Alas, dear Sigmund!
"She first said that our meeting occurred in the year 1878. When I clasped my hands and mournfully exclaimed: 'Then you have forgotten that it was in 1874,' she was a little confused, but recovered with the swift remark: 'A date is of no importance, the main thing is that we were happy, oh, very happy!' I asked if she remembered our little nest.
"'Certainly!' she cried, clapping her hands in delight. She remembered that it was in the Rue St. Dominique, but when I attempted to win from her a description of the furniture, the view from our two windows, she evaded it. I turned the conversation to you—I don't mention it to offend you—but there was not the faintest recollection! Completely forgotten! I spoke of Tannemann—nothing, nothing! Not until I recalled the little dog could she remember him, but it was especially the animal, the giver very dimly. I alluded to our excursion—her eyes sparkled, all the details, even the most minute incidents came back to her, and she related with the utmost fluency, in a rapture of delight, a picnic with breakfast in a hut built of branches and an extravagant quantity of wine—which we had never had together.
"What a shower-bath! My teeth fairly chattered from it. She noticed my coldness, asked if I had any other love, became irritated when I pretended not to hear the question, finally said that she must go, and was thoroughly offended when I did not detain her. She went away without mentioning another meeting and I let her go, without even asking where she lived.
"I shall hardly see her again. I regret that I met her. To-day is the first time that I have wholly lost Helene, and the loss gives me pain. It was a beautiful self-delusion, and I would gladly have treasured it to my life's end.
"You were right when you said that we ought not return to the scenes of former happiness unless we were sure of finding them unchanged.
"A thousand kind remembrances from your strangely agitated
"WOLF.
"Postscript. Shall I tell you all I think? I believe that Helene has mistaken me for some one else——"