"I thought you would be of the same opinion on this point," I answered, hastily. "At least I have only heard you sing slow, solemn melodies."
"Me? Oh, yes! You are my neighbor in the tower." She smiled faintly, but instantly grew grave again. "Well, would you like to know why I sing nothing else? Because I have a heavy voice that does not suit gay airs. Yet 'Bloom, dear Violet,' and 'When I on my Faded Cheek,' or anything still more light and cheerful, can touch the feelings as much as the most devout choral, if it only comes from a merry heart and a pure voice. True, we can not win artistic renown or be considered specially pious by singing such things; though I think God has the same pleasure in the chirp of the cricket as in the trills of the nightingale."
"You wound me, Fräulein," I answered, crimson with emotion. "You do me great injustice if you believe that what I do or leave undone is for the sake of external effect. Who gave you so bad an opinion of me?"
She stopped and looked at me again, not into my eyes, but at my hair, whose parting had meanwhile daily moved farther to the left.
"Do you really care to know what I think of you? Well, I believe you vain and weak, a man who no longer reflects upon anything because he imagines he has made himself familiar, once for all, with all the enigmas of life, though he does not yet know even the first word of them. I don't blame you, for I know that this is the case with most of those who have pursued your path. But, as I have different ideas of the one thing needful, we certainly have nothing to share with each other."
I felt a keen pang at these words, but was resolved at any cost to know more, to know everything.
"And what is your idea of the one thing needful?" I asked, trembling with emotion. "You say such hard things to me. Are you perfectly sure that you have a right to do so? Are you certain that you are yourself in possession of the right knowledge?"
"Oh, no," she replied, and her voice suddenly sounded strangely low and earnest, as if she were speaking only to herself; "but I know that I seek truth and allow myself to be led astray by no external delusion, peril, or reward. No more can be required of any one, but no human being should demand less from himself. I don't know why I am saying this to you; I see by your puzzled face that it is a language wholly unfamiliar. Well, I have neither taste nor talent for converting any one. I shall thank God if I can conquer myself."
She bent over a bed to straighten a young cabbage-plant that had just been set out and was half trodden down.
"Fräulein," I said, once more fully conscious of my ecclesiastical dignity, "has not God himself pointed out to us the way in which we must seek him? And is it not boastful to disdain this allotted way and seek a side-path, merely in order to be able to say to ourselves that we do not follow the high-road?"