"Thankless creature! You hesitate—you are not sure! How shameful of you to deny the gods you have once worshiped! But that is the way with you men. If you cease to love, you will not admit that you ever had loved. Tell me, was there ever a moment in your life when you could have answered my question—'Are you in love?'—with an unqualified Yes?"
"Yes, I have known such a moment. But, looking back upon it now—"
"No, no, you were quite right then and you are wrong now. That is just your great mistake. You imagine that one can only love once, and that love, to be real, must last forever. My poor friend, nothing lasts forever, and the truest love is sometimes as perishable as the loveliest rose—the most exquisite dream. But it is not to say that because it is over we are to deny that it ever existed. You may not feel anything now, but that is no reason for declaring that you did not feel it then. You thought you were in love, and therefore you were. It is sophistry to try to persuade oneself of the contrary in after days."
"You are a brilliant advocate of your views, Madame la Comtesse, but nevertheless may one take a momentary delusion—"
"Delusion' And who shall say, my German philosopher, if our whole existence may not be a delusion?"
"Ah, there you drive my philosophy very hard," murmured Wilhelm.
"Never been in love?" exclaimed the countess, and her lustrous hazel eyes flashed, "why you would be a monster. I suppose you are nearly thirty!"
"Nearly thirty-five."
"I congratulate you, Herr Eynhardt, I should have taken you for at least five years less But whether thirty or thirty-four, it would be culpable to have reached that age without having been in love. For you surely are not—a disciple of Abelard."
At this point-blank question Wilhelm reddened and cast down his eyes like the boy he really was in some respects. She observed his embarrassment, not without secret amusement.