how. I've been very comfortable" (this was my way of putting it)
"ever since, and I am curious to see what the boy will be like in a few
years. Shall you make him into a musician too?"

Courvoisier's brow clouded a little.

"I don't know," was all he said. Later, I learned the reason of that
"don't know."

"So it was no love affair," said Eugen again. "Then I have been wrong
all the time. I quite fancied it was some girl--"

"What could make you think so?" I asked, with a whole-hearted laugh. "I
tell you I don't know what it is to be in love. The other fellows are
always in love. They are in a constant state of _Schwaeramerei_ about
some girl or other. It goes in epidemics. They have not each a separate
passion. The whole lot of them will go mad about one young woman. I
can't understand it. I wish I could, for they seem to enjoy it so much."

"You heathen!" said he, but not in a very bantering tone.

"Why, Eugen, do you mean to say that you are so very susceptible? Oh, I
beg your pardon," I added, hastily, shocked and confused to find that I
had been so nearly overstepping the boundary which I had always marked
out for myself. And I stopped abruptly.

"That's like you, Friedhelm," said he, in a tone which was in some way
different from his usual one. "I never knew such a ridiculous,
chivalrous, punctilious fellow as you are. Tell me something--did you
never speculate about me?"

"Never impertinently, I assure you, Eugen," said I, earnestly.

He laughed.

"You impertinent! That is amusing, I must say. But surely you have given
me a thought now and then, have wondered whether I had a history, or
sprung out of nothing?"

"Certainly, and wondered what your story was; but I do not need to know
it to--"

"I understand. Well, but it is rather difficult to say this to such an
unsympathetic person; you won't understand it. I have been in love,
Friedel."

"So I can suppose."

I waited for the corollary, "and been loved in return," but it did not
come. He said, "And received as much regard in return as I
deserved--perhaps more."

As I could not cordially assent to this proposition, I remained silent.

After a pause he went on: "I am eight-and-twenty, and have lived my
life. The story won't bear raking up now--perhaps never. For a long time
I went on my own way, and was satisfied with it--blindly, inanely,
densely satisfied with it; then all at once I was brought to reason--"
He laughed, not a very pleasant lau