After a while Otto raised his head. "What have you to say?" he exclaimed, bitterly. "That such another idiot as I does not live upon the earth? Say it! Ah, you have not read the note, Goswyn. Why do you look at me so? Could you have known---- Oh, my God! my God!" The strong man buried his face in his hands again, and sobbed hoarsely.
Goswyn was terribly distressed. He had never known his brother to weep since his childhood. He would far rather have had him fall into a fury. But no; he was weeping: the sense of disgrace was drowned in agony.
Before long he collected himself, ashamed of his weakness, and there was the quiet of despair in the face he lifted to Goswyn.
"You knew it--since when?"
"I know nothing," Goswyn replied.
"No, you know nothing,--good God! who ever knows anything in such affairs?--but you suspected, did you not?"
Goswyn was silent.
"Perhaps you can tell me how many people in Berlin--suspect it?"
Goswyn bit his lip. What reply could he make? after a while he began: "Otto, I would have given anything in the world to prevent you from learning it."
"Indeed!" Otto interrupted him. "You would have let me go through life grinning amiably, ridiculously, with a stain on my name at which people would point contemptuously, and you never would have told me of that stain? Goswyn!" He started up; Goswyn also arose, and the brothers confronted each other beside the hearth, upon which the fire had fallen into glowing embers and ashes.