to find that I had been so nearly overstepping the boundary which I had always marked out for myself. And I stopped abruptly.
“That’s like you, Friedhelm,” said he, in a tone which was in some way different from his usual one. “I never knew such a ridiculous, chivalrous, punctilious fellow as you are. Tell me something—did you never speculate about me?”
“Never impertinently, I assure you, Eugen,” said I, earnestly.
He laughed.
“You impertinent! That is amusing, I must say. But surely you have given me a thought now and then, have wondered whether I had a history, or sprung out of nothing?”