And they translated. How they drawled it over, the beautiful, rich German. Hermann had begged so, but she had felt differently then. She had loved her work in anticipation. To marry and settle down—she was not ready. It would be so good to be independent. And now—But it was too late. That was years ago. Hermann must have found some yellow-braided, blue-eyed Dorothea by this—some Mädchen who cared not for calculus and Hebrew, but only to be what her mother had been, wife and house-mother. But this was treason. Our grandmothers had thought that.
She looked at the girl in the middle row. What beautiful hair she had! What an idiot she was to give up four years of her life to this round of work and play and pretence of living! Oh, to go back to Germany—to see Bertha and her mother again, and hear the father's 'cello! Hermann had loved her so! He had said, so quietly and yet so surely: “But thou wilt come back, my heart's own. And always I wait here for thee. Make me not wait long!” He had seemed too quiet then—too slow and too easily content. She had wanted quicker, busier, more individual life. And now her heart said, “O fool!”
Was it too late? Suppose she should go, after all? Suppose she should go, and all should be as it had been, only a little older, a little more quiet and peaceful? The very fancy filled her heart with sudden calm. A love so deep and sure, so broad and sweet—could it not dignify any woman's life? And she had been thought worthy and had refused this love! O fool!
Suppose she went and found—her heart beat too quickly, and her face flushed. She called on the bright girl in the front row.
“And what have you learned?” she said.
The girl coughed importantly. “It is a poem of Goethe's,” she announced in her high, satisfied voice. “Kennst du das Land”
“That will do,” said the German assistant. “I fear we shall not have time for it to-day. The hour is up. You may go on with the translation for to-morrow.” And as the class rose with a growing clamor she realized that though she had been thinking steadily in German, she had been talking in English. So that was why they had comprehended so well and answered so readily! And yet she was too glad to be annoyed at the slip. There were other things: her life was not a German class!
As the girls crowded out, one stopped by the desk. She laid her hand with the pearl band on the third finger on the teacher's arm. “You look tired,” she said. “I hope you're not ill?”
“Ill?” said the woman at the desk. “I never felt better. I've been neglecting my classes, I fear, in the study of your green gown. It is so very pretty.”
The girl smiled and colored a little.