She ought to come to him! She ought to notice that he was gone, ought to feel how it was with him, ought to follow him secretly, if only out of compassion, lay her hand on his shoulder and say: "Come in and join us and be happy, for I love you." And he listened for steps behind him, and waited in unreasonable suspense for her to come. But she came not at all. The like of that did not happen on earth.

Had she too laughed at him, like all the rest? Yes, she had done so, gladly as he would have denied it for her and his own sake. And yet he had only danced "moulinet des dames" because absorbed in her presence. And what did it matter? Perhaps they would stop laughing some time. Had not a magazine a short while before accepted one of his poems, though it was discontinued before the poem could appear? The day would come when he would be famous, when everything he wrote would be printed, and then it was to be seen whether that wouldn't make an impression on Inga Holm ... But it wouldn't make any impression, no, that was just the trouble. On Magdalen Vermehren, who was always falling down, yes, on her it would. But never on Inga Holm, never on the blue-eyed, merry Inga. And so was it not in vain?

Tonio Kröger's heart contracted with pain at this thought. To feel how wonderful sportive and melancholy powers are stirring in you, and to know at the same time that those to whom your longing draws you are gaily inaccessible to them, that hurts grievously. But although he stood lonely, shut out, and without hope before closed blinds, pretending in his distress that he could look through them, he was none the less happy. For in those days his heart lived. Warmly and sadly it beat for you, Ingeborg Holm, and his soul embraced your blond, bright, and saucily ordinary little personality in blissful self-abnegation.

More than once he stood with heated face in lonely spots but faintly reached by music, the scent of flowers, and the clink of glasses, seeking to distinguish your ringing voice in the distant hum of the festive throng; grieving for you he stood, and still was happy. More than once it pained him that he could talk to Magdalen Vermehren, who was always falling down, that she understood him and was merry or grave with him, whereas fair-haired Inga, even though he sat beside her, seemed distant and strange and estranged, for his language was not hers; and still he was happy. For happiness, he told himself, is not being loved; that is satisfied vanity mingled with repugnance. Happiness consists in loving and snatching up perhaps tiny, deceptive approaches to the loved object. And he noted down this idea inwardly, thought it out in its entirety, and tasted it to the lees.

"Faithfulness!" thought Tonio Kröger. "I will be faithful and love you, Ingeborg, as long as I live." So good were his intentions. And yet a secret fear and sadness whispered: "You know you have forgotten Hans Hansen altogether, although you see him daily." And the hateful and pitiful thing was that this soft and slightly malicious voice had the right of it, that time went on and days came when Tonio Kröger was no longer so unconditionally ready to die for the merry Inga as formerly, because he felt in himself the desire and the ability to accomplish in his fashion a quantity of remarkable things in the world.

And he cautiously circled about the altar of sacrifice on which the pure and chaste flame of his love was blazing, knelt before it, and stirred and fed it in every way, because he wanted to be faithful. Yet after a time, imperceptibly, without sensation or noise, it went out nevertheless.

But Tonio Kröger stood yet awhile before the chilled altar, full of wonder and disappointment to find that faithfulness was impossible on earth. Then he shrugged his shoulders and went his way.

III

He went the way he had to go, a little carelessly and unevenly, whistling to himself, looking into space with head on one side; and if he went astray, that was because there simply is no right path for some individuals. If you asked him what in all the world he intended to be, he would supply varying information, for he was wont to say (and had already written it down) that he had in him the possibilities of a thousand forms of existence, together with the secret consciousness that they really were one and all impossibilities.

Even before he departed from his cramped native city, the clamps and threads with which it held him had gently loosened their hold. The old family of the Krögers had little by little begun to crumble and disintegrate, and men had reason to reckon Tonio Kröger's own existence and nature among the other features of that process. His father's mother had died, the head of the family, and not long afterward his father, the tall, meditative, carefully dressed gentleman with the wild flower in his buttonhole, had followed her in death. The big Kröger house together with its honorable history was for sale, and the firm went out of business. Tonio's mother, however, his beautiful, passionate mother, who played the piano and the mandolin so wonderfully, and to whom everything was quite immaterial, married anew after the lapse of a year, this time a musician, a virtuoso with an Italian name whom she followed to far-away lands. Tonio Kröger found this a trifle unprincipled; but was he called upon to prevent her? He who wrote verses and could not even answer the question what in all the world he intended to become ...