Eva and her companions had become separated from the party during this animated conversation. From several symptoms, Schöner perceived that a little romance was being enacted, of which he himself was not the hero. He remained untroubled at this neglect, and, with noble unselfishness and a poet's pleasure in a little love tale, which he might utilise himself for a newspaper, he left the field, under the pretence that he had promised a beautiful bouquet to the Kanzleirath's Minna, and he must gather it in the wood. He also had the satisfaction in so doing of giving them to understand he would not act the superfluous third person's part of chaperon at this rendezvous of two lovers, and guessed their wish to be alone.
They had arrived once more at the spot where Blanden had first greeted his campanula; the alders rustled in the evening wind, the stream whispered beneath the trees; above through the quivering boughs of the weeping willows the western sky poured its floods of gold.
"You know this young poet well?" asked Blanden.
"I have met and talked to him several times, he interests me; he possesses talent, intellect and attractive qualities, yet the want of steadiness in his nature and actions repelled me; everything in him is prompted by the whim of the moment."
"And you felt no liking for him?"
"Just a very little liking, I do not deny it; he paid me attentions, people remarked it, and often threw us together in society; it flattered me, as he was accounted the ornament and pride of those circles, and he gazed at me with fervid eyes as though he felt a deep passion for me, but he looked at all the world with the same eyes, and when I recognised that, he became indifferent to me."
"He has the eye and heart of a poet! Such a heart yearns to possess everything beautiful that it looks upon as its own heaven-bestowed property; it is dangerous and fatal to win a poet's evanescent passion--he only gives it durability in his works, not in his life. How many blossoms of beautiful emotions has Goethe plucked, as it were, in passing by; to how many women's hearts did his wanderings bring death, like the approach of the inapproachable. That does not suit us inferior mortals! And even if in the extravagance of youth, we do yield ourselves up to such poetical paroxysms, we must soon learn to control ourselves, for we not only leave desolate the lives of others, like that poet, but also our own, as we are unable to cast imperishable creations into the other scale."
Eva looked questioningly at him with her large eyes.
"Let us sit down upon the grassy mound, among the blue-bells, they ring in spring, perhaps also for me; it was here I found my campanula."
Eva stood hesitatingly; he drew her down beside himself upon the sward.