She was now awaiting him, gazing fixedly at the door; a nameless fear made her heart throb wildly.
“He shall not find me weak,” murmured she; “no, I will neither weep nor complain. No, my pride must give me strength to conceal my anguish, and to hear the decision, whatever it may be, with a smiling countenance. I will cover my heart with a veil, and it shall rest with him to withdraw it with a loving hand, if he will.”
“Here you are at last, my Frederick!” she said to Schiller on his arrival. “It seems, however, that a threat was necessary to bring you!”
“No, dearest friend,” replied Schiller, gayly, “the threat was unnecessary! You know that I love you with my whole soul, and my heart has always yearned to see you once more. The duties of my professorship are such that I find it almost impossible to leave Jena.”
A bitter smile rested for a moment on Charlotte’s lips, but she quickly repressed it. “It is but natural that the new professor should be so busily engaged as not to be able to find time to pay his friend a visit. And yet, Frederick, it was necessary that I should speak to you; life has now brought me to a point where I must decide upon taking one of two paths that lie before me.”
“Charlotte, I am convinced that your heart and your wisdom will prompt you to take the right path,” said Schiller.
She inclined her head in assent. “At our last interview I was excited and agitated; I reproached you for not having spoken to my husband. I believe I even wept, and called you faithless and ungrateful.”
“Why awaken these remembrances, Charlotte? I have endeavored to forget all this, and to bear in mind that we should make allowance for words uttered by our friends when irritated. We have both dreamed a sweet dream, my friend, and have, unfortunately, been made aware that our romantic air-castles are not destined to be realized in this prosaic world.”
“Do you call the plans we have both made for our future, romantic air-castles?”
“Yes,” replied Schiller, with some little hesitation, “I am unhappily compelled to do so. A marriage with you was the brightest and most glorious air-castle of my fantasy; and may the egotism of my love be forgiven if I once dreamed that this castle might on some blissful day descend to earth and open its portals to admit us within its radiant halls! But sober thought followed quickly upon this trance of ecstasy, and told me that these heavenly dreams could not be realized.”