“Certainly, and wondered what your story was; but I do not need to know it to—”
“I understand. Well, but it is rather difficult to say this to such an unsympathetic person; you won’t understand it. I have been in love, Friedel.”
“So I can suppose.”
I waited for the corollary, “and been loved in return,” but it did not come. He said, “And received as much regard in return as I deserved—perhaps more.”
As I could not cordially assent to this proposition, I remained silent.
After a pause he went on: “I am eight-and-twenty, and have lived my life. The story won’t bear raking up now—perhaps never. For a long time I went on my own way, and was satisfied with it—blindly, inanely, densely satisfied with it; then all at once I was brought to reason—” He laughed, not a very pleasant laugh. “Brought to reason,” he resumed, “but how? By waking one morning to find myself a spoiled man, and spoiled by myself, too.”
A pause, while I turned this information over in my mind, and then said, composedly:
“I don’t quite believe in your being a spoiled man. Granted that you have made some fiasco—even a very bad one—what is to prevent your making a life again?”
“Ha, ha!” said he, ungenially. “Things not dreamed of, Friedel, by your straightforward philosophy. One night I was, take it all in all, straight with the world and my destiny; the next night I was an outcast, and justly so. I don’t complain. I have no right to complain.”
Again he laughed.