s to him at once the
sweetheart of his youth and the dear daughter of his age. How could
these young fellows have the effrontery to place their own light love
fancies in rivalry with this profound love of his that was rooted in all
the years of a lifetime? His thoughts went back to those long-past days
when he and Christine first had known each other as little children on
the sunny slopes of the Andreas-berg, and when began the love that still
was a living reality. And then he followed downward through the years
his own love-story from this its beginning--the promise made in the
twilight, while the south wind, laden with the sweet smell of the
pine-trees of the Schwarzwald, played about them; the hard parting; his
joyous journey with his birds westward across the sea; the black day
when that journey ended; the years of sorrow which closed in still
keener sorrow when his Christine was lost to him utterly in death; and
then through the later years, which ever grew brighter and happier as
his love for Christine was born anew and lived its strange, half-real
life in his love for Christine's child, who also was the daughter given
him by Heaven to cheer and comfort him in his old age. And now at the
end of it all he was asked to give to another this sweet flower of love
that for his happiness, almost by a miracle, as it seemed, a second time
had bloomed. Was not this asking more of him, he thought, than rightly
should be asked?

So heavy was the load of bitterness that oppressed him that even the
singing of the Kronprinz, who was moved to break forth into song just
then, failed for a time to arouse him. Yet presently the sweet sound
penetrated the thick substance of his sorrow, and slowly turned the
current of his sombre thoughts. Andreas loved all music; but because
of the long train of associations which it invoked, and because of his
skilled knowledge of its quality, there was no music so sweet to him as
the singing of a bird. And when the singer was the Kronprinz, who sang
with a mellow sweetness rare and wonderful, the music never failed to
move his tender nature to its very depths. And so, as he listened to the
singing of his bird, gentler and better thoughts possessed him; and then
he reproached himself for the selfishness that had so filled his
heart. He had no right, he thought, to stand in the way of Roschen's
happiness--to compel her to take the old love that he had to give in
place of the fresh young love that was