Kuhl struck the table with his hand.
"Then may the weather--that Wegen! I always had an antipathy for the man; he belongs to those who would play with dice, and cannot count, and with the most innocent face he gets up one affair after another. First he proposes to you, then to Olga--I feel as if I saw my face in a distorting mirror, like a ridiculous caricature."
"No one will blame his conduct!"
"That is it! People may dare much for love! Only a little time must elapse between--time! That is the meaning of all wisdom, and yet that old maid who paints our wrinkles upon us makes everything worse! Whether to-day I love two girls at once, or to-day the one, and to-morrow the other, is really no very great difference! And yet the first is accounted a sin, and the other is most correct. Always the goose-step in life and love, and so one walks most comfortably through the world."
"You see, though, how kindly they greet Olga and thrust me aside."
"Olga--she has put a crown upon her faithlessness to our alliance, now it is broken! I did not think her so calculating."
"Calculating? She loves Wegen!"
"It is not possible!"
"Why? He is honest, and a gentleman!"
"Did you perhaps love him too?"