"Do you think a man like me has a right to marry?"
"No!" sounded harshly and firmly.
It was not Erwin who answered. In the circle of light which the garden lamp shed amid the gray moonlight, a tall white form had placed itself opposite Felix, behind Erwin's chair.
"No!"
Erwin himself shudders; his wife seems uncanny. So beautiful, so pale, with such deathly tenderness, must have looked the angel when he drove the beings whom he loved out of Paradise.
Felix lets his head sink in his hands. Elsa bends over him and caresses him like a sick child. Erwin wishes to withdraw, but Felix calls him back. "Stay, there are no secrets between us. I should have never dared take the hand which you held out to me, had I not been convinced that you know---- Yes, Elsa," he continued, very bitterly, "you despise me, it was cowardly, it was unconscionable to even think of it, but if you knew what it is to be weary and alone, with no one on whom to lean for support! To have no one to whom one can be anything, for whom one can sacrifice oneself, to be perpetually condemned to think of oneself when thought is torment and loathing--to be sometimes permitted by pitying people to look on at happiness which awakes all the furies in one--yes, at first it was a comfort to me to flee to you, to breathe the same air with two happy people--but then--your beaming eyes, the little tendernesses of your child, even the alms of love which you gave me, all made my blood hot and me giddy. My God! I have injured no one but myself! Must I be condemned for life? Ten years is usually considered enough for a heavy crime, and I would gladly exchange these last ten years with any galley slave."
Since his return to his fatherland no one had heard him say so much; the gentle, quiet man is not to be recognized.
Elsa stands near him, white and sad, tears are in her eyes, but the severe expression of her mouth has not softened. Erwin is more moved than she. "Felix," says he, "you go too far. You must not marry the young Harfink; she is worldly and selfish, and would seek in a marriage with you only the satisfaction of her social vanity."
Felix laughs bitterly.