Two months later. The mild autumn sunshine was gilding the landscape, and the heath was brightly tinted with deep russet hues. Adolf and I were once more sitting opposite each other in the railway-carriage, but this time we were going northward, and were leaving Barnow behind us.
Adolf's manner had been rather strange of late. He had sometimes been unreasonably full of high spirits, and again absolutely silent, not a word to be got out of him on any subject; sometimes confident, and again sentimental. Any one could see that the poor fellow was over head and ears in love, and therefore in a very unsettled frame of mind. I did not know how matters stood between him and the girl he loved, and did not care to ask; but I rejoiced in silence that the spring-time of joy had at last come to the sad solitary heart of my old friend.
He was very gentle during the whole of that day, and did not give utterance to a single sarcastic speech. His face looked softer and brighter than I could have imagined it possible for those sharply-cut features to look.
At last he addressed me suddenly.
"I've got something to tell you that you'll be glad to hear."
"Go on."
But he grew silent again. After a long pause he burst out all at once: "I love her; she loves me. I can not bear to keep it to myself any longer, so I will tell you how it all happened...."
I shook him warmly by the hand, and then he went on:
"You remember that marriage. I am not a poet, nor do I find it easy to put my impressions into words, therefore I simply can not tell you what effect seeing that girl had upon me, for it was unspeakable, indescribable. Still, although her dear face was continually before me in imagination, I could not make up my mind to visit her in her father's house, for that house was haunted by the ghosts of my miserable childhood—ghosts I dared not waken without pressing necessity. Besides that, Hirsch Welt is one of the most narrow-minded of the pious sect in the community, and I felt no desire to receive any more proofs of the affection of that lot than I have already had.