"I am too old for nursery tales."
"Oh! my dear child," he replied, "there are nursery tales which we first experience, when our infant's socks are laid aside and we have discarded the nurse's milk for sound human reason. Have you never learned that some power is exerted over our wills by a sudden, as it were magical influence? Has no eye ever bewitched you, no voice ever set your blood on fire, no hand ever destroyed your defiant obstinacy by a single touch?"
A deep flush suddenly suffused Fräulein Falk's dark face.
"How do you presume to play the part of an inquisitor toward a lady whom you see for the first time?" she vehemently burst forth. "Be kind enough to leave me, sir, our conversation has taken a turn--"
She drew back as if to leave the way to the door open. He smilingly took his hat from the table, but remained standing in the middle of the room, waving it carelessly to and fro, with his eyes fixed upon the floor.
"You wrong me," said he. "I am not so indiscreet as to seek to force myself into your confidence. What I said was aimed at people in general. Inspired poets and sentimental children of the world talk of the magic of love. As if these things were not perfectly natural, so natural that the power exercised over the will has been very properly compared to chemical processes. The word magic can only be used when unnatural--supernatural things occur. If you follow the promptings of your inclinations, your blood, your nature, even were it along the worst paths, to the greatest injury of yourself and others--is there any witchcraft in it? Error, weakness, perversity--I repeat it--are very human evils, and do not lead to God. But to be urged on to what is most foreign, hostile to your nature, to be forced, in dread and horror, to do what you abhor, to be faithless to what is dearest--you see, Fräulein, that this only occurs under the influence of a powerful spell, the only one that still remains in this enlightened world, and whose consequences God scuds his pardoning mercy to destroy or efface: the magic of sin. I beg your pardon for having troubled you so long. Perhaps I shall frequently have the pleasure of conversing with you about these mysteries."
He bowed with the look and smile of a man, who has tamed a fierce lioness and can now venture to enter her cage alone. She stood speechless, and made no motion to accompany him to the door. Her arms hung loosely by her side, her chin drooped on her breast, her eyes were closed as if she had given herself up to gloomy thoughts.
Mohr and Franzelius were just going up the narrow stairs, as Lorinser closed Christiane's door behind him.
Coming from different directions, they had met at the outer door, and unwelcome as the encounter was to both--for Mohr, who had his play in his pocket, would also have liked to see the brothers alone--each was too awkward or too proud to avoid the other.
They had bowed in silence, and Mohr had allowed the printer to precede him. When they now met Lorinser on the stairs, Franzelius stepped aside like a person who unexpectedly treads upon a toad. The incident even made him forget his unfriendly relations with the eternal joker, and pausing on the landing he looked after the rapidly retreating figure, saying in a tone of the most intense abhorrence: