a virtuous wife with the woman whose distant image is somewhat
transfigured by the past, and confess that we have been completely
spoiled for the part of a husband content to sit phlegmatically in the
chimney corner."

"You still think of Helene?" cried Sigmund in surprise.

"Why shouldn't I?" replied Wolf, "you also remember her, as I see."

"True," Sigmund assented. "I have not forgotten her. She was a
bewitchingly beautiful and charming woman. What a tempting mouth!
What wicked eyes! And her clever talk! Her merry disposition!
Wherever she was, she filled everything with life and animation."

Wolf gazed thoughtfully into vacancy, and made no reply.

"She loved you very dearly," Sigmund added.

Still Wolf remained silent.

"And you loved her."

"Yes," Wolf answered at last, drawing his fingers slowly through his
red beard. "I loved Helene very dearly. So long as I was with her, I
did not notice it, and when the child was born, I even felt greatly
disturbed by the thought that I should now have her bound to me
forever. Not until after we had separated did I discover how large a
place she had filled in my life. And the more distant that time
becomes, it grows larger instead of less. A reversion of all the laws
of perspective."

"But an intelligible phenomenon," observed Sigmund. "Helene has
become, in your remembrance, the embodiment of your youth, and the
longing with which you think of her concerns your twenty-four years at
least as much as she herself."

"It may be so. The fact is that I see Helene in a golden light of
youth and careless happiness, and cannot think of her without tears."

"Do you know, friend Wolf, that you perhaps did wrong to leave her?"

"There are hours when I believe it. When we have found a creature whom
we love, and who loves us in return, we ought on no account to give her
up. We never know whether it will be possible to replace. And, after
all, love is the only thing which makes life worth living."

"What would you have, Sigmund? That is the wisdom of mature years. At
four and twenty we have not yet reached that knowledge. At that time I
perceived only that I had picked Helene up in the Luxembourg gardens,
that is, as it were, in the streets. I knew that I was not her first
love--"

"But her only one," interposed Sigmund.

"So she said, yes. But I had the feeling that I owed her nothing.
Love for love. This I gave her, and she ought to ask nothing more.